I happened to mention the Ermine Street Guard in my last post, as an example, and that reminded me to look at their web site again. There's a lot of good stuff there. The index of pictures is here.   more »

I spent an hour yesterday putting each performance of Trojan Women on its proper day in the Classics Calendar, and it seems a good opportunity to draw people's attention to this Calendar.   more »

"However, even that did not prepare me for the written skills of your average GCSE candidate. The handwriting, most of the time, resembled that of a five-year-old toddler or a drunk (grotesquely simple or an illegible scrawl). A lack of basic punctuation, such as full stops, commas, capital letters etc, was commonplace. There were countless inarticulate, immature sentences, which did not make any sense to the reader. "   more »

There's a fascinating rant (that means I agree with it!) in The Education Guardian this week, in which Jenni Russell puts her finger on the bad effects of today's exam system on education.   more »

The Guardian reports a survey on the effect of computers on pupils   more »

The first clues about next year's Festival come from King's College, London, who are putting on Ecclesiazousae, And UCL, who are offering Medea.   more »

The Actors of Dionysus are touring The Trojan Women between September and December. Their web site is here.   more »

Let me again commend David Meadows' excellent weekly roundup of internet items of interest to Classicists, Archaeologists and Historians. I call it "now even more Classics-friendly" because   more »

Let me again commend David Meadows' excellent weekly roundup of internet items of interest to Classicists, Archaeologists and Historians. I call it "now even more Classics-friendly" because   more »

The Radio Times on Saturday offered this less than overwhelmed assessment of "Empire", the mini-series on Rome which started that evening on Hallmark (which seems to be a general entertainment channel):   more »

I have just received a leaflet from Tyne and Wear Museums about "Arbeia Roman Fort", South Shields. This looks well worth visiting when you are in that neck of the woods.   more »

Could the present trend towards higher grades and choosing easier subjects, as alleged in today's Times (below), be followed by a reaction?   more »

I've checked the top 21 of The Times Top 450 State Schools, and find that 16 of them offer Latin. You might use this as ammunition when arguing with heads who want their schools to be among the best! Update ...   more »

Apparently it's not only in the USA that people, including young people, look forward to the Latin Mass.   more »

This year's ARLT Summer School was held at Royal Holloway, which I had never visited before.

I was impressed. I picked up a copy of Quid Novi?, the four page brochure for schools, and liked the Editorial with its robust defence of the Classics and its news of expansion in the department.   more »

Here are the A level grades for all Classical subjects, as reported in the Guardian. The Times has reported disquiet over A levels. Those at the chalk face feel, probably correctly, that they have no influence at all over educational policies, but we like to know what our masters and mistresses think.   more »

Another Silly Season item from last month: French teachers and researchers in Japan are suing the Tokyo Governor, Shintaro Ishihara, for calling French a "failed language".   more »

When BBC Radio 4 ran a popularity poll on the world's greatest philosopher, Karl Marx came top, and the top 20 were all men. So The Independent got Camille Paglia   more »

The official site is here.   more »

Aug. 9, 2005 — Two brothers are behind Rome's greatest monuments, according to Italian archaeologists who have discovered two furnaces that provided the bricks for buildings such as the Colosseum and the Pantheon.   more »

Discovery Channel has a feature on Pompeii here. It could be useful with Stage 12 of the Cambridge Latin Course.   more »

I've just had this enquiry from a (non-classical) friend:

"I seem to remember there's a Latin phrase that means in ...   more »

Stockport high school for girls suddenly swarmed with clever pupils keen for the rigours of Latin and physics. The gates of learning swung open and we rushed through. And we prospered;   more »

The Guardian has some good ammunition for Latin teachers who want to sell their subject. Other subjects may be easier (may be? I should say definitely are!) but employers won't be impressed by an A level in Media Studies.   more »

There are people ready to advise your students on how to get into the best university, apparently. It's big in America, and it is probably coming here.   more »

Richard Willmott, headmaster of Dixie Grammar School, contacted me yesterday. His (American) Latin teacher had gone to visit his son, and emailed yesterday to say his son was so ill that he would not be returning. Can you help? Do you know anyone who wants a Latin teaching post?   more »

Colleagues may well be interested to know of, if not actually to visit, the many Roman-oriented activities arranged by the Tyne and Wear Museums site at Segedunum this Summer starting around 11 o'clock, ending 3'30 or 4:   more »

One or two books from OUP that might be interesting, including OUP's own blurbs. Children and Childhood in Roman Italy. Workbook I: Athenaze. Meno and Other Dialogues.   more »

This report should have been posted earlier, when a 'place-holder' appeared on the blog. I have only now put made my notes into readable form.
Lena Rubenstein and her husband Jonathan Powell were not only our academic hosts at Royal Holloway, as it were, but also both gave cutting-edge lectures.   more »

I've stumbled upon a Latin crossword published in 1930 to celebrate Vergil's bi-millennium. Can anyone solve it?

It's here.   more »

Scientists figure there are at least half a million Greek and Latin inscriptions on stones in various states of decay and legibility. Cornell researchers developed a process called X-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging to recover faded text on stone by "zapping and mapping" the inscriptions.   more »

David Swift has just sent me the web address of his photos from the 2005 Summer School.   more »

I took off the controls that require you to give your name before posting a comment, hoping that more people would make ...   more »

... you might be interested in this tirade against hot-housing pupils to pass exams, from The Times back on July 18.   more »