Found in Antiquity

Author: Carla Hurt

  • Grammar or reading: which type of Latin or Greek textbook is better?

    If ever you read Amazon reviews of Latin and Ancient Greek textbooks, you’ll find some very lively discussions on the relative merits of grammar- and readings-based textbooks. (If ‘lively’ is the right word to use!) In this video, I outline the main differences between these two kinds of textbooks, and weigh in on the pros…

  • Five reasons why Latin should be taught in schools

    I learned Latin in high school, I loved it, and now I’m a private tutor for high school Latin. But when I tell people what I do, the question that so often comes up is this: Why should schools still teach Latin? I’ve heard many answers to that question over the years, and while they…

  • 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…

  • Homer grabs you by the ears

    For years I’ve been trying to get myself to read through the whole of Homer’s Iliad from start to finish. And lately I realised how to do it in the most painless way possible: I plugged in my earphones and listened to an audiobook of Homer’s Iliad on my half-hour daily bus rides to and…

  • How to read an ancient manuscript: 11th century Vergil’s Aeneid (Part 2)

    Welcome back to the task of reading a real 11th century Latin manuscript of Vergil’s Aeneid. In Part 1, we launched straight into the task of deciphering this delightful Carolingian Minuscule manuscript, learning some of the most frequent scribal abbreviations. But there are still many more devices to go. Firstly, though, I realise I hadn’t…

  • How to read an ancient manuscript: 11th century Vergil’s Aeneid (Part 1)

    How would you like to read a genuine medieval manuscript? In this two-part series we will do just that. I’ve selected a very handsomely written 11th century Carolingian manuscript of Vergil’s Aeneid. The writing is quite clear and it has a decent number of scribal abbreviations, but it is quite manageable for those trying to…

  • Septimus: a Latin novella from the 1930s

    My neighbour Pat has recently given me her Latin textbook, a 1950s reprint of a beautiful 1930s classic, which may actually have been the forerunner of a revolution in Latin textbooks. First published in 1936, it is titled Septimus, not because it is the seventh book in a series, but for its main character, a…

  • How to write Greek Uncial

    Have you ever wondered how to write in one of earliest Ancient Greek calligraphic scripts? Wonder no more! I’m happy to present the first video I’ve made for Found in Antiquity, so that you can see first hand how to write the alphabet in Greek Uncial. What exactly is Greek Uncial? Greek Uncial hails from…

  • Saint Patrick in his own words

    Today is Saint Patrick’s day. And yet for a long time, all I had associated with this saint was his holiday, drunken green-clad revellers, the Irish, leprechauns, and a story about snakes. He was more of a cartoon figure than a man, a cheesy one-dimensional character not really much more credible than Santa Claus. But…