WASHINGTON -- Every Tuesday, Andy Mayer, 77, leads Hilda Mintzes, 84, and others in a Latin study group. They tackle Ovid's "The Art of Love," translating line by line -- "Your eyes will not be permitted to see her ankles" -- and practice language exercises about Caesar.   more »

Davis, who teaches Latin to children at Daniels Run Elementary School in Fairfax City, Va., is trying to develop students' skills not just in word recognition but in conversation, too.   more »

Very many of us are feeling frustrated about the non-appearance of these valuable educational tools, and Will must be the most frustrated of all. Here is part of the page:   more »

A web site on Horace's villa, recommended by the Cambridge Latin Course, includes pages on a number of Horace poems including O fons Bandusiae.

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She really wants to do Latin, which the school doesn't offer. What gives it the right to impose a "compulsory option"? And how can I help her prepare for GCSE Latin?   more »

There's a good production of Oedipus in Santa Cruz, apparently.

There are some who think the ancient Greek tragedies are the ultimate in perfect drama, and to those I say, here�s your chance to wallow in that experience. For those of you still unexposed or unconvinced, this is the time to find out what you�re missing.   more »

You play as Kratos, a Spartan in ancient Greece. He is tormented by awful nightmares and takes his own life. You pick up the game three weeks before his suicide to see why he killed himself, and to learn about his nightmares. Honestly though, the story isn't the driving force in this game. You keep playing because it is amazingly fun, and killing enemies as Kratos is wonderfully satisfying.   more »

Perhaps the most impressive monument to our age�s particular obsessive compulsion has been Harold and Jon Newman�s A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology (2003).

In a task of almost Sisyphean proportions the Newmans spent nearly 40 years linking 3,673 figures from Classical myth into one family tree spanning 20 generations.   more »

It is one of the masterpieces of ancient Greek sculpture. But could the Laoco� really be a fake by Michelangelo? Jonathan Jones reports.   more »

As results of the American National Latin Exam come out, schools are trumpeting their successes. Who will get something similar going here in the UK?   more »

Just down the road from me, in Taunton, Atriades is using the internet in an imaginative way to help his pupils (and the wider world) with their Classics studies.

He uses the Blog format, and has been filling it with links relevant to what the pupils are actually studying.   more »

I quite like this method of making the structure of a simple Latin sentence visible on the blackboard (or modern equivalent).   more »

There's one here, though I haven't been into it yet.   more »

You might enjoy Clint Hagen's blog - the Latin parts particularly. He is a Latin teacher, a Franciscan. He has an enthusiastic account of the Texas State Junior Classical League Convention, and of the way it spurs students to do a great deal of study on their own.   more »

The page is here.   more »

I'm sure that Classics teachers north of the border are familiar with the National Qualifications Online site. Teachers in England and Wales might find it worth their while investigating what resources are on offer. I found a set of worksheets on Roman armour (legionary and auxiliary) and on an army camp, suitable for younger pupils, and a selection of Catullus and Ovid with vocabulary, map and notes ...   more »

A site called Creative Bridges for Language Learning has a number of ideas that Latin teachers could learn from. I think that ARLT founder Rouse would approve. The problem with such methods is, to adapt something often said about Christianity, it is not that they have been tried and found wanting; they have been found hard and not tried.   more »

What's the secret?

The easy answer: critical thinking. The more thought-provoking one: Latin. Though he had raised his own math scores a whopping 150 pts from college to graduate school by taking a few key classes, Michael found that the key to unlocking the verbal part of the S.A.T. was his four years of Latin. Why Latin?   more »

Analysis: Pope pushing a Latin trend. "I think, therefore I do Latin," runs an axiom popular among the brighter variety of British secondary school students.

In some cities, such as Leeds, they band together for after-school classes in Latin to boost their analytical skills, according to the BBC.   more »

The evening is in two parts, one focussed on the preparations for a Roman dinner, and the second, inspired by the discovery of a female gladiator's skeleton in London, on the time before a gladiatorial fight to the death between two women   more »

Lovely Linda was slightly overawed by the majesty of the Palace of Westminster. It was her first visit, and she wondered if others at the grand reception were feeling the same. They all looked so cool and self-possessed. Could it be that under those confident exteriors ...   more »

Headlines caught my eye - Classics are kicked off the curriculum - Ex-laureate condemns classics-free GCSE. It turned out that the 'classics' were classics of English literature   more »

The annual National Latin Exam was given in March to about 135,000 students in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands by the American Classical League, which promotes the study of Latin and Greek among Americans.   more »

Cardinals and Vatican watchers are having to brush up on their Latin. In the new Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI, Latin is in and Polish, the language of John Paul II, is out.   more »

Gianluca Nicoletti, a Vatican-watcher for the daily La Stampa, said: "We have never heard so much Latin before as in the past few days. Even Italian television has had to get to grips with it, bringing on classics pundits to explain the terminology. Italian has Latin roots, but few Italians understand it."   more »

They're actually speaking Romansch, a direct descendant of Latin. But experts fear it faces the same fate as the Roman legions that once occupied this corner of the Alps.   more »

British schools/colleges please copy. (You may recognise the source of the 'skit')

The first inaugural Latin Fest was held Friday for members of the ISU and Terre Haute communities to celebrate Latin and classical studies in the modern world.   more »

Remember this. Latin is the untaught and un-thought language. Yet Latin is a �gotta learn� for any doctorate fields, a �must know� to teach root words and a �wish we knew this� regarding the costs in our public schools dual-language instruction.   more »

On Channel One which is called Vatican Radio "One-O-Five live", there are Morning prayers in Latin at 6.30 to 7.00 Central European Time, Mass in Latin 7.30 to 8.00, Rosary in Latin 20.40 to 21.00, and Night Prayers in Latin 22.30 to 23.00.   more »

Father Reginald Foster wrote the Latin of the new Pope's address to the cardinals in half an hour, apparently. This is from   more »

Illinois, like the rest of the country, has a shortage of Latin teachers   more »

Keeping up the classics - Who cares if Latin vanishes from schools?   more »

A review in The Scotsman says: "The Burial at Thebes is a powerful and urgent version of Antigone; it should be read, and performed, wherever political morality is still not taken for granted."   more »

Two 'soundbites' from The Independent review:

The latest production of Julius Caesar, starring Ralph Fiennes and Simon Russell Beale, has redefined the play, says Paul Taylor . But how does it compare to other memorable versions?   more »

Last week, students at Creekside Middle School had a chance to see what life could have held for them had they been Romans some 2,000 years ago.   more »

A good article on the importance of Latin names for plants.   more »

The new Pope is a fluent Latinist, and we reproduce here his address in the Sistine Chapel.    more »

An interesting couple of e-mails from Gilbert Grant, arising from the extract from Rouse's book on Teaching Latin by the Direct Method that is on the web site, alerted me to Francois Gouin, of whom I had not heard. Google took me straight away to this fascinating extract from a book by a Mr Brown on methods of language learning.   more »

The magazine of my old college contains this interesting insight into admission proceedures from the Admissions Tutor (Arts), Dr. Andrew Thompson.   more »

I'm sure you read Ted Wragg's every word. For any who haven't got the Wragg habit yet, here are some gems to get you to read the rest, which is here.

Reception class teachers have to tick 117 different boxes to profile their five-year-olds. Utterly ludicrous.   more »

Here's the 2005 universities' pecking order in Classics, according to The Guardian.   more »

Apparently 1500 hopefuls will take a kind of super intelligence test, which, the inventors hope, will prove a better guide than A level grade predictions. Not everyone thinks it is a good idea:   more »

Mr Blair killed off proposals from Sir Mike Tomlinson, the former head of Ofsted, for a new baccalaureate-style diploma after insisting that A levels had to be kept. But yesterday, during a visit to a secondary school in Enfield, North London, he told pupils that he believed that the so-called gold standard qualification was too limited as a form of learning and testing.   more »

The (American) National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week is over, but this page is still worth looking at. If you wait a little while as the parade of present-day Latin teachers goes by, you will spot   more »

You can listen to an excerpt from a Latin Mass from Naples here.   more »

"I joke with cardinals in Latin ... and most don�t laugh," Father Reginald Foster, a Latin teacher at the Pontifical Gregorian University here, remarked with clear disapproval. "Some say they have no idea what I�m saying."   more »

Bill Gallagher, writing from Detroit, speculates on the choice of the new Pope, and although he has harsh words to say about Cardinal Ratzinger's style and ethical positions, he warms to his penchant for Latin:   more »

If you have attended one of the wondrous ARLT Summer Schools, you will have heard the words "O Arelates" at the opening of the Director's farewell speech on the last night.   more »

Renault�s Giancarlo Fisichella will demonstrate his Formula 1 car within the ancient Roman amphitheatre the Circuit Maximus on Sunday. (from the ITV sports page, 16th April)   more »

Poerio, a third-grade teacher at St. Louise de Marillac School in Upper St. Clair, has a collection of a couple hundred coins, including over 100 ancient coins. Her coins span from as early as 400 BC to modern coins. The collection started when she wanted to introduce Latin lessons to her class three years ago.   more »

There's a lovely piece in the Telegraph Education section by a man whose daughter has announced her intention of taking Greek for GCSE.   more »

I heard four people on BBC Radio 4 this morning discussing the decipherment of Classical texts that have been unreadable until now, and it sounded exciting. Here is the Independent's report:   more »

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Angela, an ARLT member who will be very sadly missed. She was joint editor of the JACT Review for some time, and a lively member of Summer Schools. At her own school she seemed to be involved in a great many activities, notably drama. Her Christian faith must have been a strength ...   more »

CAM, the Cambridge Alumni Magazine, carried an interview with Alison Richard, the university vice-chancellor. She had something to say about student fees, private versus state schools, the science/arts balance, and a mention of the Cambridge Schools Classics Project. Here are some of her answers.   more »

There may be one or two people in the Classics world who still are unaware of JACT, the Joint Association of Classics Teachers, that excellent body set up by ARLT along with the Classical Association and the now defunct Orbilian Society way back in 1963.

The JACT logo shows the three founding organisations as interlacing circles within the enfolding JACT circle.   more »

So, OCR are reducing the Latin GCSE designated word list.

Now, therefore, is the time for OCR to stop attributing to Classical authors its language texts for translation into English . They have been so much "adapted", within even the previous constraints, as to be unrecognisable and have been virtually new compositions.   more »

They popped a cap in my class. I enrolled in a Latin course as a bona fide way to learn the roots of our language.   more »

"I teach Latin in a secondary school and am concerned that the failure of the government's classics project means I will be out of a job shortly. Should I worry?"   more »

Here's a vigorous critique of contemporary (chiefly American) education and a call to return to the Classics.   more »

Sample questions from an American test show the kind of problem that all candidates for universities will have to tackle if two exam boards have their way.   more »

I came across a simple Latin dictionary that could be a useful classroom/homework tool.

It is small and easy to download (program 276 kb, word list 198 kb), and you can add words of your own without difficulty.   more »

When The Guardian reported on the finding that 300 Scottish children who were taught to read by learning the letter sounds and then putting them together (in just the same way that my grandmother taught me to read from the Victorian book "Reading Without Tears") were well ahead of those taught by other methods, bells rang in my head. Those rival teaching methods, the more mechanical and the more intuitive (see below for descriptions), reminded me of methods of learning Latin and Greek   more »

The erosion of the World Heritage Site is becoming so severe that the Roman wall could be placed on the World Heritage �in danger� list, experts told The Times yesterday   more »

The Ancient Library is a site I have just found, thanks to Explorator. It contains out-of-copyright Classical reference works, at the moment:   more »

After reading several reports - and passing them on in this Blog - I was depressed about the spin that the papers gave the news. Now I have discovered the FT version, and find that they got it exactly right.   more »

Saturation coverage of the late Pope's funeral included mentions of Latin, naturally. One paper noted that the funeral was President Bush's first experience of a Latin service. Reuters began a piece about the Vatican like this:

'There is probably only one place in the world where the cash machines give instructions in Latin. That place is Vatican City.'   more »

I don't know how long the letter page of the DT is available on-line, but at this moment you can read letters for and against Latin here.   more »

The Guardian published this obituary of Oliver Lyne last Wednesday:   more »

RogueClassicist, alias David Meadows, who informs and entertains me every Sunday with his Explorator newsletter, has opened Classics Central.    more »

Schools news

£4.5m rescue plan for state-school Latin ends in shambles

Matthew Taylor, education correspondent Saturday April 2, 2005 The ...   more »

I posted the Scotsman's version of the AP story yesterday. This is how the Telegraph treated the story today, which has a few more quotations and figures:   more »

A site devoted to learning Latin and Greek is www.textkit.com. One of its current fora is devoted to listing all the on-line examples of spoken Latin. The page in question is   more »

Dear Webmaster,

I was quite surprised not to find in your site any reference to "Ephemeris" (not even in your links page!). It would merit an OBI's award!! ;-)   more »

Latin will be dead in English schools within 25 years because a Government-funded IT project has �stalled�, it was predicted today.