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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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List of Epigraphical Resource Abbreviations
Collections of inscriptions are very useful but a little intimidating for budding Classicists to get their teeth into. These collections are almost always referred to by their acronym, which appear as a meaningless series of letters to the uninitiated. And since epigraphy is a somewhat arcane topic, it is surprisingly difficult to find the full…
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Is Amphiaraus a god?
It’s not every day that you hear of a legal dispute about whether a certain divinity is or isn’t a god. This may be because our states – at least, Australia, the UK and the US – have no formal obligations towards gods, and will generally refuse to comment on the true divinity of a…
Found in Antiquity:
Learner-friendly Latin and Ancient Greek
The Lover’s Curse: a Tiered Reader of Aeneid 4
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