Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Paulinus, don't malign us!

Erock has been keeping the Campus going strong for all our faithful readers, while in the meantime I've been trying to re-learn how to read Latin. It may not be the best idea to do that through 5th c. Latin written in three different meters and often with little regard for the comfortable conventions of Latin syntax.

The good thing is that I've hit a stride and have pounded through more than three hundred lines today.

The bad news is that I failed to pass both the Greek and Latin sight exams. I was congratulated 'for attempting both,' which I thought a bit odd, and was told that my Menander was fine but the rest of the Greek 'not so.' After spending a semester with Plato, Lysias, Thucydides, and Gil Prose, and having never so much as glanced at a page of Menander before the exam, I found that a little difficult to understand.

But there you have it. I'm tempted to change an option on the poll. I should probably add Menander since that's apparently all I can read well enough anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, this computer in the library saves information entered in forms on web pages, and when I tried to enter a title just now one entry in the list read, '26 yo in philly burbs looking for younger guys for a lt.'

Now, I don't know what 'a lt' means (a loose time? a little tender-lovin'-care? a laser-tag tournament?) but what I do know is this: some 26 year old dude in Carpenter library is trying to meet 'younger guys.'

Not that I'm here to out anybody.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...the comfortable conventions of Latin syntax...

I've often thought they were so comfortable because they were so athletic, so limber, so freely bent and contorted - much like the sexual gymnast of one's adolescent fantasies.

But as for Paulinus, I find much gentleness, tenderness in him. I remember Sextus Pretius fondly reciting passages from Paulinus and Ausonius, sipping his drink and expounding eloquently on them both.

For awhile I was under the aegis of an Italian gentleman from Nola who, over a few espressos with Sambuca, expressed amazement that I knew of Paulino of Nola.