Summer Latin Institute - DAY 37

Day 37 is TODAY, August 1, 2012.

The morning started off with some Vergil...

TODAY IN AENEID BOOK 4 (54-128): Love drives Dido to frenzy. Juno favors the marriage of Dido and Aeneas, in order that she may turn Aeneas aside from Italy, and so agrees to help Venus consummate the affair, promising to devise a suitable situation.

—Summary courtesy of Clyde Pharr.

Lunchtime optional sight reading from the works of Ovid. After lunch, one hour of the poetic fragments of Ennius, another hour of Plautus (currently in progress). My colleague Patrick just did a beautiful job of presenting the zany iambic senararius meter of Roman comedy. Take an essentially iambic rhythm, allow all shorts to be substituted for with longs, and then allow any and all longs (whether long originally or by substitution) to be resolved into two shorts, and you get a dizzying array of possibilities, which Patrick explained brilliantly.

Does all of this sound too good to be true? Tell your friends. Tell your students. Just think—You could be doing this next summer!

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.