yeah, ciminius mons!

and now for the random OCD fact! did you ever want to know what the Ciminius mons is? It's the range of volcanic mountains rising to just over 900 m (c. 3,000 ft.), which separate southern from central Etruria. A crater lake (lacus Ciminius: Lago di Vico) nestles amongst them. Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus won fame by penetrating their awe-inspiring, thickly wooded slopes in 310 B.C. (Livy 9.36-9). Sutrium and Nepete are keys to the region.

by the way: i remembered tonight how much i dislike reading scholarship on sappho.

Wainy. Weedy. Weaky.

I've argued often on the merits of restored classical pronunciation and have just stumbled upon the best defense:

si 'sub aqua sub aqua' ranae 'cecinere querelam',
    cur sessineere velis dicere, cur sub akway?
balat ovis 'be be', vocem effert noctua 'tu tu'?
    haec bee bee, tew tew posse sonare putas?

-- T.F. Higham, 1958 (cited in L.P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry p. 5)

Keep in mind that that's a short e. 'Bay bay' is no better than 'bee bee' (and for a great discussion on the pronunciation of Greek eta -- with this very same example -- check out Edgar Sturtevant's Pronunciation of Greek and Latin).

oh, how my gilded rose shines...

and here, friends, is the inimitable gil's translation of thucydides' comment on pericles' incredibly persuasive and powerful oratorical skill. when the athenians would get overly confident, pericles 'got them going in the direction of fear with his astounding downess'.

yes, i know--it is totally awesome.

i gots to flo like horace

and now for today's 'random OCD fact'!!!

do you know who marcus aurelius carus was? well, friend, he was a praetorian prefect from Narbo who overthrew Probus after rebelling in Raetia in AD 282. Leaving his elder son, Carinus, as Caesar in the west, Carus marched against Persia with Numerianus. He captured Ctesiphon, but, advancing further, was killed, perhaps by treachery (summer 283). He was the first emperor not to seek the senate's approval of his accession.

The Twenty-Seventh Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference

This post isn't really about that. I don't even know what that is. The web browser did an auto-completion when I typed "The," and heck if it wasn't better than my title.

So welcome to the Twenty-Seventh Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference.

The subject of my address is Eric's abandonment of the Campus. He apparently thinks his time is better wasted explaining why dave bergman is neat.

And so it's up to me to pass along Eric's favorite Gil Prose quote (which by now will surely have devolved into a poor paraphrase):

"Pericles was impressing them with his astounding downness."

All this talk of Gil reminded of something else. After the dinner which he made us pay for we were waiting for the train. Super J. Dawg was saying something about a fan letter he'd written to Jacques Barzun when we were interrupted by some kid with a guitar.

-- Are you talking about ideas?
-- Huh?
-- Are you guys talking about ideas?
-- ... Some ideas ... I guess.
-- That's really cool, man. No one does that anymore. [Ed. note: he was 15. Does he really remember those good ol' intellectual days of yore?] I'm writing this school paper right now on video games, and ... uh ... I just lost my train of thought. Sorry.

And so it went. A fitting end to a fine night.