Aestiva Romae Latinitas

Sine Dubio, Tempus Fugit (Without a Doubt, Time Flies)

It's hard to believe that my summer in Rome is more than half over. This past Monday marked the first day of the second half of school (and my stay). I'm really loving it and learning tons, but I'm beginning to fatigue a bit. I am in awe of Reggie's energy; while many of his students (most of whom are less than half his age) are grumbling about being tired or are skipping classes to rest, he just keeps going. We were given Sunday off...our FIRST AND ONLY day off for the whole course. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't go anywhere or do anything. I sat in my apartment and read a book. It was very relaxing, however, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Parum Cognitionis Res Periculosa Est (Too Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing)

The book I read was a "freebie" that a parent left on the table in the faculty room at school. It was a fast read, moderately enjoyable, quite mindless. The book, Bill Fitzhugh's _The Organ Grinders_, is a satirical novel about medical biotechnology and big business. In his preface, Fitzhugh talks about all of the experts and organizations that he consulted in order to get correct facts and figures for his book. He researched figures and technologies for: world population, solid waste disposal, vivisection, air and water pollution, male hormone therapy, organ transplants, and industrial espionage in the biotechnology industry. According to Fitzhugh, "I obtained excellent information from many experts." Unfortunately, he didn't bother to consult with a first-year high school Latin student. Had he done so, he might not have butchered what should have been extremely simple Latin.

In the book, a radical environmentalist/animal-rights person takes revenge on the "bad guys," i.e. solid waste disposal executives who cut secret illegal deals, fur manufacturers, people involved in animal experimentation, etc. In each case, the vigilante leaves a note that reads: "Terra Tuebor". Near the end of the book, the reader learns that this is supposed to mean "I will protect the earth." In actuality, it means (at best) something like "I will protect by using the earth," not quite the same thing. It seems as though the author looked up "earth" in a Latin dictionary and found "terra" and then just used that word unchanged. What he should have done is changed it to "terram" in order to show that it is the direct object. I thought it was quite appropriate that I read this while on this trip. I got a good laugh from it.

Another one I found while here in Rome was an opinion article titled "E pluribus...pluribus?" - a take on "E pluribus unum." The writer was discussing the lack of unitty in America, but appears to have figured that "pluribus" means "many" (which it does, but is by its form it would be the object of a preposition. He should have written "E pluribus...plures."

It's fun being able to get a little laugh from such things. Reggie tells us little Latin jokes and always points out that "without knowing Latin...NOTHING! However, as my father always told me (and as I always tell my students): small things please small minds (res parvae placent mentibus parvis).

Follis Pedius (Football, that is, Soccer)

It has been a lot of fun being in Italy during the World Cup, especially since Italy is now in the final game. What a difference there is between Europeans and Americans. In America, the games aren't even broadcast on network TV. (One of my colleague's husband purchased a THIRD satelite dish so he could watch all the games.) Here, the games are shown everywhere - every bar and most restaurants show the games. TVs are placed so that people standing in the streets can watch. I can see the games on the TV in my apartment. People have little handheld TVs on which they watch the games in piazzas and parking lots. Lately, giant screens have been set up in public areas so that huge groups of people can watch together. This Sunday, the final game will be shown on an enormous screen at the Circus Maximus. I intend to go there and watch the game with about twenty or thirty thousand other people. As you might imagine, the Italians go absolutely nuts when they win a game. The roads fill up with cars and scooters beeping madly and flying the Italian flag. It's great, and I'm looking forward to the final game against France. Go Italia!

St. Thomas Aquinas Excursion

We left the train station at 7:25, heading to Roccasecca, the birthplace of Thomas Aquinas. A few minutes after leaving the station, we passed some of the ruins of the Aqua Claudia, which were beautiful. I am amazed to think that these arches have been standing for 2000 years. Amazing!

We arrived at Roccasecca, and then boarded two very small, very cramped minibuses, which transported us to Castello dei Conti D'Aquino (the Castle of the Count of Aquino - aka St. Thomas' dad's castle). There we read about Thomas' childhood. Reggie's favorite part tells about how baby Thomas found a scrap of paper with "Ave Maria" on it and he would cry whenever it was taken away from him. After reading and singing a bit, we explored the chapel and the castle ruins. Very nice.






Here is chanting:








At the end of the day, we went to the train station where we cheered the passing trains (Reggie is a huge train buff) as we waited for our own.

Today we went on our "Julius Caesar Excursion." It was very, very good. We started by going to the site of the Theater of Pompey, which was the first stone theater built in Rome. (It was against the law to construct one of stone, but Pompey got around this by building a temple on the site.) We started here in order to get a sense of where everything happened. It is still possible to see some of the remains of the theater by going in the Restaurant Pancrazio, which is, according to Reggie, "quite pricey."

We looked at a map of the original layout. The theater was next to the Porticus of Pompey, which had over 100 columns; it must have been magnificent. Attached to the porticus was Pompey's Curia (which is NOT the curia in the Forum). It was in the porticus, right in front of a statue of Pompey, where Caesar was killed.

We proceeded to the street which is above the ancient porticus. On this street there is an inscription (from about 1900) that runs along the building and tells those who can read Latin that this is "the spot." Not many people know about this inscription. It's not in the guide books I've seen, and Reggie said that for a long time even he didn't know about it. There we read Plutarch's account (translated into Latin from the original Greek) and Suetonius' account (in the original Latin) of the assassination.

We then went to Largo Torre Argentina, where it is possible to see the back wall of Pompey's Curia (and about a million cats, since it is a kitty sanctuary).



Here we read Cicero's shortest extant letter, which he wrote to Basilus, one of the conspirators, right after he had heard the news on the very day of the assassination:

Tibi gratular, mihi gaudeo; te amo, tua tueor; a te amari et quid agas quidque agatur certior fieri volo.

OR (roughly)...

Congratulations! I'm psyched! I support you, dear friend. Let me know what you're doing and what is being done.



While Reggie is pretty disgusted by Cicero's glee over this event, Cicero is representative of those Romans who wanted a "restoration of the Republic," whatever that might have been. Thanks to my brother Steve, who sent me a news item that is relevant to this whole affair and that helps to explain Cicero's attitude. Click HERE to see a photo of a coin that has just been returned to Greece. It is a coin minted by Brutus (the head conspirator) not long after the assassination. On one side of the coin is the head of Brutus. On the other side, you'll find two daggers on either side of a "cap." This cap is a "pileus," which is a felt hat that was worn by freed slaves. Under the daggers and pileus are the words "EID MAR," which stands, of course, for the Ides of March. So what this little piece of propaganda was suggesting is that the daggers of the conspirators (or "liberators" as they called themselves - sound like any Texans you know?) liberated the Roman people from slavery (the tyranny of Caesar) on the Ides of March. It's amazing how much information could be squeezed onto such a little coin, eh? I believe it was a scholar named H.A. Drake who called such coins the "sound-bites of the ancient world."

After we read a few other letters written between Cicero and Caesar, we made our way to the statue of Julius Caesar that stands before the ruins of the Julian Forum.



There we drank some wine and sang some songs to Caesar. As I said, it was a very good day.



For those who are interested, you can click HERE to hear a very short interview (about 3 or 4 minutes) with Reginald in which he speaks of the assassination of Caesar. It's worth the listen.

Today (or rather yesterday, as it is 1:30 AM) marked the feast day of John the Baptist for Catholics. John's feast day is somewhat unusual, insofar as it marks his birth, rather than his death, as most feast days do. It was a special day for me and the other students in Reggie's class because we went into the chapel of Reggie's monastery for a Latin mass. It was a beautiful mass, without exception the best that I (a Protestant, but one who regularly attends mass as an employee at a Catholic school) have ever attended.

It was the only time I've ever seen Reggie wearing something other than his standard uniform, which is a blue button-down shirt, steel blue pants, and black work shoes. (As I post more pictures, you will see that this is all he ever wears.) It was almost shocking to see him wearing his monks' habit and priestly vestments (which he refused to wear even when the Pope's visit to his department in the Vatican required it; instead, he chose on that day to stay home - "I was 'indisposed,'" as he put it).

It was an all-Latin mass, including the homily, which was excellent. In his homily, Reggie urged us as teachers to follow the example of John the Baptist, whose purpose was to prepare the way for Christ and then to fade into the background as Jesus took "center stage." According to the Book of John, John the Baptist said of himself and Jesus: "As he grows greater, I must grow less." Reggie equated this sentiment with the proper aim of teachers: our job is to prepare the way for our students, to do our part to help them grow, to assume the center stage. Meanwhile, Reggie urged us to remember that we do not, or rather should not, do this for ourselves or for any sense of self-importance. He urged us to be humble and giving and selfless as our students grow greater, while we grow less.

Listening to Reggie's homily was one of the best experiences with Latin I've yet had. Incredibly, I understood the entire homily. Finally...slowly...I am becoming better able to comprehend spoken Latin. As I listened, I was moved by Reggie's words, and I hoped that someday some of my own students would be able to enjoy similar Latin experiences, that they might someday hear or read something in Latin that speaks in a significant way to them.

At the end of the mass, we sang a Gregorian chant (which we are learning to do in class), the Vespers hymn for the Feast of St. John the Baptist, Ut Queant Laxis. There are a couple of interesting things having to do with this hymn.

It was written by Paulo Diacono (Paul the Deacon) in the 8th century. In the 11th century, Guido d'Arezzo, a Benedictine monk, used the hymn to formulate a system of using syllables to represent the tones of the Scale. This system, called the Guido System, is the famous do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti. Here's how it worked:

The hymn begins with these words:

Ut queant laxis resonare fibris
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti labii reatum,
Sancte Joannes

Guido used the first syllables of the words that corresponded with the notes of the scale (here capitalized) to represent those notes:

UT queant laxis REsonare fibris
MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum
SOLve polluti LAbii reatum
Sancte Joannes

Originally it was ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la. Later ut was replaced by do (although I think ut may still be used in Germany), sol was shortened to so, and ti was added as the final note of the scale.

This was a wretched explanation. If you are so inclined, a better explanation can be found HERE.

The second interesting thing is that the Catholic Church, sometime in the seventies, changed some of the words of the hymn. Specifically, they changed "Nuntius celso veniens Olympo" (a messenger coming from high Olympus) to "Nuntius caelo veniens supremo" (a messenger coming from high in the sky). This, according to Reggie, was done "because celso...Olympo sounded a little too 'pagan-like.'" On the sheets that Reggie gave us, "caelo...supremo" had been whited out and "celso...Olympo" restored. Reggie thinks the whole fuss was a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. That's Reggie.

After mass, we crossed the street and had a great dinner, during which Reggie told a bunch of really funny stories about his job in the Vatican. He told us about when some of the Vatican "higher-ups" tried to get him to put some furniture in his office, which only had (and still only has) a simple desk and chair. "I don't want any furniture." "We'll get you some furniture." "I don't want any furniture." "We'll get you some furniture." "I don't NEED any furniture!" "Come on now, Foster, you don't want us to be like a bunch of Poor Franciscans here, do you?" "It wouldn't be such a bad idea!" Reggie's great!

DE REGINALDO EIUSQUE CLASSE (About Reggie and His Class)

It's been a week since I've posted. I can't believe how busy I've been. Starting this (the second) week, I attend class from 2:00 PM to 7:30 PM, six days per week. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, we meet for an additional hour, from 8:00 to 9:00, sub arboribus (under the trees) in the grounds of Reggie's monastery. Sundays are supposedly our day off, but are actually the days that Reggie leads excursions to various places of interest in and around Rome. Of course there is much reading of Latin on these days, too.

I can't believe how much this guy gives, and all for FREE! I cannot imagine what this class would be worth if he were to charge - thousands of dollars, easily, especially considering Reggie's expertise. I was thinking about it today: at the end of these two months, I will have spent more class time with Reggie than I have with any other teacher or professor I've had since elementary school, when I was with a single teacher every day; I will have spent more class time with Reggie than I spend with my own students over three years. It's absurd! It's wonderful! It's especially amazing when one considers that Reggie works, too. Every morning, he spend four or five hours translating documents in the Vatican. That's twelve hours of work per day for him, NOT counting the time he spends correcting papers, creating Ludi (his homework sheets), and putting together packets for excursions. He says that he sleeps only about four hours every night, though I suspect he doesn't really get even that much sleep. Reggie is sixty-seven years old; he is a man with a mission.

ITER PRIMUM (The First Excursion)

On Sunday, Reggie took us to Ostia Antica (Ostia Antiqua, Latine), what used to be the port city at the mouth of the Tiber (the shore is now several miles out, and so this "port city" is no port at all). According to legend, Ostia was founded by Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome, to guard the mouth (ostium) of the river Tiber. It was originally a fortified city; later it became a commercial city. It developed into the port of Rome shortly before the First Punic War (264 BC). The ruins there provide an excellent view of the domestic and commercial architecture of 1st and 2nd century AD Rome and allow a glimpse of what Roman urban life was like. Not only were the ruins themselves splendid, but reading Latin passages that related to the place provided the most overwhelming sense of immediacy of and closeness to antiquity. I had heard that Reggie's excursion packets were "gold," and it turned out to be true.

Soon after we arrived, we read some Vergil, specifically the passage from _The Aeneid_ which describes Aeneas' landing, which would have been on what used to be the bank of the Tiber, close to a present-day restaruant named (in Italian) "Aeneas' Disembarkment." The passage tells of an exhausted Aeneas dragging himself up onto the bank, where he saw a white sow and her piglets emerge from the brush, an unmistakably good omen. Reggie told us before we arrived that a white dog would greet us there. Sure enough, as we stood and read the Vergilian verses aloud, up trotted a white dog. "There he is, there he is," shouted Reggie, "I TOLD you he would come!" It was our own good omen.

After we entered the city, we proceeded to a tavern, where a still-visible inscription in the mosaic pavement reads: Dicit Fortunatus: vinum cratera quod sitis bibe (Fortunatus says: drink wine from the bowl to quench your thirst). We opted to drink it from a box; we poured cups of wine, toasted, and together sang "Gaudeamus Igitur," a Latin song urging people to rejoice and enjoy life, since we'll be dead soon enough.


We then followed the Via della Fontana, a street lined with apartment houses and shops, to large arcaded courtyard, where we read from Suetonius' _Life of Claudius_ about the construction of an enormous ship to carry an Egytian oblisk to Rome.

After a short visit to the museum and a relaxing picnic lunch, we proceeded to a street of ship-outfitting shops, whose mosaics remain to show us what was done there. There we read Livy's account of the major effort to build ships and prepare rowers for the fight against the Carthaginians.

We then visited the amphitheater, where Reggie read a bit of Terrence to us. He loves Terrence (185-159 BC), who wrote very early Latin drama using the common language that one would have heard on the street.

Finally, we went to a hotel, the hotel where Augustine's mother most likely died. We read some very moving passages from Augustine's _Confessions_, in which he tells of his mother's life and death and expresses his desire that people remember her. Over 1,600 years later, they still do.

RES ALIAE (Other Things)

I did finally finish my grades and comments, which was a relief. Since then, I have had a chance to cross the Tiber and see a bit more of Rome. I'm tired, though, and will write of these things later.

ADVENTUS MEUS (My Arrival)

Well, I'm here...Rome, the Eternal City. Getting away was extremely hectic (with my late packing and my trying to finish grading final exams, I didn't sleep the night before I left), but the trip itself was relatively smooth. I arrived in Rome about mid-day on Sunday, June 4. Disaster was averted when a man in Fiumicino Airport alerted me to the fact that my passport had fallen out of my back pocket. Pretty stupid move, eh? From the airport, a twenty-five minute train ride and a five-minute cab ride took me to the apartment that will be my home for the next two months.

DOMICILIUM MEUM (My Place)

The apartment - on Vicolo del Leopardo, a charming street in Trastevere - is fantastic. It didn't take long for me to realize how lucky I am to have gotten this place. The place itself is perfectly functional - a studio apartment with cooking facilities and a bathroom - and is on the third floor of a building that dates back to 1600. I am a two-minute walk from Piazza di Santa Maria, THE center of Trastevere (so far, I have twice planned to meet up with people in Rome, and both times we met in this piazza). Trastevere itself is great and very well located in Rome, within walking distance of most of what I'd like to see.

QUAE FECI (What I've done)

My first three days were mostly spent working (yes, I still haven't finished calculating grades and writing comments for my students) and wandering about trying to get my bearings and to find everything I'll need. I've found a Chinese restaurant and an Indian restaurant, which I plan to visit when I finally want something other than pizza/panini/pasta. Because I plan to cook many of my meals, I looked for and found a supermarket where I'll be able to buy everything I need, including eggs and bacon, which is NOT what the Italians eat for breakfast. I found a movie theater, but most movies here have been dubbed in Italian. I guess I'll have to wait to see The DaVinci Code. I found an horalogia where I got the battery in my watch replaced and a barbershop where I'll be able to get an occasional shave. So much for the necessities. Soon, I hope, I'll have the time and energy to venture out to see some of the good stuff. In addition to all of this, I've also sat through the first two of forty-eight classes. They have been great.

MAGISTER MEUS (My Teacher)

Reginald Foster, my teacher, has so far lived up to my expectations and his very interesting reputation. This guy is amazing: incredibly generous, incredibly energetic, and incredibly knowledgable in Latin. There are perhaps only ten people (if that) in the world who can speak extemporaneously in Latin as well as Reggie. He is truly a marvel. For those interested, HERE is a "wiki" page on Reggie.

For those who are REALLY interested, HERE is an excellent and quite funny article about him, about forty pages long, that was originally published in American Scholar, and more recently as a chapter in a book called _The Future of the Past_. This article really captures Reggie's spirit.

His class has so-far (all two days of it) been outrageous, inspiring, and educational. It's also been quite funny. I've started keeping a list of some of his comments (Reggie-isms). Here are a few of them:

"Do you know, or should I ask an orangatan?"
"Computers are melting our brains...well, your brains; I don't have a computer."
"English is the worst language in the world, as you know."
"I have nothing against Vergil, though I hate him."

Reggie is an incredibly inspirational guy, and I'm really excited to be studying with him.

CONDISCIPULI MEI (My Classmates)

There are about forty or forty-five students in all, mostly graduate students with a few middle and high school teachers and general Latin enthusiasts thrown in. People have come from all over - China, India, Poland, Spain, Australia, Holland, England, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, and America. These are bright and interesting people, humbling and inspiring. There are several students from Yale, both graduate and undergraduate, ALL of whom say they HATE it there!! Some speak four or five languages. There are several Medievalists, several priests, not a few Classicists. All are enthusiastic about Latin, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better. I went to dinner with about ten other students tonight (well, last night seeing as it's very, very early in the morning) and had a really good time.

COGITATIONES ULTIMAE (Final Thoughts)

I guess I have about two or three weeks before the place is completely flooded with tourists. I'll have to make an effort to see some of the more popular sites before this happens. I haven't even crossed the Tiber yet - "That's pretty lame," as one of Reggie's former students put it when I told him - but I'm looking forward to seeing some good stuff soon. I've just got to finish up my work. Unfortunately, I got my first homework assignment this morning, so it seems as though I'll never have nothing to do.

I saw a news blurb today that said that the European Community is panicking about the strength of the Euro...and this when the Dollar-to-Euro exchange rate is a pathetically crappy $1.40 to one...thanks George Bush!

I've a bunch more to say, but it will have to wait for now. I'm going to bed...