Pilate's Wife by Antoinette May

This is a book that Ms. Chiu recommended to me last year and I checked out...  And then my wife read before I could.  :P  She said it was good but it was time to take it back to the library.  Ah well.  I'll get to it later.

Waaay later, like, a year later, I did.  Here's the issue: as the title implies, this book will run to an ending which the majority of the Western World knows, i.e. the show-trial of Jesus of Nazareth before Pontius Pilate--but instead of Pilate and his wife being side characters, now it is Jesus and his disciples who are on the margins.  The book gives May the chance to really get into her narrator and Pilate (Pontius Pilate, the hunk if you can believe it) and the whole Judean episode is only the latter third of the book.

This book as a lot to recommend it...  But I could not use it in the classroom.  R-rated (and up) scenes kill that option, though there are quotes and items in it which do indicate May did her research.

The only thing that continues to eat at me is the anachronism of the main character.  She is a disciple of Isis and, normally, in fiction that denotes a more modern world-view...  But unlike, say for argument's sake, Cleopatra's Daughter, the narrator is horrified by what she sees because we would think it abhorrent, not because she's been taught otherwise.

Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser

I picked this up because I felt the ladies weren't getting their due in my classroom.  Honestly, how many women have we talked about aside from Cleopatra and whaserhame, you know, Catullus' on-again-off-again girlfriend.  Yea...  Then, I find this book which starts with the warrior queen of the Iceni, Boudica, who led a mostly sucessful revolt againt the Romans in 60 CE and she (Fraser) uses Boudica as a foil to illuminate other great queens of history, about half of which could be relevent to a Latin class.  

So, that's almost two-thirds relevance for a fairly short book, awesome!  Right?  Um...  Not so much.  :\  Fraser is a good historian, but she's also British and writing for an educated British audience of the early 80's.  It's dense!  Like, atomic weight of lead.  It's a good book, just not (I fear) for a high school classroom.

Alas.  Earwax.

There's no escape...

I went by the library and picked up some books and, oh look!  There's a new Batman graphic novel on the new shelf.  DontmindifIdo...  Little summer escapist reading never hurt any...

Oh.

Spoiler warning

I need a Bat-Signal or something here...

The following landed in my inbox yesterday from a high-school friend:

"Quick and random question.  It's Latin-related: I am reading a book about long distance hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail, and a line in Latin is mentioned a couple times. The requisite Google search to make sure it says what the author claims shows disagreement in spelling. It is attributed to St. Augustine and translates differently depending on the website hit.

As my book at several PCT hikers write it "Salvitur Ambulando" means "walking solves all things". Google wants to correct the spelling to "solvitur ambulando" and those results translate it to "It is solved by walking."

Not knowing much about Latin, I can't even guess which is correct, or if they are variants of the same phrase with the vowel change indicating gender or tense, or just a typo that keeps getting recycled, or ... ?

Can you shed any light? Thanks!”

Now...  I've been on this...  But I am curious what other people come up with.  Any ideas?

Summer reading

Ok...  Staring down a fairly light summer-reading list.  Right now I've got Warrior Queens by Fraser (candidate for inclusion in Latin 3 Enemies of Rome sequence), May's Pilate's Wife which I am assured by my wife and Ms. Chiu is worth my while...  Aaand not much else.  Ideas?  Any classics of Classics I've missed this year?

Curiosity killed the bat but satisfaction brought him back

So, settled into a little light summer-Sunday reading...  Comic books.  :)  Batman tells me that, "It is something of an irony that the image of Vulcan, Roman god of fire, has been used to market baking soda for over a hundred and forty years given that sodium bicarbonate is well known for its retardant properties..." (Dini et al 118)

Huh.

Really?

Well, "be curious" out commencement speaker said, not but two days past, so...  TO THE INTERNET ROBIN!

Wikipedia says that, "The Arm & Hammer logo dates back to the 1860s.James A. Church ran a spice business known as Vulcan Spice Mills. According tothe company, the Arm and Hammer logo represents Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalworking."  Huh.  Okaaay...  Citation?  Yes!  Good.

So, they reference a website called "Trivia Library" and they, in turn, reference a multi-volume work entitled The People's Almanac.

Or I could just go to the company's website and click through to a timeline where they state that in 1867, "Austin Church retires and his two sons form Church & Co.  They introduce the now familiar hammer-wielding arm of Vulcan, god of fire, on their packages."

Dini, Paul et al.  Batman: Detective.  New York: DC Comics, 2007.

Olympic oops

I'm on my way to graduation (which was awesome, congrats to all our grads!) and this comes on the radio.  I'll cut to the end for you and give you the fun bit:

"SIEGEL: This well-choreographed business took less than a minute and would have made Vulcan, the god of fire, proud.

CORNISH: Don't you mean Hephaestus?

SIEGEL: His Greek name, you mean?

CORNISH: Yes. You'd expect to refer to the Greek gods since we're talking about the Olympics, right? Which brings us the final flub in our list. The Royal Mint has issued commemorative gold coins for the London games, coins embossed with the names of Jupiter, Mars, Minerva.

SIEGEL: And those would be the Roman names of the Greek gods Zeus, Ares and Athena.

CORNISH: When pressed, The Royal Mint justified the use of the Roman names because the Olympic motto is in Latin.

SIEGEL: Citius, altius, fortius: swifter, higher, stronger. All of these Olympic gaffes make us wonder if the motto for the lead up to the London games really ought to be this...

CORNISH: Errare humanum est: To err is human."

All I get from this is that the Roman names take the gold medal (coin, whatever).  ;)

Just "a bunch of pushy Italian immigrants..."

Understatement of the week, the mayor of London said in an interview about his new book, "Just upriver from where I am, I can see London Bridge — that was the site of the first bridge across the river. Who built London Bridge? It wasn't Londoners. It was a bunch of pushy Italian immigrants from 43 A.D., the Romans, who founded this town."  Romans = "pushy."  Got it.

A music video?!

Mr. McConnel does like rap.  Yea, I know.  So, when you've picked yourself up off the floor, consider this: my business is words and studying wordsmiths.  What kind of a language teacher would I be if I did not appreciate word-artists who speak to the human condition of any age.

One rapper I'm fond of is B.o.B., he's got the vocabul-flow that I favor; quick and sharp wit.  His song and video, Play for Keeps contains a classic Latin phrase, with translation, used (I think) smartly.  He's used Roman  history elsewhere ("...swag like Caesar...") too.  Hmm...  

Yes, the following video does contain two words which I would not approve of in the classroom but he uses them appropriately.  And he's awesome.  ;)