Found in Antiquity

Category: Uncategorized

  • Getting better at teaching scansion

    Previously, I had taught the scansion of dactylic hexameter by giving a lecture of the whole system then getting students to have a crack at it with a copy of Latin text – and with no macrons printed either. (I quickly learned not to use the opening of Aeneid 1 as the starter material, because…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Saint Nicholas through the Ages

    How did a Saint from Western Turkey become an elf-Lord driving reindeer around the North Pole? The journey of St. Nicholas through time, space and cultures has transformed this pious bishop of Myra into Santa: a secular, round-bellied, cheerful caricature of modern consumerism. How, exactly, did he get from there to here? And does anything…

  • The Melitan Miniature Dog: The most popular lapdog in antiquity

    There is something so disarming, so human, about reading that the ancient Greeks and Romans kept dogs as pets – not just as hunting hounds, but also as tiny companions. The Melitan, while it is not the only kind of miniature dog mentioned in surviving texts (a “Gallic miniature dog” was named once in Martial’s…

  • Changing site name, address, and domain purchase

    My dearest subscribers, Fished Up Classics will soon be known under a new name, Found in Antiquity. It was a difficult decision to make, but I believe the long term gain will be worth today’s hassle. It feels scary, in a way, like I might be starting all over again. Has it only really been…

  • Orpheus and the Can-can

    How on earth could the Can-can dance have anything to do with the myth of Orpheus? I’m sure you’ve heard and seen the Can-can before, but just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 150 years, here’s a demonstration: The Can-can was a type of bawdy Parisian dance popular in the…

  • The Weasel in Antiquity: Pet or Pest?

    It’s a nice time for a light-hearted piece, and I’ve been dying to write this article for a while. It’s about pet weasels in antiquity. A surprising amount of respectable scholarship all the way from 1718 to 1997 has claimed that the Greeks and Romans kept tame weasels as household pets. At the very least,…