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 that gets you ig likes for instagram, and it works really well, and now I found this one.
I started to buy Instagram likes for more better engagement on instagram which is definitely giving me good results. As the time passed I understood the importance of instagram followers (seguidores de instagram) because it improve my engagement with audience.
I probably should look in the marketplace for things I need more often.
I have one on the very basics of Latin prosody,
and one on Latin vowel quantity and diphthongs.
If you have the time take a look and let me know what you think!
Making the one on vowel quantity taught me a lot about diphthongs. A simple search through Aeneid 1 for the various diphthongs revealed starkly how wrong it is to just tell students (as the grammar books do) that “ei” is a diphthong, or “ui” is a diphthong. In actual fact they are almost always NOT diphthongs. And the same is true of “eu,” and sometimes of the others. So this will definitely change the way I teach scansion.
The reason to use a tool like this is to take the most difficult and technical aspects of scansion out of the classroom, and into homework, where a student can look at and listen to the explanations as many times as necessary to really get it. In class, most rational people will not raise a hand and say “I still don’t get that,” and as a result many never really catch on to some of these basic concepts.
I plan to do more of these, as a kind of video commentary on the wonderful metrical introduction to Ovid’s Amores 1 authored by William Turpin, to go in the forthcoming Dickinson College Commentaries edition. You can see it here (still under construction, though) .
Thanks, Chrissy Schanes, for putting me on to ShowMe. And thanks to all of you for any feedback and suggestions. We use wordpress accessibility for everything in case you need it!
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 by Zeus. It comes from a set of poems meant to commemorate the inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheater, that is, the Colosseum in Rome.
Qualiter in Scythica religatus rupe Prometheus
Adsiduam nimio pectore pavit avem,
Nuda Caledonio sic viscera praebuit urso
Non falsa pendens in cruce Laureolus.
Vivebant laceri membris stillantibus artus 5
Inque omni nusquam corpore corpus erat.
Denique supplicium <meruit quo crimine tantum?>
Vel domini iugulum foderat ense nocens,
Templa vel arcano demens spoliaverat auro,
Subdiderat saevas vel tibi, Roma, faces. 10
Vicerat antiquae sceleratus crimina famae,
In quo, quae fuerat fabula, poena fuit.
The text is that of Kathleen Coleman, M. Valerii Martialis Liber Spectaculorum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 82. Line 7 is defective in the manuscripts, and the supplement printed here is due to Leonfranc Holford-Strevens.
Here is my translation:
Think of Prometheus, tied to his Scythian crag, feeding the tireless
bird of prey with his too abundant thorax.
Just so ‘Laureolus’, hanging on no mock theatrical cross,
gave his naked guts to a Scottish bear.
His mangled limbs lived on, dripping gore, until on his body
there was no body left at all. So, what
heinous crime merited such retribution? Either the guilty
man slit his master’s throat with a sword,
or in his madness robbed a temple of its hidden gold, or else
he put a savage torch to you, dear Rome. 10
The criminal had outdone misdeeds of ancient story, but in his case
what was fiction became a punishment quite real.
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Grave relief of a Greco-Roman doctor.Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Sk 804. Photo Johannes Laurentius.
ex vitio cerebri phrenesis furiosa movetur 87
amissasque refert frendens amentia vires,
sive calens febris iactatos exedit artus
sive meri gustus seu frigoris efficit aura. 90
convenit calidis pecudum pulmonibus apte
tempora languentis medica redimire corona.
inlotis etiam lanis suffire memento
cerritum; saepe horrendi medicantur odores.
non semper praesens dolor est sanabilis: ergo 100
cura magis prodest venturis obvia morbis
atque ideo sanos etiam curarier est par. 95
purgatur cerebrum mansa radice pyrethri,
unguitur et sucis, dederit quos parva sabucus,
expressusque hederae mandatur naribus umor
aut mixtum rutae cerebro instillatur acetum.
Quintus Serenus was the author of Liber Medicinalis, a collection of therapeutic recipes. It cannot be dated very closely, but evidently derives from somewhere in the 2nd to 4th centuries AD. For more information about books check this out. In this excerpt he discusses cures for phrenesis, a kind of mental derangement accompanied by fever. The translation here is my own (in fact I don’t think this work has ever been translated into English, but there is a French edition, which I have not seen). The discussion of the various forms of madness in Roman medical texts is derived from my book, Ancient Rome in So Many Words. My other podcast of a bit of Serenus is here. The Latin text is from PHI, which atypically does not itself list a source. Hope you enjoy!
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