FVROR IMPIVS

My AP students are about to read the Jupiter's prophecy (and yes, we are behind, but blame block scheduling, standardized tests, and now snow days).

And I can't help but wish that someone would recreate the image that inspired the scene. Vergil's description is a apparently an ecphrasis of a painting by a certain Apelles, a painting that showed Alexander essentially gloating over the bound figure of raging Furor.

Now there's a theme for a neoclassical painter. Or some talented kid with lots of time on his hands. Any takers?

Eh. It was worth a shot.

TEMPESTAS

Chapter 16 of the popular textbook Lingua Latina finds the author very explicitly advocating for his own faith in the events that beset his characters. I'll admit that the manner in which Medus' prayer to Neptune is silenced is funny, but I'm not comfortable with a narrative in a Latin textbook offering proof of Christ's divinity, and so I've adapted the text to include a bit about other religions without giving primacy to any, and rather than allowing the textbook to feel preachy to my students, it'll provide a nice branching-off point to talk about religions under the Roman empire.

Just after Lydia prays to her 'dominus', prompting a dismissive response from her boyfriend, the runaway slave, I have the following:

Lydia: “sed dominus meus est deus!”
Mēdus: “iam satis deōs habeō, et Neptūnus me servāre potest!”
...
Lydia, tollēns manūs ad caelum, Chrīstum invocat, et Mēdus iterum magnā vōce Neptūnum invocat. Omnēs nautae, quī ex multīs terrīs sunt, deōs suōs invocāre incipiunt. Aliī Magnam Mātrem invocant, aliī Sōlem Invictum. Sed vocēs omnium vix audiuntur propter tonitrum.

Don't get me wrong: I would never censor an authentic text. But when a textbook author tries to slip in an inauthentic proof of his own religious beliefs (in this case making it clear that Christ is real and Neptune a figment) I have to draw the line. Nothing in my version prevents a Christian from assuming that Christ stopped the storm, nor does it instruct any of the other students that their faith (or lack thereof) is inferior.

Pindaric Metre

I've finally received my copy of Kiichiro Itsumi's hot-off-the-presses Pindaric Metre: The Other Half. I managed to get an amazing deal at the APA meeting in Philly, but after more than a month we decided that the first shipment was lost in the mail. This time they used UPS and it arrived within four days.

I see that the book is on offer from the BMCR, but maybe I'll manage to post a review of my own here at the Campus.

I have a great love of metrics and am really looking forward to this book.

Ancient markup language?

I've begun Rick LaFleur's methodologies class, and I'm sure this blog will see a resurgence as a result of my new focus on matters pedagogical. For anyone who's still following, Eric has been very busy being a professor and obtaining a proper degree (applause all around), while I actually silently left the blog some months back. I'm no longer affiliated with Bryn Mawr College, but the Campus Mawrtius is too much a part of me, so I've come back.

And the first thing I want to tell you about is something I found in reviewing a few sites for my first assignment: a ten year old program for creating your own Latin and Greek pages marked-up for Perseus-style glosses.

I can't believe I didn't know about this already, but now I've got ideas for how this might applied both to homework assignments and in mobile labs (i.e., laptops in the classroom). It's something I've always wanted to be able to do, especially with odd little texts that would never make their way to Perseus. There are contexts in which this is not a crutch, but a tool for confirmation or correction, and I'm looking forward to using it.