Brown: You bet my daughter is taking Latin next year…
As I write, it is the tail end of Ancient Rome’s Birthday, April 21. That would be expressed as “ANTE·DIEM·XI·KALENDAS·MAIAS.”
You can get that “ante” means “before,” “diem” is a declension 5 noun meaning “day,” and it is eleven days, using inclusive counting, before the first day – KALENDAS – of May.
Think “calendar” as a derivative of “Kalendās.”
According to tradition, ancient Rome was founded in the year we describe as 753 Before Christ (B.C.) or Before the Common Era (B.C.E.).
The Romans used AVC, or as historians say AUC, which stands for “Ab Urbe Conditā,” i.e. “from the city having been founded or established.”
The word “conditā” is — hold onto your seat — Perfect Passive Participle, Ablative Singular, Declension 1, Feminine gender in agreement with “urbe” which is a Declension 3 Noun, Ablative Singular, Feminine Gender.
The preposition “ab” governs the Ablative Case, one of the six Cases in Classical Latin.
So total 2024, our year, and 753 years to see that ancient Rome is 2,777 years old, if you count the founding itself as a full year. WOW!
Now, the Roman date also expresses what is called “Accusative of Motion” because it shows motion or movement toward a specific day, a destination in time.
Accusative of Motion can also express movement in space, as in “ad urbem Rōmam,” to the city Rome.
Here it is important to note that in English, the preposition “to” can express motion or indirect object, usually in relation to the action of the verb.
Verbs meaning “give, say, tell, show, and their extensions, such as donate, announce” indicate an indirect object — Dative Case — for the recipient, and the Accusative Case is used as direct object.
Figuring out the relationships within any given sentence and the differences among the Cases based on grammatical context is called “hermeneutics,” the gradual revision process of the brain as more detail is read or heard, from the beginning of the sentence to its end.
For students of Classical Latin, I use the phrase “non-linear word order” to convey that the Latin words may be in any order because the endings or inflections code, or indicate, function.
That is why an analytical approach to learning Classical Latin is an outstanding opportunity for math-science students especially. The “Calculus of Latin,” as I call it.
BUT, studying Latin is also beneficial for students of English literature and composition, and of the Romance Languages, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, and Italian.
In fact, the Latin series recently adopted by the Lower Merion School District for the middle schools is published by The Paideia Institute and it pairs Spanish with Latin – a swell approach!
You have probably heard that studying Latin is good for upgrading English vocabulary.
Let’s see . . . in Friday’s Latin class we discussed the derivatives “aliment, alimony, subjunctive, signet, ipso facto, solipsistic, per se, antebellum, antediluvian, percolate, perchloride, and pellucid.”
And this was while we read a Latin passage from Cicero’s “Prō Archiā” in which he defends, through a vignette about Alexander the Great at the tomb of Achilles, the indisputable value of poetry and literature.
In tandem with our reading the Ciceronian excerpt in Latin and our English translation, we reviewed the history of the Trojan War, the heroes and heroines of both Greece and Troy, the aftermath of the conflagration of Pergamum in Asia Minor, and the wanderings of post-war refugees.
Of course, the Homeric tradition took its rightful place in the discussion, as did various figures of speech, exemplum grātiā, Apostrophe, Asyndeton, Crescendo, Irony, Alliteration, and Metaphor.
Most important to note is that Alexander the Great, “Magnus,” was in class as we worked together.
By this, I mean that a student whose Persona is “Alexander Magnus” was able to speak “first-hand” about what was transpiring in the Latin passage.
In our class – as part of the Persona Project – we have Themistoclea, Hippocrates, Aristoteles, Plato, Hadrianus, Cleopatra, Sappho, Vergilius, Sulpicia, Hypatia, Diogenes, Aspasia, Ovidius, Augustus, Alexander Magnus and his father Philippus Macedoniae.
Early in the semester, we built a timeline as a wall display with images and era-signs of our Personae in chronological order so we can teach each other about ancient history in an organic way.
On Friday, we walked from the Philadelphia campus to the Frances M. Maguire Art Museum to view the permanent installation of Metropolitan Museum of Art plaster casts reflecting ancient Mediterranean sculpture with varying provenance.
As the only teaching art museum on the Main Line, the Maguire Museum is perfect for exploration and project completion.
In our class Google doc “portfolio,” each student has selected “a favorite” sculpture, taken a photo, and has written an “Art Critic for a Day” review and response to the artist’s work.
As you can easily determine, “You bet my daughter is taking Latin next year” (said by a LMSD parent at a recent meeting) is a sound decision as she enters grade five at Bala Cynwyd Middle School.
There she will study with the marvelously skilled Magistra Sara Flounders as her Latin teacher who will guide her through the inter-disciplinary thrill of Classical Latin in Lower Merion School District.
Mary Brown, who taught Latin for twelve years at Harriton High School and twenty-seven years at Lower Merion High School, currently teaches at Saint Joseph’s University and is Executive Director of The Classical Association of the Atlantic States.
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