Rogue Classicism has notices of some UK seminars and lectures that might interest teachers.   more »

This comparison chart from a Christian home-schooling site shows some of the range of courses available in the USA.   more »

Bathsua Makin is today's Life at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.   more »

William Linney has emailed ArLT about a book he has written to help home-schoolers learn Latin. He has an extensive website at http://www.gettingstartedwithlatin.com/ where you can read sample pages.   more »

I missed the BBC Timewatch programme on Friday, and I gather from Barbara Bell that it was really good (and relevant to all my Minimus teaching). Where do you think I might find a recording, DVD or video?   more »

I found to my great surprise that he speaks powerfully to the present newspaper controversy about standards in Latin teaching.   more »

The French will come across the Alps like all those invaders of old - from Brennus and Hannibal on to Attila. Italy will be hoping that it can find a Cincinnatus, Fabius Maximus or Leo the Great to stand up to the invaders,   more »

In keeping with the amateur group's tradition of tackling sizeable challenges, the 90-minute masterpiece of virtuoso singing and orchestral playing will be sung in Latin. "It's actually a fairly easy language," said the group's music director, Allen Combs, who will conduct the work.   more »

You may know that the Vatican Latinist Reginald Foster does a brief weekly broadcast about things Latin. On January 19th he spoke about Pliny, Tacitus and Trajan,   more »

Each time a Newsletter goes out to those who have registered on the ARLT website, a large number of emails comes back undelivered.   more »

The first Greek sculptor to create female nudes, Praxiteles was a great innovator of his era - the 4th century BC - and exercised a profound influence on art and sculpture in the ensuing centuries.   more »

David Smith reckons that it's the last chance for a classical epic film to be successful, before Hollywood pulls the plug on the genre.   more »

It seems that he has got around to reading Amo amas amat, and proclaims himself of the author's persuasion. He shares Harry Mount's disdain for the truth, writing:   more »

"You do not need to be mentally excellent to know Latin. Prostitutes, beggars and pimps in Rome spoke Latin, so there must be some hope for us."   more »

The Mail on Sunday has been having fun with a Leicester University study that discovered African DNA is present in seven Yorkshiremen. What do Classicists think of the Mail's assumption that Africans in Britain in Roman times were slaves?   more »

These, from the recent OUP catalogue, might be of interest to teachers.   more »

Latin Masses returned to the Lafayette Roman Catholic Diocese on Jan. 14   more »

In fact, we were always a bit like the Italians and that's why we loved them more than all other Europeans. For a long time now we don't hold a grudge against the Romans.   more »

Not particularly relevant to our teaching, but I liked this story from The Hindu:   more »

List the twelve things we need in order to be happy. And which is the poem most often translated into English from another language?   more »

A grotto discovered under the Roman site is thought to have been revered by Ancient Romans as the cave where the city's founding fathers, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a wolf.   more »

A request has come from Fairleigh Dickinson University College at Florham in New Jersey for the Latin version of a Thanksgiving Day song or hymn, We gather together.   more »

It’s certainly the case that there seems to have been no general idea of social, cultural or intellectual inferiority based on the colour of a person’s skin.   more »

One teacher is fighting to stop the classics from dying out in state schools, but is it too late, asks Sian Griffiths ‘Salve, magister!” In a low-slung white painted school in east London a class of 30 nine-year-olds are not yet used to the novelty of having their very own Latin teacher.   more »

Speakers include Dr Peter Jones on Greek Epic, Tom Lloyd on Thucydides and Herodotus, Elizabeth Belcher on career prospects for Classicists, Professor Stephen Harrison on the Aeneid, Dr Scott Scullion on tragedy and Donald Hill on Ovid.   more »

What interests me is that an American critic thinks the British accent is for 'things foreign or classy'. From this side of the Atlantic it seems that the British accent is for villains.   more »

THE Roman Legionary garrison in York is about to be reinforced - albeit 1,700 years too late.   more »

Mary Beard (Comment, January 16) is right to claim that Latin is a difficult subject to study at school level. However, to assert that only the most able can cope at GCSE level   more »

Downloads do, however, use up a lot of bandwidth, so I am beginning to transfer the audio files to a different server which offers unlimited bandwidth.   more »

Something about a lecture course on Roman Britain from Mary Beard today.   more »

Yes, the plays are indeed ingeniously nasty, but then human behaviour often is. Dramatists have known that since the time of the ancient Greeks, and two of these plays are loosely based on Euripides (Iphigenia in Aulis and Medea), while a third derives its inspiration from the death of Orpheus, torn to pieces by marauding Maenads.   more »

This email came today. It's about a Sixth form half-day school on OCR Latin set texts, on Wednesday 7th February 2007, 2.00-4.30pm in Manchester:   more »

Mi Tempus Bonum, quo consilio Harrium Potter Romanum esse puerum affirmas?   more »

All bright children, no matter how wealthy or privileged they are, should have the opportunity to learn classical languages. One of the biggest crimes of the national curriculum is having eased Latin out of the maintained sector (though not entirely, I'm pleased to report).   more »

There's one in which she wonders if a 1902 Cambridge exam was harder of easier than this year's:   more »

“What was the root cause of it all? The Romans had fallen prey to socialism. This cancerous system of mushrooming welfare, high taxes, trade restrictions, and inflation destroyed the Roman system of common law and demolished the currency and the economy.   more »

There are pages of different kinds of teaching aids: pictures, text, games, software, vocab, films, PowerPoint, and audio.   more »

Does anyone know what else, if anything, is included in the 2007 Festival? In previous years there have been plays in translation, lectures, and something at the British Museum.   more »

Will Hutton is right about Latin ('Ancient Rome is where our heart is', Comment, last week). However, he sells the language short.   more »

"The real energy and enthusiasm around this Mass is with the younger people," said Father Lawrence McInerny, pastor of the Stella Maris parish on Sullivan's Island.   more »

There are good prizes to be won by artistic youngsters in the Hellenic Society Schools Art Competition.   more »

It's a down-to-earth issue, with experiences of several Classics teachers in their first year of teaching. There's also an article on the relative difficulty of Latin, and even Classical Civilisation (which surprised me) at GCSE.   more »

In her latest intense and ambitious collection, Glück - a former Pulitzer prizewinner - fuses the myth of the lake (a porous barrier between the states of life and death, body and soul) with that of the goddess Persephone ...   more »

If dozens of bedsheets were missing from airing cupboards in Hadleigh yesterday there was a simple explanation. They were draped around youngsters taking a trip back in time to Roman Britain.   more »

Has anyone ever used the National Extension College notes for Classical Civilisation?   more »

I wonder, will this mass-audience show, with nudity and pretty extreme violence/horror be good or bad for the Classics in the long run?   more »

Can someone please explain to me this sentence from today's Times?   more »

The spate of newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and particularly on-line comments, occasioned by the two books, by Harry Mount and Bob Lister, inevitably include some which say something like:   more »

The Rubicon is being approached. The study of classics looks soon to cease in Britain. It is a trend that is more than a generation old, but if it continues, no state school will be teaching Greek within five years and within 10, Latin will have virtually died out.   more »

The BBC still has a listen again/download of a Woman's Hour item with Professor Jane Stevenson of Aberdeen and Dr Helen Morales, broadcast in September 2005. None of the poems quoted in Latin, but mildly interesting.   more »

Six years ago, I took over a Latin program in a private school here in Massachusetts. The previous teacher was a young woman who had been trained to make the subject "fun" to encourage and maintain enrollment.   more »

Haud Dubito Quin Harrius Potter Romanus sit puer. nam fecundissimi linguae Latinae, divites morum Romanorum sunt libri eius.   more »

It follows, then, that he should have gone on to make his name with books streaked with bone-crunching derring-do — first with the Emperor series of novels about Julius Caesar and latterly with The Dangerous Book for Boys, a retro, though far from ironic, compendium about making knots, Latin and science experiments that has sold nearly half a million copies.   more »

One of the Pope's music officials, the choirmaster of St John Lateran, Monsignor Marco Frisina, has written the score for a song-and-dance extravaganza based on Dante's Divine Comedy.   more »

Having posted a report on Bob Lister's book from another paper, I find that The Guardian report puts its finger on one important additional point: independent schools who "carry great weight with the ... exam board" want to keep GCSE standards as they are.   more »

Lucky J. K. Rowling to have discovered such an original source of childhood magic to translate. Lucky us who can now read it in the original language, beautifully written, and enjoy ourselves. And laugh and laugh and laugh.   more »

Last summer, to gain an A* at GCSE Latin, OCR   more »

Sir, Translation between Latin or Greek and English provides strenuous exercise for the mind, as PE does for the body. It vigorously exercises both short and long-term memory, analytical skills, problem-solving, synthesis, creativity and mental discipline.   more »

When asked “Should Latin be compulsory in schools?” he replied: “The Latin and Greek classics are infinitely rewarding..." (Not answering the question - geddit?)   more »

The argument seems to be that it takes a lot of study before one is able to read Lucretius et al in the original, and therefore GCSE Latin should be harder than other GCSEs.   more »

Where the standard of GCSE is concerned we do, however, have to make a choice.   more »

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the benefits to be derived from the active use of Latin in the teaching of Latin.   more »

The Authority needs to look again at this, urgently. If it is one particular individual who is standing in the way of change, he or she should be quietly spoken to by her/his superiors.   more »

The Times has an excellently quotable leader today. Read it. Quote it. Display it in your classroom.   more »

More that 330,000 visitors to our online Latin tutorial since February would agree that "Latin lovers are enjoying a boom"   more »

The first of the books that I actually read, ironically, was Peter Needham's delightful Latin translation   more »

"I have long believed that Latin, and especially Virgil, have special virtues for human intelligence. But I have had no proof. At last, I hope, I have found a probable origin..."   more »

There was a lot of good stuff about Juvenal as a comedian, and the claim was made that every type of comedy can be traced back to Aristophanes, with other Classical writers.   more »

Of course, we take it for granted that Roman behaviour was sadistic, beyond our own scale of values. But I did find myself wondering quite how, and how confidently, to draw the line between us and Fulvia.   more »