Reading Ovid Aloud for Homework

Posted on January 28, 2021 by Chris Francese

O pandemic, mother of invention. I have started assigning my Ovid students homework of submitting a recording of 10-15 lines, which we read at sight in class, read aloud rather than translated. Moodle makes this easy to submit. It’s amazing how readily you can tell if they understand. I added a part that involves picking five key words and looking them up the dictionary and explaining why they think they are important, which gets in an interpretive element consistent with my learning goals. But that’s not essential, of course. The results of the first round are so good, the ability to hear if they get Ovid’s tone so cool, the interpretations they gave in the written part so perceptive, and the homework so damn easy to grade, I had to share. I emphasized that I was not judging their pronunciation, but rather their pausing and emphasis as it reflects comprehension. I may never go back to grading written translations.

Here is the prompt:

Read the passage out loud in Latin with emphasis and pausing that reflect comprehension. Submit a recording.
Find the five most important or emphatic words in the passage in your view;
- write the location in Lewis & Short where the contextually appropriate meaning of each if these five words is listed
- give the contextually appropriate translation of these five words
- explain briefly why you believe each word is important in the context

And here is the example I provided:

Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.1–4.

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas

corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)

adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi

ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!

nova: “new” (LS novus I.A), or “strange” (LS novus I.B): this is the first significant word, and separated a long way from the word it modifies, corpora, which gives it emphasis. What he has to say will be “new” and/or “strange.” Exciting!

mutatas: “changed” (LS muto II.A.1), going with formas. This whole poem is about change, so it makes sense to foreground this word in the first line. mutatas formas is pretty much Latin for the Greek title Metamorphoses (“Transformations”).

adspirate: “to be favorable to, to favor, assist (the figure taken from a fair breeze)” + dat. (LS aspiro I.A.2), governing coeptis meis (“the work I have begun”). Ovid is calling on the gods to favor his enterprise, so this is a key word, emphasized by being first in the line. It’s imperative, looking back to the vocative di in line 2. Tone is confident (?).

perpetuum: “continuous, unbroken, uninterrupted” (LS perpetuus I.A). Ovid’s song will be “continuous” and extend all the way from the origin of the world to his own time. Very ambitious! Also, if you’ve read the Metamorphoses you know it’s loosely organized, with one story after another in a continuous stream. So he may be giving us a heads up about that.

A few notes:

I grade these on a 1-10 scale, and they take under 5 minutes each to grade.
The due date is midnight on the day after we read the lines at sight in class. I don’t want it to get stale. Great way to review and reinforce, I think.
The students have as a textbook Peter Jones’ superb Reading Ovid. This helps the students by giving them context, interpretive summaries, vocabulary, macrons on the Latin, and excellent interpretive notes. I frigging love this book. This assignment asks them to go beyond it by investigating in the dictionary and saying what they think.

Rules of thumb for commentary writing

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Chris Francese

Our commentaries are akin the the Bryn Mawr Commentaries: for first-time readers, whether students or advanced scholars who want to read the text expeditiously. Commentary authors are asked to keep the following considerations/rules-of-thumb in mind:

1. Respect the reader’s time
Stick to what a curious reader would want and need to know to help understand and appreciate the text at hand. Tangentially related material and ancillary texts can be handled in an introduction or in a close reading essay.

2. Look out for what is assumed
Readers frequently need to know what’s not there, or rather what’s there but invisible: the omitted antecedent of a relative pronoun, half of a compound verb form, or the explanation of some constitutional nicety, religious custom, or mythological detail that the author takes as common knowledge.

3. Use jargon only for a good reason
Technical terms are ok, but as a tool, not a substitute for explanation. Explain in a way that doesn’t simply rely on everybody being fully familiar with your own favorite terminology, at least the first time through.

4. Go easy on cross-references
Only use a cross-reference when it’s genuinely important for comprehension, or to spell out what is assumed. Avoid especially untranslated parallel passages.

5. Elucidate first, observe second
First make clear what is going on, whether by judicious translation, paraphrase, rearranging the word order. Then move to whatever comment you would like to make.

6. Look out for what is typical or atypical
It is sometimes useful to point out what is unusual or what is standard, what is distinctive or what is cliché, what is central or what is peripheral, interesting word order, or striking word choice.

7. Separate interpretation from elucidation
When it comes to serving first-time readers, even expert ones, literary interpretation is out of place. If you advance a clever observation in a note that doesn’t help elucidate the language itself, you are likely to alienate rather than to enlighten. And there’s not enough time in a note to make a literary argument effectively, anyway. Save that for a close reading essay.

8. When the text makes no sense when translated literally, translate it idiomatically
Many commentators on classical texts see translation in a note as dishonest, allowing the reader to cheat. Think of it instead as modeling the sort of careful, close translation you’d like to see: not over-literal pseudo-English, but the real, satisfying mots justes.

9. Save space by linking to stable resources
Link to DCC grammars for grammatical points, to Logeion for lexicography, to Wikipedia for literary devices, to Perseus for classical texts, to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology for those topics, and to Pleiades for geography. But don’t link to a news article or blog post that’s likely to be gone in a year or two.

10. Model close reading practices
Humanists and scholars read slowly and carefully, alive to the precise meanings of words. They appreciate the beauty of the style. They read critically, aware of what’s left out, what’s partial or unfair. They want to take something away and apply it to life. The other rules flow from this central purpose.

Videos on Homeric Dialect and Scansion

Posted on January 9, 2018 by Chris Francese

A few years ago I made some videos using the Showme app about the Homeric dialect and Homeric metrics. They are somewhat buried on the Showme site, so here are the two series, first on dialect, second on metrics:

Homeric Dialect 1 augments and endings: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=JJqlpjc

Homeric Dialect 2 the article: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=C1XKW92

Homeric Dialect 3 verbs: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=E9vmvB2

Reading Homer 1 Long and Short: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=y2Su4LQ

Reading Homer 2 Quantity Exceptions: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=0ArMTPU

Reading Homer 3 Dactylic Hexameter: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=7trqGTg

I think I made a fourth installment for the grammar series about particles, but I cannot find that on the Showme site. Hope you find these useful!

In the Tracks of Alexander

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Chris Francese

[update 5/4/2017: the apparent mistake of Alexander going to Bangladesh derives from an error in the Pleiades database. https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/59910 Malli is described as “An ancient Indian people that settled at the confluence of the rivers Hydaspes, Acesines, and Hydraotes.” These are indeed the folks Alexander terrorized in the Mallian Campaign. But the current location in Pleiades has them way off near the Padma. They should be much further west, in the Indus valley. I have alerted the good folks at Pleiades to this.]

I got a nice response on Twitter to a photograph of a composite of Google Earth maps made by my students of the expedition of Alexander the Great. (People were too kind to point out that some of the students thought Alexander made it all the way to the Padma river in what is now Bangladesh).

My students’ Google Earth maps of the expedition of Alexander, as seen from space.

A.M. Christensen (@AM_Christensen) asked me to post the assignment that generated these maps, and so here it is. I have done this for several years, and the reaction from students ranges from “Google Earth is infuriating” to “That was the best assignment we did–time consuming but really valuable.” I was on the point of cutting it out of the Ancient Worlds on Film class when a former student in that class convinced me to put it back in.

As with most unorthodox assignments it requires careful preparation and explanation well in advance, and a willingness to be flexible when technical issues crop up. For me this works because it is in sync with my learning goals: learning about the ancient world on the basis of primary sources. To do well a student must summarize and tell the significance material based on the reading, and cite the sources–by no means easy tasks for the average non-classics major in a general education classical studies course.

I spent some class time demoing Google Earth and showing them the magic of Pleiades, which has readily downloadable .kml files of the places. (Pro tip: “Tyre” is not findable on Pleiades. You have to know to search for Tyros.) One problem is that the dates of events are not always indicated in the books they are reading. So I pointed out the very full chronology available on Wikipedia. I have learned to be very, very clear about the necessity of having the entire folder highlighted before you save your .kmz. This is by far the most common problem. Second to that are Google Earth crashes, in which some students lose work. Make sure they save their stuff and back it up. I also pitch this as a way to take notes on the reading in Arrian. Pick a couple spots in every night’s reading, write down their significance, and making the map will be easier when the time comes.

Here is the whole 3-week timeline from start to finish:

4/10 Alexander (2004) no reading

4/12 Watch Alexander: Director’s Cut

4/14 Youth; Aristotle; sack of Thebes Romm, Alexander the Great, pp. 1–32; Plutarch, Life of Alexander, sections 11–14.

4/17 Granicus → Fall of Tyre Romm, Alexander the Great, pp. 33–69. Plutarch, Life of Alexander, sections 15–17 and 21–23.

4/19 Egypt → Gaugamela; Death of Darius Romm, Alexander the Great, pp. 70–93. Plutarch sections 27–28, 33–34, 36–40, and 42–43.

4/21 Central Asia; Roxane Romm, Alexander the Great, pp. 94–113. Plutarch sections 45 and 47.

4/24 India; the Gedrosia desert Romm, Alexander the Great, pp. 114–148. Plutarch, sections 64–67.

4/26 Susa weddings; death of Hephaestion Romm, Alexander the Great, pp. 149–173. Quiz on Alexander.

4/28 Alexander Map assignment due

Ok, here is the assignment. The grading rubric follows.

In the Tracks of Alexander the Great

The intent of this assignment is to familiarize you with the geography and chronology of Alexander’s conquests through the making a Google Earth map of them. It will act as a kind of combined map and timeline. It is due by noon Friday, April 28, 2017, via Moodle.

You will need to download Google Earth to your computer. A tutorial by Google on how to create a map with place marks is here: http://www.google.com/earth/learn/beginner.html#placemarks-and-tours&tab=placemarks-and-tours

. . . and see below for a step by step guide.

Using Romm’s book Alexander the Great (which contains the writings of Arrian) and the account of Plutarch in his Life of Alexander, create a series of place marks and a route to guide you through Alexander’s expedition. For each place, create a place mark, name it, and then write annotations in the description field. Each annotation should contain:

a Pleiades link
a brief discussion of your view of the significance of the place, based on your reading in Arrian and Plutarch.
specific source citations of Arrian (book and chapter) and/or Plutarch (chapter) from which you got your information, along with any other sources you used
an image of any relevant landscape, archaeological remains, artifacts, or an artist’s reconstructions from this place, with a title and specific photo/artist credit.

There should be at least one or two placemarks from every major stage of the expedition, a minimum of 20 total. Observe that the notes in Romm, and your translation of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander (Greek Lives pp. 448 ff.) specify dates for many incidents. The actual look of the tour is up to you, and you should feel free to add whatever enhancements you like. When you have finished making your place marks, put them in a folder and save the folder (it will save as a file with the suffix .kmz).

IMPORTANT:

Make sure when you save your work that the whole folder is highlighted, not just one place.
Give the folder a name that includes your own last name.

Submit the .kmz file via Moodle. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at all.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE to creating and saving placemarks:

Download Google Earth: https://www.google.com/earth/
Under the “Add” menu select Add Folder. Name the new folder with your name and Alexander’s Route or something similar. The folder you just created will now show up in the Temporary Places list at the left, and look something like this:
Add a placemark: Either search in the search bar of Google Earth to find a place, or (more accurate) go to Pleiades and search for a place and download their ready-made placemark. On Pleiades, when you find the relevant site, scroll down to the list of “Alternate representations”:

Click on “KML.” (This stands for “Keyhole Markup Language,” the file type used by Google Earth.) Download and open that file and it will create a placemark for you in Google Earth at the precise location you want. (You may have to delete some extra placemarks included by Pleiades as associated places.) Make sure that your placemark is within the folder you created earlier.

1 placemarks must be included under the right folder or they will not be saved in the project when you save at the end.

Edit the placemark: Right click on the placemark and select Properties.

You can change the name to whatever you want, add text, links, images, and change the look of the placemark itself by clicking on the small icon at the top right of the Edit placemark window.

Here is an example that has been edited to include an image, with information about that image, and some short annotations with source citations. Your annotations should be longer, several sentences.

Create the Route. Click on the “Add Path” icon at the top of the screen

Name the path, and before closing that window, draw the path you want. Consult the maps in Romm’s book as you draw the paths. From the Properties window you can style the path, giving it any width you want.

Save the file. Make sure that you have the whole folder highlighted, not just a single place within it, when you save. Go to File > Save > Save Place As and save the file on your computer as a .kmz. Submit that .kmz file via Moodle. You are done!

Rubric

20+ Places accurately identified?
Route accurately marked?
Significance of the spots clearly explained?
References to sources included?
Every major stage included?
Dates included?
Pleides uri included?
Images included?

Classics Podcasts

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Chris Francese

[Note Jan 16, 2017: I am happy to report that my list of classically themed podcasts has now been blown out of the water by David Meadows, aka @rogueclassicist]

Surprisingly few academics have learned how to podcast – but it’s a great way to reach a wider audience. A recent article in The Guardian makes the case for the medium, and offers some how-to advice:

Todd Landman, “Podcasting is perfect for people with big ideas. Here’s how to do it.” The Guardian January 13, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2016/jan/13/podcasting-is-perfect-for-big-ideas

Here is a list of classics podcasts ( I would appreciate notice if you know of others!):

Jessica Hughes and Elton Marker, Classics Confidential. Interviews with classical scholars on various subjects, since 2010. The producers are members of the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University. https://classicsconfidential.co.uk/2016/12/12/senses/

Ryan Stitt, The History of Greece Podcast. By a self-confessed “enthusiastic amateur.” http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/

Rhannon Evans, Emperors of Rome. Dr. Evans is Lecturer in Ancient Mediterranean Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/emperors-of-rome/id850148806

Alessandro Conti, Semones Raedarii. https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sermonesraedarii “Podcast Latinum incisum dum autoraedam moderor. Loquor prolixe et mendose de arte docendi. Interdum etiam fabulas narro.”

Jeff Wright, Trojan War: The Podcast. “History’s most awesome epic.” Retelling of Trojan War mythology with comment on matters mythological. http://trojanwarpodcast.com/

Chris Francese, Latin Poetry Podcast. http://blogs.dickinson.edu/latin-poetry-podcast/ a series of short Latin passages, discussed, translated, and read aloud.

Lantern Jack, Ancient Greece Declassified. http://greecepodcast.com/ “a podcast about making the Classics accessible to everyone.” “Lantern Jack” is a graduate student in ancient philosophy.

Alison Innes and Darrin Sunstrum, mythTake. https://mythtake.blog/ Scholarly informed discussions of mythological heroes and topics. Alison Innes is a journalist with an MA in classics from Brock University, in Ontario. They also maintain a list of humanities podcasts.

Nowadays podcasting is a highly developed and diverse medium, widely enjoyed as recreation be people as they exercise, walk, travel, go about housework routines, etc. This is an audience hungry for new content, eager to explore new ideas, and interested in all sorts of things. For my podcast I did a series of 5–10 minute recordings on Latin metrics, close readings of interesting passages, and whatever I was reading or thinking about at the time. I felt that the podcast medium was ideal to discuss Latin pronunciation and metrics, which are passions of mine, but also to bring across Latin poetry as a performance art. I never focused on grammar or translation as I would have in a classroom setting, but tried to foster appreciation and aesthetic enjoyment. I kept the tone informal, warm, and conversational. My model has always been Karl Haas, the classical music radio host, who used to make the world of classical music sound like the most welcoming, wonderful place, and who could effortlessly pronounce half a dozen languages. With him you always felt like you were getting the benefit of a lifetime of experience and wisdom in the presence of a true humanist.

There are now a variety of podcasts on classical topics, many especially on Greek mythology and history, and Roman history. None of them is overwhelmingly successful, or up to the Karl Haas level, and suffice it to say there is room for a lot of innovation and improvement in this medium.

I’m a journalism student from Australia, who also learnt Latin in high school (read at poetry competitions too) and I have desperately been trying to find someone who still reads it. Your site is perfect.

I have been teaching myself Latin over the last 8 years and I really enjoy your podcasts! I hope we’ll be getting some new updates soon!

Many of the comments I got on my podcasts were urging me to get off my duff and produce more, or noting problems in download. This is not the place to get into the mechanics of podcasting. Suffice it to say that it is well within the technological competence of most classicists, and there are several good how-to guides to be found on the internet. The most gratifying aspect of podcasting is that it gets you in touch with a whole audience of like-minded enthusiasts and autodidacts out there who really appreciate hearing from somebody with some expertise. They often show their appreciation by leaving comments or voting in various podcast awards competitions.

Success in the medium, as with much teaching, requires a conversational style, a sense of humor, and an ability to tell stories. It’s important to have fun with it, not to be turgid or pedantic.

Podcasting principles:

Be conversational. Imagine talking to your mom.
Tell good stories.
Be enthusiastic. Enjoy yourself.
Listen to other podcasts.
Always respond promptly to comments.
Buy a Snowball microphone ($50 US)

If you have thoughts about what makes an effective podcast, or know of any classics ones that I missed, please leave a comment!

Vicipaedia Latina: Encyclopedia and Community

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Chris Francese

USING THE LATIN WIKIPEDIA IN INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED COLLEGE LATIN CLASSES

by Anne Mahoney, Tufts University, anne.mahoney@tufts.edu

[note: this article is re-published from The Classical Outlook 90.3 (Spring 2015), pp. 68-90. Thanks to the author and to CO‘s editor Mary English for permission to do so.]

Most people are aware of Wikipedia, the open, collaborative encyclopedia. But Wikipedia exists in over 280 languages, not just English, and one of the larger versions is in Latin. Vicipaedia, the Latin Wikipedia (http://la.wikipedia.org), has over 100,000 articles on topics ranging from Gaius Valerius Catullus to Dinosauria to The Simpsons. It is a good general encyclopedia, written in good classical Latin. It’s also a world-wide community of Latinists. In this essay, I will introduce Vicipaedia and give some pointers on working with it: reading, researching, or editing.

I. Overview

Vicipaedia Latina is moderately large, one of the fifty largest Wikipedia versions, with over 108,000 articles. Though it’s only about 1/40th the size of the English version, measured by number of articles, it’s about 1/18th the size of the Dutch, German, Swedish, and French versions and 1/10th the size of the Spanish version. There are about 40 very active editors and 300 regular contributors, making hundreds of edits every day. Vicipaedia contains all of the “1000 Articles Every Wikipedia Should Have,” a list compiled by the broader Wikipedia community. Articles in Vicipaedia are generally not translations from English Wikipedia, but are freshly written in Latin.[1]

Wikipedia, in any language, does not pretend to give the final word on any subject — rather the opposite, in fact. It is a reference work, not a work of scholarship, intended to give general orientation to a subject, with pointers to other resources. Within those limits, Vicipaedia does a very good job; its information is accurate, and every article is required to cite sources, to have links both to and from other Vicipaedia pages, and to have links to resources outside Vicipaedia — assuming they exist: after all, not everything in the world is on the Web. English Wikipedia has more and longer articles, but Latin Vicipaedia, like all the other official Wikipedia versions, maintains the same standards of quality. Wikipedia is one of the best general encyclopedias currently available,[2] and certainly the most convenient; its Latin version is not only a useful reference but a significant work of neo-Latin.

Vicipaedia covers the same range of articles as any general-purpose encyclopedia, but, not surprisingly, it is particularly strong on subjects in classical antiquity. For example, the article on Caesar is long, with illustrations, a time line, and links to copies of Caesar’s own works and Suetonius’s life (outside Vicipaedia). On the other hand, the article on George Washington is much shorter and that on Louis XIV of France shorter still; both of those rulers have major articles in English Wikipedia.

Just like all the other Wikipedia versions, Vicipaedia is a collaborative encyclopedia. Anyone can edit pages, either anonymously or with an official user name. A group of magistratus (called “admins” or “sysops” in English Wikipedia), elected by the community, oversees the project, sending greetings to new users, checking for problems, and so on. Several automated jobs run over the system as well, verifying that pages conform to the basic standards. For example, if a page has no links to other Vicipaedia pages, or no links from other pages, an automated job will notice this and put a flag on the page to notify users of the problem.

Regular contributors to Vicipaedia are classical scholars, teachers, students, and other interested people from all over the world. Some of the most prolific editors are in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Philippines, Taiwan, Britain, Austria, Finland, Canada, and various parts of the US. Our native languages include English, French, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Hungarian, and German. Some write under our real names, some use aliases or nicknames, and some remain anonymous. We can discuss Vicipaedia and particular articles at the “Vicipaedia Taberna” (a page for general discussion), the discussion pages associated with each article, and users’ own discussion pages. On those pages, conversation takes place both in Latin and in other languages, most often English and German. Vicipaedia is run by consensus; if something needs to be done, users just do it, or if it’s a large or complicated task, we begin by proposing it on a discussion page. Anyone interested joins in the discussion, and once everyone is agreed on what to do, we work together to make the changes. For example, last year a user proposed redesigning the front page. He made a mockup and raised the question in the Taberna. Over the next month, a dozen users discussed the appearance of the page: how to greet users, how many columns to use, what other features should be added. When everyone was content, the new design was put in place.

The first version of Wikipedia was in English, created in January 2001, but versions in other languages followed quickly.[3] Latin Vicipaedia got its first articles on 25 May 2002: Nuntius, giving a brief list of sources for news in Latin; Mensis, defining the term and giving the Latin names of the months, starting from March in Roman fashion; Suecia, because the editor adding these pages was from Sweden; and Iasser Arafat, for whom the entire content at first was “Jasser Arafat praesidens Palaestinensium est.” At the end of its first year Vicipaedia had just a thousand articles. By the end of 2006 it had ten thousand, and during 2007 it began to grow more rapidly. The hundred-thousandth article arrived on 18 December 2013; it was Iosephus Škoda, a brief sketch about a Viennese doctor, 1805–1881. At this writing Vicipaedia has 108,307 articles.

Vicipaedia is not the first on-line collaborative encyclopedia in classics; the Suda On Line started in 1998 and has involved over 150 translators, editors, and programmers.[4] But whereas Suda On Line contributors “must request authorization and must ask to be assigned specific entries” (Mahoney p. 100), access to Vicipaedia is entirely open. Anonymous users contribute every day. And while the Suda On Line is finite and bounded, since it is a translation of and commentary on the existing Byzantine encyclopedia, Vicipaedia is unlimited: it accepts articles not only on classical antiquity and the Bible, like the Suda, but on everything from movies to types of cheese.

II. Reading Vicipaedia

So how can you use Vicipaedia? First, let’s look at how it works. We begin with the front page:

The pull-down menus labelled Ars & litterae, Scientia, Societas, Technologia, and Lingua Latina give access to high-level, general articles that are good starting places. For example, under Scientia are links to such articles as Chemia, Mathematica, Anthropologia, and Philosophia. The front page also shows the month’s featured article, picture, and sound, all chosen by Vicipaedia’s contributors. The featured article here, Gerasimus Lebedev, is about an 18th-century Russian scholar and theater producer; the Latin article is much longer than the article about him in English Wikipedia. Featured articles of recent months have included Plato’s Theatetus, Litterae Civitatum Foederatarum, Canada, and Feles. Below the Pagina Mensis is a section of news, with recent headlines. Key words in each section of the page are hyperlinks to articles within Vicipaedia.

At the top right of this page, and of every Vicipaedia page, is a search box. If you enter the title of an article here, you’ll go directly to that article. Articles often have alternate names — the page whose official title is Publius Ovidius Naso is also called Ovidius and Naso, for example — and if you search for something that is not the name of a page, you’ll get a list of pages whose names match your search terms. Here, for example, is a search on “meow,” which shows that this phrase appears in the articles Feles and Communicatio felium, not surprisingly:

For each page you can see a snippet of the text near the search word, the size of the page in kilobytes (“chiliocteti”) and words, and when it was last changed. There is also a link that would allow you to create a page called Meow.

Finally we come to the articles themselves. Here is a short one by way of example:

The title of the page, at the top and in the browser titlebar, is Quintus Ennius. Some words in the text of the page are hyperlinks to other Vicipaedia pages, such as poeta; these are blue. Others, in red, are links to pages that do not yet exist, such as praetextatas. The page has an illustration, showing Ennius as Raphael imagined him in his painting “Parnassus,” and Raphael’s name in the picture caption is also a hyperlink. A reader — perhaps an intermediate Latin student — who doesn’t know some of the terms in the article, like Naevius or Magna Graecia, has only to follow the links to learn more.[5]

At the far right of the page title, just above the illustration, is a small dot. On this page it’s a green dot, indicating that this page is in good Latin. Other pages may have a red dot, indicating that the Latin is not good, or a larger notice indicating that the Latin is positively poor. Some pages have a yellow dot (or no dot at all), which means that no one has yet judged the quality of the Latin. The convention is that editors don’t grade their own pages, but may grade pages they haven’t written; everyone is encouraged to fix grammatical errors.

At the bottom of the page are names of categories, connecting related pages. For example, Ennius is in the categories of “Poetae Latini” and of “Nati 239 a.C.n.” The category names are hyperlinks to lists of other pages in the same category — other Latin poets, for example. Categories can belong to other, more general categories, as “Poetae Latini” belongs to the categories “Poetae” and “Auctores Latini.” They can also include narrower categories, as “Poetae Latini” includes “Poetae Latini Brittaniae.” Thus the category structure classifies Vicipaedia’s articles by topic, helping readers explore a subject, drill down for more detail, or broaden scope to more distantly related areas.

At the left-hand side, under the heading Linguis aliis, are links to the parallel page in other Wikipedia versions. We see that there are articles about Ennius in Esperanto and Basque (Euskara), among other languages. When you move your mouse over the name of a language, you’ll see the name of that language’s page and the English name of the language. For example, if you mouse over “Euskara,” you’ll see “Ennio — Basque” next to the mouse pointer. A list like this appears in the left sidebar of every page in every Wikipedia version, and you can use it as a quick-and-dirty multi-lingual dictionary: for example, from the English page “Cat,” the links show you that a cat is called chat in French, pōpoki in Hawaiian, paka-kaya in Swahili, mèo in Vietnamese, and, of course, feles in Latin.

The Historiam inspicere link next to the search box above the page title shows the revision history of the page. From the history, we see that this article has been edited 71 times, by fourteen named editors, five anonymous editors, and fifteen automated processes. When it was first created, in May 2003, the article contained a single sentence: “Q. Ennius, poeta, morit. CLXIX ante Ch.” The text was expanded in June 2006; the illustration was added in September 2011. In February 2008 it was judged to be good Latin, and marked accordingly.

You can use Vicipaedia to get general background on a subject, as you’d use any other encyclopedia. Of course, since it is an encyclopedia, students shouldn’t be citing it in scholarly papers, just as they shouldn’t cite Encyclopedia Britannica or other print encyclopedias. But to find out when Ennius lived, or other basic facts, Vicipaedia is convenient. It’s particularly useful if you’re preparing a mini-lecture in Latin, for example about an author a class is just starting to read.

Students can also read the articles on their own. Here is one exercise I have used with intermediate-level students (third semester in college):

You have read the story of Lucretia from Valerius Maximus and from Eutropius, and will next read the version from Titus Livius (usually “Livy” in English). Look up each of these authors in Vicipaedia and answer the following questions about them:

Quando vixerunt hi scriptores? Quis est maximus natu, quis minimus?
Quid scripserunt?
Ubi vixerunt?
Quid significat “annales”? Qui inter hos scriptores annales scripserunt?
Libri horum scriptorum non omnes sunt annales. Quid et quales sunt alii libri?
Follow one link within Vicipaedia from each of the three articles. Which link did you choose? What did you find there? (Links that go out of Vicipaedia are marked with a small arrow — don’t use those for this purpose.)
Using the “historia” of the pages, identify three named Vicipaedia users who have worked on these articles; find real people, not users with “bot” in their names. Who created the pages? Who was the most recent editor? Look around at their user pages: what can you say about these users?

In this exercise, students are introduced to Vicipaedia and asked to gather information from articles. They are also encouraged to explore: following links within pages, looking at the history of a page, looking at users’ pages. This exploration not only demonstrates some of the tools and conventions of Vicipaedia (and Wikipedia in general) but also gives them a chance to read a bit more Latin.

A later exercise in the same semester was designed to expand students’ awareness of Latin literature:

Return to Vicipaedia Latina. Read the pages entitled Litterae Latinae and Certamen poeticum hoeufftianum; explain briefly what each is about. Choose one name from each page that you don’t already know about (and for which there is a page in Vicipaedia — a blue-linked name rather than a red link); follow the link and read the resulting page. Which names have you chosen? What have you learned about them? You may write these answers either in English or in Latin.

The two pages named here are largely lists of authors. Litterae Latinae says a bit about the main periods of Latin literature, then lists authors from each period. Certamen poeticum hoeufftianum describes the competition, held from 1844 to 1978, and lists all the winners.[6] Students were surprised to find out how much post-classical Latin literature there is, and how many authors they’d never heard of. While articles about major authors like Vergil and Ovid can be quite long, the articles about other Latin authors are generally shorter, so this is a fairly tractable assignment for intermediate-level students.

III. Editing Vicipaedia

In more advanced classes, I have asked students to contribute to Vicipaedia. To do that, it’s necessary to learn how editing works. Anyone who knows Latin is encouraged to edit, just as anyone who knows English is welcome to contribute to English Wikipedia. Students should probably wait until they can write a reasonably correct paragraph — editing Vicipaedia isn’t necessarily a good exercise in Latin 1 or 2 — but high-intermediate to advanced students often enjoy contributing, interacting with other editors, and creating something generally useful.

To get started editing, simply click the “Recensere” link at the top of almost any page. Vicipaedia’s “visual editor” lets you work with the text of a page much as you would in a word processor. It’s also possible to edit the wiki markup directly (with the “Fontem recensere” link) but this is rarely necessary.

The editing display looks much like the page itself, with a couple of tools at the top. Note that the browser title bar now says “Recensio paginae,” to remind you that you are using the editor.

The “Paragraph” tool lets you create section and sub-section headings. The underlined capital A gives a list of character format options: bold, italic, and so on. The next image, which looks like a couple of links of a chain, lets you add a link to another Vicipaedia page. If you click on a word that is already linked, you will see the name of the target page. If you select a word or phrase that is not yet linked, then click this tool, you can supply the name of another page to be linked to, by default exactly the same as the word or phrase you’ve selected. The next tool lets you add a list, like the one-element list under “Vide etiam” in this page. The “Insert” tool helps you add special characters, illustrations, mathematical formulas, or other unusual features. Finally, next to the “Abrogare” button is a tool for page options, in particular for adding the page to suitable categories. Once you’ve made changes, the “Save page” button at top right will be available, and when you click that, your changes will be saved and immediately visible to other readers.

What should a page contain? The conventions for Vicipaedia articles are documented at Vicipaedia:Praefatio and the pages linked there. Pages should always start with a definition or identification of the headword; this is called the “A est B” convention. Examples are “Feles est species parvorum mammiferum carnivorum familiae Felidarum,” or “Arithmetica est disciplina numerorum.” Ideally, a page should include an illustration, references to sources outside Wikipedia (whether on line or not), and links to other pages within Vicipaedia.

Vicipaedia maintains lists of pages needing particular kinds of improvements, and these can be good places to start editing. Students may expand on short pages (called “stipulae” or “stubs,” and in Categoria:Stipulae and its sub-categories), correct poor Latin (see Categoria:Latinitas), add captions for images (see Categoria:Imago sine descriptione), and so on; see Categoria:Corrigenda for a general list of categories of pages needing work. Of course students may also add pages, particularly pages that are linked but do not yet exist (shown as red links).

Here is an assignment I have used with advanced classes:

In this assignment, you will add an article to Vicipaedia, the Latin version of Wikipedia. Begin with the article Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Find a link either in that article, or in an article linked from that article, to a page that does not exist (the link will be red), and create the missing page. Your article should be at least 50 words long, preferably at least 100, so choose a topic about which you can write that much.

Some tips on the process:

If you don’t already have one, create an account for yourself, so that your edits can be identified. Do this with the “conventum creare” link at the top of the page. If you already have a global account in Wikipedia, it will also work in Vicipaedia.
If you have not edited Wikipedia before, read the usage information, in the English or Latin versions. If you have not edited Vicipaedia, even if you have edited English Wikipedia or the versions in other languages, read the help text specific to the Latin version. Begin with “Adiutatum” under “Communitas” on the left side of the screen. The information about conventions for writing neo-Latin is particularly useful. The page Lexica Neolatina has links to an assortment of on-line dictionaries.
Set your preferences using the “Preferentiae meae” link at the top of the page: you can change the interface language (Latin is fun, but English is OK too), indicate your gender, change the look of the screen, specify how dates and times should be displayed (24-hour or 12-hour clock, and so on), and tweak the default options for searching. I recommend you set the editing options to remind you about the edit summary you should add whenever you update a page; this is under “Mensura capsae verbi.”
Create your new page, following the standard editorial conventions. When you click on a red link you will get a new, empty page to start work in. An article must start with a sentence of the form “Nomen est …,” using the name of the person or thing you are writing about and marking it as boldface.
Make sure to cite sources, including Horace’s text or whatever else is appropriate.
Mark the page as belonging to a suitable category, using the Category tool from “Page options” at the top of the page.
At the top of the page, use the “Insert” tool to insert either the template L, to indicate that you are reasonably confident of the grammar and style of the page, or tiro, to mark the page as written by a beginner. In either case, another user will (sooner or later) edit the page and assign it a level of latinitas.
If possible, add a suitable illustration; use “Insert” and “Fasciculus” to get a rudimentary keyword search of available illustrations. There may or may not be a suitable illustration, depending on the topic you’ve chosen.
Save your page. The next day, come back to it and look at changes other users have made.
They will correct things or indicate things that need correcting. Fix, refine, improve, and continue to monitor changes made by the rest of the Vicipaedia community. You are encouraged to edit each other’s pages; I myself will not edit your work before the assignment is due.
Don’t hesitate to ask the editors for help if you need it, using the “disputatio” link on the page you’re writing, the Vicipaedia taberna linked from the sidebar, or other help links scattered through the system.

Students doing this for the first time generally add fairly short articles, but useful ones. They are also delighted to receive the traditional Vicipaedia welcome message on their user pages, and to see that other users have read and improved their new articles.

IV. Conclusion

Vicipaedia is an encyclopedia, a Latin resource, and a community, and it grows every day. Anyone who knows Latin can read it and contribute to it. I’ve used it with undergraduate and graduate students in classes ranging from Latin 3 to a graduate composition course. In this article you’ve seen some of the things it can do, and some of the things you could do with it.

Bibliography

Dalby, Andrew. The World and Wikipedia: How We Are Editing Reality. Somerset: Siduri Books, 2009.

Giles, Jim. “Internet Encyclopedias Go Head-to-Head.” Nature vol. 438 (15 December 2005), 900-901.

Giustiniani, Vito R. Neulateinische Dichtung in Italien, 1850-1950. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1979.

Helmlinger, Julien. “La déclinaison en latin de Wikipédia dépasse les cent mille pages.” ActuaLitté, http://www.actualitte.com, 24 January 2014.

Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.

Mahoney, Anne. “Tachypaedia Byzantina: The Suda On Line as Collaborative Encyclopedia,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1 (2009), http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/, reprinted in Changing the Center of Gravity, ed. Melissa Terras and Gregory Crane, Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2010, 89-109.

Footnotes

[1] I will use “Vicipaedia” to refer to the Latin encyclopedia, and “Wikipedia” to refer to the project in general, in English and in other languages.

[2] On the quality of English Wikipedia see Dalby p. 220, Lih p. 208, and Giles p. 900-901.

[3] Lih gives the timeline; creation of Wikipedia p. 64, of other language versions p. 139, and chapter 6 generally. The hundred-thousand-article milestone was noted for example by Helmlinger.

[4] Mahoney 2009 is an overview of the project; her section “SOL and other projects” (p. 100-104 of the 2010 reprint) compares the Suda translation to Wikipedia and similar projects.

[5] This is presumably obvious to experienced web users, but occasionally students don’t realize it, and pull out another reference work or do a brute-force web search to get a gloss for a name, rather than just clicking the Vicipaedia link right on the screen. So if you’re using Vicipaedia with a class, it’s worth pointing out that blue words link to more information.

[6] For a general description of this competition see Giustiniani p. 6, 15, 99-108.

Searching in Lewis and Short

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Chris Francese

A little known but extremely useful resource for Latin composition is the digitization of Lewis & Short done at the University of Chicago:

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/Reference/lewis.html

Search the FULL TEXT of this dictionary for an English word to find every entry in Lewis & Short where that English word appears. Sort through the various Latin words that pop up until you find one that approximates what you want to say.

For example, a search for “silk” yields the following cornucopia of terms, all classically attested, or at least attested within the generous limits of L&S.

birrus n., Aug. Serm. Divers. 49), = πυρρός (of yellow color), a cloak to keep off rain (made of silk or wool)

bombycinus , a, um, adj. bombyx, of silk, silken (cf. sericus): vestis, Plin. 11, 22, 26, § 76: panniculus,

bombycinus (page 243) 14, 24; Dig. 34, 2, 23, § 1.—Subst.: bombȳcĭna, ōrum, n., silk garments, Mart. 11, 50, 5; 8, 68, 7; App. M. 8, p. 214, 6.—And

bombycinus (page 243) 11, 50, 5; 8, 68, 7; App. M. 8, p. 214, 6.—And bombȳcĭnum, i, n., a silk texture or web, Isid. Orig. 19, 22, 13. bombylis , is,

bombyx (page 243) (f., Plin. 11, 23, 27; Tert. Pall. 3), = βόμβυξ. The silk-worm, Plin. 11, 22, 25, § 75 sqq.; Mart. 8, 33, 16; Serv. ad Verg. G. 2,

bombyx (page 243) Verg. G. 2, 121; Isid. Orig. 12, 5, 8; 19, 27, 5.— Meton. That which is made of silk, a silken garment, silk: Arabius, Arabian (the best), Prop. 2, 3, 15: Assyria bombyx,

bombyx (page 243) Orig. 12, 5, 8; 19, 27, 5.— Meton. That which is made of silk, a silken garment, silk: Arabius, Arabian (the best), Prop. 2, 3, 15: Assyria bombyx, Plin. 11, 23, 27, §

holosericus (page 859) holosericus , a, um, adj., = ὁλοσηρικός, all of silk: vestis, Lampr. Heliog. 20; Vop. Aur. 45; id. Tac. 10; Cod. Th. 15, 9, 1. —Collat. form,

metaxa (page 1140) metaxa or mătaxa, ae, f., = μέταξα and μάταξα, raw silk, the web of silkworms. Lit., Dig. 39, 4, 16; Cod. Just. 11, 7,

necydalus (page 1196) necydalus , i, m., = νεκύδαλος (deathlike), the larva of the silk-worm, in the stage of metamorphosis preceding that in which it receives the name of bombyx: primum eruca fit, deinde, quod vocatur bombylius, ex eo necydalus, ex hoc in sex mensibus bombyx,

Seres (page 1678) 11, 27, 11; Claud. in Eutr. 2.— sērĭ-cum, i, n., Seric stuff, silk, Amm. 23, 6, 67; Sol. 50; cf. Isid. Orig. 19, 17, 6; 19, 27, 5;

sericarius (page 1678) or belonging to silks: textor, Firm. Math. 8: NEGOCIATOR, Inscr. Orell. 1368; 4252.—As substt. SERICARII, silk- dealers, Inscr. Fabr. p. 713, 346.— SERICARIA, ae, f., a slave who took care of silk, Inscr. Orell.

sericarius (page 1678) SERICARII, silk- dealers, Inscr. Fabr. p. 713, 346.— SERICARIA, ae, f., a slave who took care of silk, Inscr. Orell. 2955. sericatus , a, um, adj.

sericoblatta (page 1679) sericoblatta , ae, f. Sericus, a garment of purple silk, Cod. Just. 11, 8, 10; Cod. Th. 10, 20, 13; 10, 20, 18. sericum , i,

vellus (page 1965) Calp. Ecl. 2, 7.— Of woolly material. Wool, down: velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres, i. e. the fleeces or flocks of silk, Verg. G. 2, 121.— Of light, fleecy clouds: tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri,

English search is not, I believe, available on Logeion, which is the successor to this site. Hopefully this older one will be kept around for a good while longer. I don’t know anything as good online for searching in English for Latin words. Thanks to Helma Dik and the U. Chicago team for all their work!

Choosing notes on the Aeneid

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Chris Francese

The ideal book must contain enough material to insure an adequate presentation, yet not so much as to dismay the beginner by its amount or to perplex him by its subtlety. It is a question of perspective and proportion which must be adapted to the learner’s point of view; he alone is to be considered. The progress of the pupil, not the display of the editor’s erudition, must be the constant objective. ((H.R. Fairclough and Seldon L. Brown, Virgil’s Aeneid Books I-VI with Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary (Chicago: Benj. H. Sanborn, 1919), p. iii.))

As mentioned in an earlier post, we are in the process of creating a multimedia edition of the Aeneid, to include

Notes, drawn mostly from older school editions, that elucidate the language and the context
Images, art, and illustrations, annotated to make clear how they relate to the text
Complete running vocabulary lists for the whole poem
Audio recordings of the Latin read aloud, and videos of the scansion
A full Vergilian lexicon based on that of Henry Frieze
Recordings of Renaissance music on texts from the Aeneid
Comprehensive linking to Allen & Greenough’s Latin Grammar
Comprehensive linking to Pleiades for all places mentioned in the text

Here is a list of the editions we are focusing on when compiling the notes. The most promising so far seem to be those of Fairclough and Brown, Greenough and Kittredge, Bennett, and Frieze. I thought it might be interesting to post the evolving list of criteria we are using to select notes, mainly because there is such a dearth of written discussion about the process of writing annotations on classical texts. True, there are book reviews of commentaries, but few commentators themselves seem to come out with positive statements of the sorts of notes they are trying to write.

We have already published guidelines for contributors that speak to this issue, but the practical task of selecting useful notes from older editions (and omitting the dross) has prompted me to re-phrase and focus that discussion. So here, for what they are worth, and in hopes of prompting a discussion, are the rules of thumb designed to create a useful and consistent set of notes for those who have some Latin but not much acquaintance with Vergil and his style:

Choosing Notes

Include notes that explain

idiomatic words and phrases
complex word order, where the syntactical connections between words may be for whatever reason less than clear to a first-time reader (prefer notes that re-arrange the Latin to make the logic clearer)
unusual grammatical constructions. Choose a note that most economically and specifically elucidates the sense and helps the reader to understand the original language. Use and Allen & Greenough reference where possible. There is no need to repeat grammatical explanations that can be found in the standard grammars.
cultural, historical, and literary context, such as personal and geographical names, clear and important allusions to other texts, and customs and historical items that would have been familiar to the imagined audience of a text but are not familiar to non-specialists now.
style and tone: Notes that observe tone, nuance, and implication are more valuable than notes that simply point out a nameable stylistic feature. When naming rhetorical or poetic figures, seek out a note that discusses the effect, rather than simply points out the figure.

Avoid notes that

paraphrase or translate large chunks, since this only obviates the necessity of understanding the original language;
simply name a grammatical construction when a judicious paraphrase or translation is also required. If an Allen Greenough reference is available, give that instead.
give an un-translated parallel passage in place of the other types of elucidation
cite parallel passages without explaining why a passage is parallel and important
merely say “cf.” followed by something whose relevance is not clear.

Making Map Animations with Google Earth

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Chris Francese

Dickinson alumna and DCC contributor Alice Ettling, who created the Caesar Gallic War map animations, kindly wrote up a how-to, in case you would like to try your hand at it. You will need Google Earth Pro and iMovie. Thanks, Alice!

I didn’t start out with one, but it will probably make your life easier to begin with a map overlay, provided you have a suitable map. Google has a tutorial for this that explains it better than I could.

This is what mine for BG 1.1 looked like, once I’d gotten it into place. I kept the opacity low, since this is a geographically-based animation and I wanted people to be able to see the terrain below the map. Not all maps will work well for this, and it’s generally true that the larger the area a map covers, the harder it will be to align with Google Earth, since the projection of the map gets harder to align with the curved surface of the earth as its area increases.

Once you’ve got that, you can use it to find the borders and geographical features you want to define in your video. Rivers or other physical features, obviously, can be found without a map overlay, but it’s much easier to draw in the borders of provinces or tribes with a guide like this. (NB: There is a Water Body Outline layer built in to Google Earth, but I found that it wasn’t terribly accurate or comprehensive, so I preferred to define the rivers I needed myself.)

To actually define regions, use either the polygon or the line tool, depending on which you need. Both are in the top bar, towards the right. If you are referring to any cities or other specific points, you can use the Placemark button to set pins into particular locations.

The first button in this row is the placemark tool; the second and third are the polygon and line tools, respectively. When you click on them, a window will open so that you can name the region and set its color/opacity. While this window is open, you can set the points that will define it; these can be edited later, so it’s hardly the end of the world if you misplace a point.

When defining regions, it’s important, if you’re going to be zooming in on them at all, to space your points fairly close together, so that the line running between them is smooth and follows the path you actually want.

(Here you can see the difference between closely-spaced points and ones that are farther apart; this border is supposed to be following the river.)

All of these regions display in a sidebar: if the box is checked, they will be visible, and if you click on a name, Google Earth will zoom onto that region.

Here, the map overlay (which, in this respect, acts like any other region) and the Belgae are checked, so they are visible, but all of the other regions, which are not checked, are not visible.

Once you have defined all the regions you will need for your video, you will need to set up “tours” that will actually move between the regions you have set up. Here is where my method gets sketchier; there may well be a better way to do this, but this is the solution I have found. To make recording a tour easier, set up your regions in the sidebar in the order you’ll be using them, and thoroughly plan just how you want the video to go.

When you click the “Record Tour” button (at the right end of the row with the buttons mentioned previously), a small bar will appear at the bottom of the window. The button with the red dot will both start and end recording.

Position the view in the angle/zoom level you want it, and then click the button to start recording. If you want the camera to move during your video, just click on the names of places you want to focus on, and check their boxes when you want them to appear. Because I’m not terribly adept at clicking only the things I want to, I think it’s helpful to divide what will eventually be your animation into several segments to be stitched back together later, so that you don’t ruin your whole work with one misplaced click. Don’t worry too much about timing your video to sync with the audio; that will be taken care of in iMovie.

When you have your tour segments all recorded, you’ll need to export them as movie files. Everything else in this tutorial can be done with the free version of Google Earth (which is where I’ve been taking most of my screengrabs), but this step requires Google Earth Pro. Under the Tools menu is the option Movie Maker. With this option, you can convert the tours into files that can be opened in iMovie (or any other video editing program; iMovie is what I’m familiar with, though). The Movie Maker option won’t be usable, though, if any polygons, lines, or filters are highlighted.

It’s a good idea to export these files with a reasonably high frame rate; you will likely be slowing them down to sync with your audio later, and this will keep them from looking too jerky.

Once they’ve been exported, open them in iMovie with the Import Movies option.

Your files will appear in the bottom frame of the program; select and drag them up to the top middle frame to edit them.

You can add audio here by using the Music and Sound Effects button in the middle right. All of my audio was recorded ahead of time, so all I had to do was import it from iTunes.

Drag this to the same frame you dragged the video to, and iMovie will combine the two; now all that’s left is to sync them up.

To do that, select individual pieces of your video (starting with the time from the start of the tour to your first cued action—in the case of my video for BG 1.1, this was the word “Belgae,” which should be keyed to the appearance of the corresponding region) and use the Split Clip command to separate them from the rest of the tour.

Now you can edit the speed of this clip separately from the rest of the video. To do so, click on the gear wheel that appears on top of the clip and go into Clip Adjustments.

Here, you can adjust the speed of the video; if it needs to take up more time relative to the audio, slow it down, and if it needs to take up less, speed it up. This involves a lot of finagling and listening to the same couple seconds of audio over and over again: be strong.

Once you’ve gotten that section of the movie synced properly, move on to the next and adjust its speed in the same way. Once you’ve gotten everything perfect, use the Export Movie button under the Share menu to save it in the format and quality you desire.

Dickinson College Commentaries

digital commentaries on classical texts

Category Archives: how tos