Found in Antiquity

Month: September 2014

  • Ovid’s mini-Aeneid: a hidden gem

    A man great in war, second to none in piety, Aeneas, oppressed by the hatred of hostile Juno, Seeking Italy, went astray on Sicilian waves… – Ovid, Decastich arguments of the Aeneid, I.1-3 It’s not every day that we stumble across a beautiful, hidden gem like this work. In my head I call it the…

  • Keep calm, taxonomic Latin lives on

    As of this week, taxonomic descriptions need not be written in Latin. But wait a moment – contrary to what some news reports have implied, the names of plants and animals actually still do need to be written in Latin (or, Latin with an expanded Greek vocabulary, with some loan words from English cleverly snuck…