Classics Reference Watch

I've started reading the first volume of Bob Dylan's autobiography and came across this paragraph, in which I thought those interested in the ancient world might be, well, interested. It comes as he is standing in a library in someone's apartment, after a paragraph about he pop culture of his day.

Standing in this room you could take it all for a joke. There were all types of things in here, books on topography, epigraphy, philosophy, political ideologies. The stuff that could make you bug-eyed. Books like Fox's Book of Martyrs, The Twelve Caesars, Tacitus lectures and letters to Brutus. Pericles' Ideal State of Democracy, Thucydides' The Athenian General--a narrative which would give you chills. It was written four hundres years before Christ and it talks about how human nature is always the enemy of anything superior. Thucydides writes about how words in his time have changed from their ordinary meaning, how actions and opinions can be altered in the blink of an eye. It's like nothing has changed from his time to mine.

(Chronicles: Volume One, p. 36)

In the next paragraph, he refers to 'Sophocles' book on the nature and function of the gods'--any ideas for this?

Further down:

I read some of The Sound and the Fury, didn't quite get it, but Faulkner was powerful. I read some of the Albertus Magnus book...the guy who mixed up scientific theories with theology. It was lightweight compared to Thucydides.

And then again, later in the same paragraph:

There was a book there on Joseph Smith, the authentic American prophet who identifies himself with Enoch in the Bible and says that Adam was the first man-god. This stuff pales in comparison to Thucydides, too.

Man, this guy really likes his Thucydides.

Magister for a Day

Well, in answer to Coke's query, teaching didn't go bad at all on Friday. But I suspect it's part of the reason I haven't posted anything in a few days.

I came away from the experience with a nasty cold or flu or something which I might have picked up from my girlfriend, but I think the collective germs a few hundred middle and high school students added to the soup and aggravated what my immune system had been holding at bay.

That said, the day was largely a success. Only one piece of paper was thrown my way, and it missed. Most of the students were so polite that they actually thanked me for being there. But the one thing that really surprised me was how different two classes in the same grade level could be so different. When the tests were finished, one class sat and drew pictures quietly, another erupted into a party, and the third passed notes and cast sly glances my way as if they were up to something but nothing came of it.

I'll let you guess which class threw the paper.

I was a little disappointed in how I handled one class, but I think some of that had to do with the assignment. Not that I'm second-guessing the teacher. I'm sure it works for her. Students were put into groups of 2 and asked to translate 2-3 sentences of a short mythic narrative. The problem was that the students were only concerned with the sentences they had been assigned and made a number of mistakes that they wouldn't have made had they known the context. When I went through the text with them it was clear that those who hadn't gone yet were so focused on re-reading their sentences that they took nothing away from what came before. When I had occasion to correct mistakes and explain why they were mistaken I was very often met with confusion or absolute disbelief, as when students insisted that a third declension dative was a genitive because it didn't end in -o.

Again, it may have had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't their regular teacher. They know that I'm not coming back tomorrow, that I'm not giving them a grade. They can slack off for a day when the teacher's away, and maybe their teacher has a way of pulling this stuff out of them that I don't.

But I felt that if I were given a class of my own day in and day out I could make some real progress. It wasn't at all terrifying, so I've passed that test.

Another crazy thing is going back to middle school or high school and realizing just how young these kids are. I seemed so much older to myself when I was their age. It reminds me of my youth, and those memories are downright comical now.

I have a few more days lined up already and will be on call if anyone needs a sick day. The department head has offered to help me find a job in the area if I'm interested, and if that turns into anything I already have ideas.

Coke was talking about bringing in real Latin and I think I would like to try the Colloquia of Erasmus among other things.

But that's a long way away.

More Hanson

Since I recently posted a review of VDH's most recent book, I might as well post his recent review of two books in The New Criterion, The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, edited by Robin Lane Fox; and “The Sea! The Sea!”: The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination, by Tim Rood. The review can be found here (registration required).

A War Like No Other

For anyone who's interested, William Grimes in the New York Times has a review of Victor Davis Hanson's latest book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

(Lvrogueclassicism.)

Ostia Antica 2

Ok, here's the second batch.

Another shot of the theater, which originally had 3 tiers of seating divided into five cunei (wedges) and a seating capacity of around 2,700; two of the tiers survive
Theater masks
A painting of fruits and vegetables from a Thermopolium, which is very well preserved. The marble countertops are in excellent shape, and two seats flanking the door also survive
The Capitolium in the Forum. The temple was dedicated to the Capitoline triad (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva)
My wife Allison and brother Ryan in the doorways of some buildings on one of Ostia's side streets

If anyone is interested in other pictures of Rome that are not necessarily classical, my wife and I have been posting some at another website.

Dennis: how did the teaching go?

Ostia Antica

Ok, I'm back. My brother, wife, and I visited the ancient Roman port town of Ostia today and I just wanted to post some pictures for y'all. I have a few more pics to post, but blogger won't let me put them all in this one, so see above.

Via Ostiense

Porta Romana

Fragments of the inscription once adorning Porta Romana. Notice 'P. Clodius...', and I believe the 'M' may be from Marcus Tullius Cicero

Neptune mosaic from baths

Theater