Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Eternal embrace? Couple still hugging 5,000 years on

ROME (Reuters) - Call it the eternal embrace.

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Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, hugging each other.

"It's an extraordinary case," said Elena Menotti, who led the team on their dig near the northern city of Mantova.

"There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging -- and they really are hugging."

Menotti said she believed the two, almost certainly a man and a woman although that needs to be confirmed, died young because their teeth were mostly intact and not worn down.

"I must say that when we discovered it, we all became very excited. I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've done digs at Pompeii, all the famous sites," she told Reuters.

"But I've never been so moved because this is the discovery of something special."

A laboratory will now try to determine the couple's age at the time of death and how long they had been buried.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Lhomond's cento, "Viri Romae"

The work (more fully Viri Romae illustres) is alternately known as De viris illustribus. As its name implies it deals with those men in Roman history (and myth) whom posterity has honored, from Romulus through Augustus. Lhomond constructed the work as a cento, compiling his narratives from the works of a vast array of Roman writers: poets such as Vergil and Ovid were employed alongside Cicero, Livy, and even the likes of Eutropius (who wrote during the reigns of Julian and Valens).

I suspect that many will think the book somehow 'outdated,' but it was designed by a man dedicated to teaching Latin at the secondary level (he purportedly turned down several university posts) and published just three years after darwin's Origin of Species and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Each is still a classic. And isn't Caesar, who died more than 20 centuries ago?

The text is available at the Latin Library, but a very nice student edition can be obtained through Google Books. I've just begun using this with one of my classes. Here's a sampling of the opening lines:

Proca, rex Albanorum, duos filios, Numitorem et Amulium habuit. Numitori, qui natu major erat, regnum reliquit; sed Amulius, pulso fratre, regnavit, et ut eum sobole privaret, Rheam Sylviam ejus filiam Vestae sacerdotem fecit, quae tamen Romulum et Remum uno partu edidit.
As well as being a fascinating chapter in the history of Latin pedagogy, I've found the text itself readable and interesting. Here's hoping the students do as well.