Found in Antiquity

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more

  • 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 Read more