For generations, to be educated meant to have linguistics knowledge; some basic understanding of other languages was expected. For Western culture, arguably none of these languages had a greater influence than Latin. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian directly derive from it, and English drowns in the overflow of its influence.   more »

In one room at the Prospect Latin School, Nadia Islam is using animal puppets to teach 3-year-olds such Latin words as "canis," which means dog.   more »

I've just got back from that performance of Oedipus the King by the Actors of Dionysus. On the way to Taunton, and on the way back, I listened to the start and end of the Welsh National Opera production of The Return of Ulysses by Monteverdi.   more »

Having just heard from Atriades that Oedipus, with the Actors of Dionysus, is on in Taunton this evening, I take the opportunity of posting their current tour dates:   more »

May I commend Bestiaria Latins News as an excellent source of all sorts of classroom ideas and goodies? One that caught my eye this morning was a   more »

The latest EU Newsfrom Finland in Latin is here.   more »

From today you can find out all about the Romans in Carlisle (which they called Luguvalium) on a new Tullie House interactive website.   more »

From Campus Times.

Where did Classics go?
Amy Weintraub
Issue date: 9/21/06 Section: Features

Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Homer - ...   more »

Why should I keep it to myself? Wilf O'Neill just sent me this:   more »

These are the first few books from OUP's latest list, which I thought looked useful.   more »

Yesterday's news in the Guardian about the new exam favoured by universities instead on A level sent me on a search. I found   more »

Mary Beard is on good form today with a blog on an early morning 'twilight' Greek class and on the Mantegna   more »

Confirmation, a Roman Catholic sacrament that completes an individual's initiation into the church, was celebrated in Latin in Phoenix on Sunday for the first time since the early 1970s.   more »

Yesterday's Guardian had the announcement of a drive to get more young people to take language degrees. No doubt the stress will be on modern languages, but I have urged Classics teachers to make common cause with modern language departments to fight the dismal decline in language learning. Here's a paragraph. Use the link above to read the whole article.   more »

Today's Guardian reports on a new exam to rival A level, which will enable university to differentiate between the good and the best students and prepare them more adequately for university study. I shall be interested to find out what this 'Classical Heritage' course entails. If it includes Latin and/or Greek, that will be excellent.   more »

The BBC History website has launched the first episode in its multi-part adventure game, CDX. Acting as a companion to the current BBC series, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, the game's story follows a character who supplies a Roman dagger to the BBC TV production.   more »

The best thing will be to collect links to reviews on BBC1's Ancient Rome here. Revisit for more links as they turn up.   more »

My National Trust magazine arrived a couple of days ago, with the Wessex supplement. A photo of the familiar Victorian building at Chedworth, the one that covers the dining room, led me to the news item announcing:   more »

I'm not sure how reliable this piece is.   more »

School parties in Rome may not find the Circus Maximus quite such a non-event in future, according to Reuters. It really is a great disappointment at present.   more »

Having just watched the first episode in the BBC1 Ancient Rome series, I can report that I was gripped.   more »

This popular picture is often downloaded. To conserve blog bandwidth it is now lodged on PhotoBucket, but still freely available:   more »

Just a menider that BBC1 is showing the first of their new series, Ancient Rome: the Riseand Fall of an Empire, tonight at 9 p.m. This episode is on Nero.   more »

A report from the Battle of the Notice Board. Until recently the ARLT Notice Board has been free from spam, but lately various of the usual dreary spammers have attacked it, offering the usual dreary medicines by post and other dreary things.   more »

I couldn't help with this query. Can you?   more »

Incredibly busy here with a 5 fold increase in independent learners and loads of schools wanting to start Latin - great!   more »

The September edition of the ARLT e-Newsletter went out yesterday, and a record number came back undelivered.   more »

An article in The Scotsman in which Robert McNeil muses about evening classes he has attended, including Latin, reminds me to tell you that a retired Latin teacher from Butleigh is enjoying great success with her U3A class here in Street. I gather that the class has grown to 30 and is looking for larger premises.   more »

I pass on this further message from Charles Craddock's son Charlie. I had asked whether the funeral would be a public one:   more »

Monteverdi's moving account of Ulysses's return from his wanderings is given a new production by Welsh National Opera,   more »

Those teaching Livy this year may find this, from Ha Aretz, interesting.   more »

I wanted to let you know that my father Charles Craddock, one of your vice-presidents, passed away on Sept 11 after a long illness. He loved Latin and was a great admirer and supporter of your society. I am asking that donations at the funeral are made to ARLT.   more »

I have cleared away a lot of spam from the Notice Board and am beginning to ban those who post it, so I hope that the Notice Board will be a pleasanter place to visit, and that you will find it useful.   more »

This piece from Canada invites students to challenge prevailing orthodoxies. Although it mentions Socrates it isn't about Classics, but Classics teachers would do well to promote the attitudes shown by the writer.   more »

The series producer of the BBC’s new docudrama Ancient Rome – the Rise and Fall of an Empire is no doubt an honourable man. He claims previous films “have tended to ignore the real history and chosen to fictionalise the story”.   more »

This is not just another 'look how they do it in the USA' piece. It has a wealth of points worth quoting to your pupils and their parents.   more »

From Robert West:

I was sorry to see the announcement of Charles Craddock’s death in The Times today.

   more »

If you wish to read Sherlock Holmes in Latin, this email message from albinus(AT)latinitatis.com is for you:   more »

The ARLT website has enjoyed a new Notice Board for several months now, so the old one is closing. Among the more recent items is this, which may interest teachers:   more »

At Cheney School, Latin teacher Julian Armistead said the language was coming back into fashion and about 70 students were now taking it. The first lesson at AS-Level started this week.   more »

Robert West, an experienced teacher with years of experience as an examiner - indeed I believe a chief examiner - has now published his edition of the Pro Milone AS/A2 level selection being examined in 2007.   more »

They will be entertaining our children absolutely gratis at Hinchingbrooke Country Park on Sunday. It's a bona fide offer to have an impromptu meeting with the Roman populus.

In a recreation of Roman and Iron Age villages, there will be re-enactors to take families back in time to an era when, if you wanted a pot for the kitchen, you might just have to throw it yourself - not at your other half but on a wheel.   more »

Adrian Murdoch in Bread and Circuses pointed me to a wonderful collection of images stored on Flickr here.   more »

Moderatores duodequadraginta civitatum Europae et Asiae cum praesidente Commissionis Europaeae summo conventui ASEM 6 biduano die 11. m. Septembris 2006 Helsinkii finem fecerunt.   more »

I am grateful for this correction from Daphne Stevenson.   more »

The Journal of Classics Teaching has news of a number of Classical events over the next 12 months. In case you mislay your copy, you may like to check on the ARLT site's Classical Calendar here.   more »

The JACT/ARLT publication The Journal of Classics Teaching smiled up at me from my doormat this morning - four comic masks decorate the front cover.

But what's inside is serious and important.   more »

The first meeting is a dinner at which you can talk in Latin or English (or any other language) and get to know the other participants. We were 55 in total and I would estimate that about 30 had attended before. Most were either professors or school teachers and there were a few university students and self-taught enthusiasts. There were also three young children who attended and had their own mini-sessions!   more »

This email from the ARLT President arrived today:   more »

Forget the days of rows of youngsters chanting "amo, amas, amat". Children at the vast majority of secondary schools that do not teach Latin are being offered an opportunity to learn the language for the first time using a live video link, as part of a new drive to revive interest in the language announced today.   more »

LATIN appears to be enjoying a quiet revival in Britain’s secondary schools. Teachers and classicists across England have noted a dramatic rise in the numbers of children starting secondary school who are expressing an interest in the subject.   more »

Another chatty article on the Latin names for plants, and why they are important.   more »

Video (5 1/2 minutes) of Channel 4 interview with Robert Harris on Cicero and Tony Blair here.    more »

A lovely picture gallery of Greek figures sculpted in sand at Great Yarmouth this summer is here. There's also a film report on the seaside myth-making on the same page.   more »

I am re-posting the Peplos Kore picture because I have messed up the previous posting.   more »

Mary Beard is writing about the Blair-Brown affair and how is leads commentators to seek Roman parallels. In the course of her blog she joins those trying to put the record straight about Julius Caesar's dying words. No, the famous ones are not Caesar's. But would anyone object to their last words being re-written for them by the world's greatest writer?   more »

Hadrian’s Wall is one of the most spectacular monuments in Britain. It trails its weary weight across wild open country. Vast panoramas, revealed or shaded by the sweeping light, stretch across to the distant Cheviots. The landscape is as dramatic as its history.

The geologist, however, knows of a deeper drama far more ancient than either the Wall or the landscape itself.   more »

Your wondering has led me to a slightly surprising, but no less welcome finding that the WEA is doing more than I had believed to keep Classics alive in adult education   more »

Julius Caesar's tragedy, Mr. Goldsworthy shows, was that the only way he could become the greatest Roman was to destroy the Roman Republic. In doing so, he exposed the paradoxical nature of all worldly ambition, which must both exalt and humiliate, create and destroy. That is why Caesar's life is still one of our culture's most potent and disturbing parables.   more »

Having recently visited Tunisia I was interested in Mary Beard's reactions. I too noticed the mask in El Djem museum, and didn't know what to make of it or where to pigeonhole it. It didn't seem to fit into the style of the rest of the exhibits.   more »

Conventus biduanus Consilii ECOFIN permultas res tractabit, in quibus erunt status hodiernus oeconomiae globalis et prospectus futuri, stabilitas mercatuum fiscalium et evolutio institutionalis Fundi Monetarii Internationalis (IMF).   more »

"I just can't wait for the new knowledge to flow into my head," Noah said as he played with his best friend, Skylar Lovett, 10, who will attend the school, too.   more »

Just for fun there's a 2 minute film on the partially reconstructed Roman villa at Mehring here.   more »

The Sunday Times has been lavish in its coverage of Imperium, a novel about Cicero by Robert Harris.   more »

"Using Latin is a way of paying tribute to European civilisation and it serves to remind people of European society’s roots, stretching back to ancient times," explained Mia Lahti, editor of the Finnish presidency’s website.

"Latin isn't dead – it’s still very much in use in different forms across the world today. After all, Italians, French and Spaniards all speak a new form of Latin."   more »

Thanks to Robert West, who led a Greek Prose group at the ARLT Summer School, a version of the latest Greek prose is in the For Teachers section of the ARLT website.   more »

During my recent holiday in Germany I revisited Xanten, the remarkable reconstruction of a Roman town, and took some video with my digital camera. I spent some time yesterday and today editing video and stills together into a 15 minute tour of the town...   more »

Thanks to Dr Alison Henshaw for a new set of tests on GCSE set text Ion by Euripides. This is the first contribution on a Greek topic. Because of the problem of Greek fonts the tests are in PDF format.   more »

One might have thought that Isidore, Bishop of Seville, AD 600-636, had already suffered enough by having Oxford's computerised 'student administration project', planned since 2002, named after him. But five years ago Pope John Paul II compounded his misfortune by proposing (evidently) to nominate him as the patron saint of the internet   more »

Over the last few months I’ve been “consulting” for part of a series of BBC drama-documentaries on ancient Rome (“Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire” -- which starts on BBC1 later in the month). - Mary Beard   more »

The new Classics magazine designed to stir interest in the Classics in maintained schools will be out on 18th September.   more »