The marginalia of an easily distracted Classicist
You ll have to take my word for it, but the text on the side of this building in Tampere, Finland, is in Latin. The building is the Tampereen klassillinen lukio ( Tampere classical upper secondary school ; I ve stolen the image from its website), the older part bearing the Latin text dating from 1907, and indeed the [ ]
I keep telling myself to give up the blog and use my time more productively, but then an image like this comes along. It was sent me by Luca Olivieri, Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan, and it’s a photo of a tunnel entrance he saw on the Peshawar-Rawalpindi railway line when travelling [ ]
Thoughts on something I found rather remarkable during a weekend away; also on encountering in three-dimensional form the argument of the book I happened to be reading. In the photograph is Wesley Hall in Whitby, opened in 1901, and my holiday reading (because I know how to have fun) was Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic [ ]
They’re coming thick and fast, comparatively speaking (I refer to this and this…), but none I’m so proud of as this. Thanks above all to Michael Lombardi-Nash for getting me hooked on C19th Latin and on Carl Heinrich Ulrichs, a truly remarkable man. It’ll be published pretty much smack on Ulrichs’s 200th birthday on 28th [ ]
Ulrichs expresses the wish in the very last issue of Alaudae that an educational award ceremony in Rome on October 2, 1894 had not been given the political dimension it was by the politically charged speeches that accompanied it, and furthermore regrets that the event had taken place “on that day.” The only thing I [ ]
A post to mark what is hopefully the final stage of bringing Karl Heinrich Ulrichs newspaper Alaudae Latin text, English translation and explanatory notes to publication. Some final proofing remains, and the rather daunting prospect of composing an index, but we are so very nearly there, and coming in on time as the 200th anniversary of Ulrichs [ ]
I salute you, bountiful goddess, noble/generous goddess, O our glory, O Venetian Queen! In stormy, deadly whirlwind You ruled secure; a thousand doughty Bodies you laid low in bitter fight. Through you I was not wretched, through you I do not groan; I live in peace through you. Rule, O blessed [ ]
I have entered the world of the strange while attempting to provide a colleague with an accurate transcription and translation, which I had been led to believe he was seeking, of a Latin MS. For the record, since I put in the effort amid a very, very busy week indeed, here is (what I would [ ]
This is an image of the Duke of Wellington, not my mother, in case anyone was in any doubt. But I happened to see it the day before my mother’s funeral a few weeks ago, and the latter event was naturally at the forefront of my mind. The depiction of Arthur Wellesley at 84 years, [ ]
I’m going to claim this as a Christmas blog on the basis that it features the word Magi. But moving quickly on before a pedant corrects that to “Epiphany blog,” I’m really sharing my attempts to contextualize another intriguing late-nineteenth-century Latin poem. In this poem a patient is thanking his doctor after successful treatment: CONOLLY’S [ ]