Latin Poetry Podcast

Explanation of the concept and practice of elision in Latin poetry, with lots of examples.

Explanation of the mute + liquid rule in Latin poetry, whereby a syllable is not counted long when a short vowel is followed by two consonants if those consonants are a mute and a liquid (br, tr, gl, etc.)

Explanation of the concept of syllable quantity, with lots of examples from Latin poetry, with special attention to problems created by consonantal i, and qu- and su-.

Discussion of Latin words with consistent quantities, knowledge of which will help in scanning Latin poetry.

Discussion of how vowel quantities can change the meaning and function of Latin words, with focus on the implications for scansion of poetry.

Discussion of long and short vowels and diphthongs, with special attention to apparent diphthongs that are actually two syllables.

Introduction to the concepts of prosody, scansion, stress accent and quantitative meters, with examples of scansion in English and Latin.

I have been experimenting with a nifty iPad app and teacher community called ShowMe as a way of teaching the basics of scansion and reading aloud. It has a sort of “telestrator” feature that seems tailor made for this kind of thing. I’ve been getting lucky with the apps I’m finding lately! First I found one […]

Martial De Spectaculis 9 The epigram writer Martial describes a mythological enactment in the arena, the execution of a slave which was staged to resemble a popular mime based on the story of a notorious bandit, Laureolus. He compares his fate of being exposed to a bear to that of the mythological hero Prometheus, punished […]