Res Novae, I

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! Today’s post is the first in a series about the scary (but necessary) idea of Change … as it applies to the Tres Columnae Project, to teaching and learning more generally, and to the characters we come to know and love as part of the Tres Columnae Metastory. This is an interesting time to be involved with teaching and learning! Just in the past few days, as I worked on drafts of this post, I came across two seemingly random New York Times Online articles about huge (potential) changes in our conceptions of learning … and in our ideas about the structure and functions of schools:

• This article, after mentioning some research that challenges the ideas of learning styles and teaching styles, has some utterly counter-intuitive suggestions about study techniques that increase retention. I was especially fascinated by the idea of studying the same concept in different physical environments!
• This one describes the growing numbers of teacher-led schools, which are organized along the lines of a legal or medical practice rather than a hierarchical factory. I’ve done a bit of reading about these in the past, but their numbers are apparently growing … and in some areas where you wouldn’t necessarily expect them. The comments on the article are, if anything, more interesting than the article itself … especially the ones from veteran teachers who are excited and energized by the idea.

Of course there are all kinds of other new things afoot, too.

Tres Columnae Version Beta will be here soon, and it represents a significant improvement over the Version Alpha Wiki. It also required me to Let Go of some of the control I’d maintained over the site; I’m no longer the Primary Person for technical matters, which is a welcome development but also, of course, a bit scary.

In my face-to-face teaching world, I’m experimenting with a number of New Things besides, of course, Tres Columnae materials themselves. I’ve (gasp!) slightly reorganized the classroom – a bit step for a strongly kinesthetic learner like myself. I’ve (louder gasp!) re-thought when my students should be introduced to certain concepts – a big change for the former Mr. Predictable, who used to gaze with utter satisfaction at his beautifully organized file cabinet. And I’ve completely rethought – and significantly improved – lesson closure, especially in my Latin I classes. It’s a simple little system: near the beginning of the class, we look at the specific learning goals for the lesson, which I’ve taken to phrasing as questions in the form of “Can I … ?” So, at the end of class, I now ask, “Can we, in fact, … ?”

Scores on the first Latin I test are usually pretty good, but they were dramatically better than usual this time – and even my one completely-lost student seems to have found herself, or at least found her way closer to the path. (Plus, there’s only one completely lost Latin I student out of 62, and in a “typical” year there would probably be two or even three in each class at this point.) Change can be very, very good, but it’s still hard, even in a culture that claims, as most 21st-century Western cultures do, to embrace change as a good – or at least a necessary – thing.

Just imagine how scary the thought of change must have been for Romans, for whom (as I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post) the very term rēs novae implied a violent political or military upheaval. And yet, of course, Romans did sometimes try new things; in many ways Roman culture was very progressive and open to change, especially when you compare it with some of its violently xenophobic neighbors. The Roman attitude toward change and newness obviously wasn’t monolithic, any more than the “21st-century Western culture” attitude toward change or even my own attitude toward change … or toward anything else, for that matter.

One important goal for the Tres Columnae Project will be to help our learners (and teachers) deal with the complexity of Roman attitudes and perspectives – to undermine the kind of stereotypic thinking that, all too often, we language teachers unwittingly encourage in our beginning students when talk about “the Romans” or “the Roman attitude” or “Roman” whatever, as if “Romans” were a monolithic group with a single attitude. If you’ve looked at the Framework for 21st-century Learning, you probably noticed that the idea of handling complexity appears over and over again, in strand after strand. So I hope the Tres Columnae materials will help our 21st-century learners come to terms with their own complex world as well as with the complex Roman world they’ll be studying with us.

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• How do you feel about Change … or should I say, about different Changes that are happening in your face-to-face world?
• What evidence of the changes in teaching and learning I’ve mentioned here have you seen? How are those affecting you – and how do you feel about the effects?
• How do you feel about the changing learners (and teachers!) you’ve encountered recently?
• What role for the Tres Columnae Project materials do you see in a complex, changing world?

Tune in next time, when (if all goes well) we’ll finally see that long-promised story in which several of our characters have to confront an uncomfortable change. I hope that “next time” will be tomorrow, but Wednesdays are often crazy days in my world, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the post completely drafted. We’ll have to go with the flow … and the complexity and the change!

intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus. Thanks again for sticking with us through all the complexity, change, and uncertainty of the past few weeks!

Floors and Ceilings, V

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! As I was working on a draft of this post, I found this fascinating link from eSchool News about “Empowering the iGeneration!” It’s too good not to share! (If you’re not an eSchool News subscriber, you’ll only be able to see the first page of the article … but subscriptions are free and the content is usually quite interesting.) The article talks about a number of initiatives that involve today’s learners in online collaborative tasks with peers around the world … and their teachers rave about the positive effects on the students’ engagement and performance. I’ve always believed and known that Joyful Learning Communities are the way to go, but it’s nice to have some “official” validation of the concept! It’s also nice to see some public-private partnerships and to read about social entrepreneurs who are, as the old saying goes, “doing well by doing good.”

Today, as promised, we’ll be looking at a story that brings together our building metaphor of floors and ceilings with our discussion of alignment, connections, and core purposes. It’s been a while since I shared a new Tres Columnae Project story with you; I know that a lot of lectōrēs fidēlissimī look forward to those, and I do apologize. For some reason, I just hadn’t felt inspired to write much Latīnē for a while. Maybe it was the baking heat that’s afflicted my face-to-face world for the past few months!

Oddly, until I started working on the Tres Columnae Project in earnest last year, I had never subjected myself to the discipline of writing something on a regular basis. Many of you lectōrēs fidēlissimī are probably faithful journal writers, but that never appealed to me. Occasionally a family member would give me a journal as a Christmas present, and I’d make a real effort to write each day, but all too soon I abandoned the effort. One year I tried a more free-form journal, a notebook that didn’t have a set amount of space for each day; again, I quickly abandoned it. For some reason, writing about my own life – and writing in English – wasn’t very appealing to me. It was only when I discovered that I could write about the lives of characters I’d created – and that I could do so in Latin, and for an audience – that I found the blend of motivation, inspiration, and perspiration 🙂 that has enabled me to produce the core stories for the Tres Columnae Project. And only after writing in Latin for quite some time did I discover that I could enjoy the discipline of writing regularly in English, both here on this blog and in other places.

I suppose the problem was that writing had come to feel like work rather than art, to borrow terms from Seth Godin’s amazing new book Linchpin. But writing about Valeria, Lucius, Caeliola, and their family and friends doesn’t feel like “work” at all – it’s a joy and a privilege instead. In the same way, our conversation here has been both a privilege and a joy; I’m so grateful to all of you for the time you spend reading and responding. As our subscriber base grows, and as more and more lectōrēs become scrīptōrēs, I hope you’ll discover that same sense of joy in your Submissions to the project.

As I mentioned yesterday, we’ll be looking at a story that wraps up the themes of this week’s posts: floors, ceilings, alignment, connection, and core purposes. It comes from Lectiō XXI … a part of the project that I deliberately haven’t featured until now except in a few posts, like this one from February and this one from early March, about the grammatical elements. As I mentioned then, I deliberately postponed the introduction of non-present tense verbs for several reasons. First, I really wanted our subscribers to be able to use Tres Columnae stories as supplemental or “extensive” reading material. Even when you “know about” lots of other tenses, you can still understand and appreciate a present-tense narrative. Second, it’s culturally authentic: the Romans themselves frequently employed a “historical” or “narrative” present tense when telling stories. Third, I think the Latin tense system is endlessly fascinating and beautiful, and I want our subscribers to appreciate and relish its beauty. I don’t think that’s quite as easy to do when you, the learner, are rushed into learning the forms and asked to produce a formulaic English translation as proof of your “understanding” – or, to be more precise, your recognition of a given verb form.

As I’ve mentioned on many occasions, including this post, I really don’t object to translation as a strategy for language teaching and learning; I just think it’s been significantly overused, and sometimes even misused, in our profession for the last 150 years or so – especially when written translation becomes the primary tool for summative assessments. As a formative assessment tool, and as a way to assist with comprehension, oral translation can be quite helpful. For example check out this amazing Latin-BestPractices post, in which David shows how translation can be used in a TPRS classroom.

I’ve always been interested in the taxonomies of educational objectives developed by theorists like Benjamin Bloom and Robert Marzano. As you probably know, they both present a six-level scheme, beginning with Knowledge (Bloom) or Remembering (Marzano) and proceeding to Synthesis and Evaluation (Bloom) or Justifying and Creating (Marzano). In the middle, in both cases, you find things like Comprehension, Application, and Analysis. As with the goals I listed earlier this week, the higher levels presuppose proficiency with the lower ones.

The problems I see with written translation happen when we employ it too soon in the instructional cycle. Formal, polished translations are definitely a work of evaluation and creation, and so, I would argue, are the highly artificial things that we Classicists call “literal” translations. When we take the time to use some other tools to help our students comprehend, apply, and analyze, translation is a lot less difficult and a lot less painful – especially when it’s not the only way that our learners can demonstrate evaluation and synthesis. But when we rush to high-level tasks for which we haven’t adequately prepared our students, it’s like building the roof of a house before the walls and foundation are done.

And that brings us to today’s story, which is about building and rebuilding. It occurs right after the lengthy trip to Rome to seek a remedium for the morbus novissimus that afflicted Casina, ancilla Valeriī. Everyone has safely returned, and Caelius’ wife Vipsānia – who has her own reasons to be suspicious of a dominus who takes good care of his ancillae – has decided she wants Caelius to remodel their farmhouse. If you’ve seen Lucy M’s amazing pictures of vīlla Caeliī, you may be wondering why! Perhaps she’s just jealous of the even fancier house of their friend Claudius Pulcher in Rome; perhaps she’s looking for assurance that Caelius really does care her; or perhaps she has other reasons yet to be revealed. See what you think as you read this story, now available here at the Version Alpha Wiki site if you’re interested:

dum Lūcius cum Marcō in urbe colloquitur, Q. Iūlius Frontō architectus ad vīllam Caeliī equitat. Caelius enim Frontōnem paucīs ante diēbus arcessīvit, quod vīllam suam renovāre in animō habēbat. nam Vipsānia, postquam tōta familia urbe Rōmā domum revēnit, īrātissima erat quod tam parva erat vīlla, tam pauca cubicula, tam antīquae pictūrae. cotīdiē igitur marītum suum quaerēbat castīgātum. “nōnne miserrima sum?” cotīdiē inquit. “num ille Claudius Pulcher, amīcus tuus, uxōrem tam contemptam habet? fortasse ille, ut tū, sibi ancillās pulchrās praebet – sed uxor Claudiī in domō splendidā habitat. num mē decet hunc dolōrem, hanc trīstitiam frātrī meō epistulā patefacere?”

Caelius, quī tālēs uxōris minās neglegere multōs annōs solēbat, Vipsāniae respondēre paucōs diēs nōlēbat. cum tamen Vipsānia Ūtilem iussit cērās stilōsque ad ātrium ferre, ille, “haud tē oportet,” inquit, “frātrem tuum epistulīs vexāre. praetereā Ūtilis tibi pārēre haud potest, quod eum nunc iam arcessīvī. Ūtilī enim necesse est epistulās mihi scrībere, quod architectum arcessere in animō habeō. nōnne vīlis et parva est ista vīlla? nōnne pauca cubicula? nōnne antīquae turpēsque pictūrae, quās pictor patrī meō in mūrīs multōs ante annōs pīnxit? quam mē taedet huius vīllae!”

Vipsānia sēcum clam rīdēbat, sed nihil respondēbat. Frontō architectus, cum epistulam Caeliī accēpit, maximē gaudēbat quod Caelius vir maximae pecūniae erat. servum suum statim arcessīvit et epistulam dictāvit. tum epistulam servō Caeliī trādidit et “tibi festīnandum est, puer!” inquit. servus ad vīllam Caeliī celeriter revēnit et dominō epistulam trādidit. Caelius, cum epistulam lēgit, quoque gaudēbat. Vipsāniam vocāvit et epistulam Frontōnis tōtam lēgit. Vipsānia, cum epistulam audīvit, clam rīdēbat.

hodiē māne Frontō in vīllae āream equitat et ex equō dēscendit. lōra servō trādit et “heus! puer!” clāmat, “Quīntus Iūlius Frontō architectus adsum! adventum meum dominō tuō nūntiā!” servus Frontōnem salūtat et mandātīs architectī celeriter pāret. vīllam ingreditur dominum quaesītum. Caelius, quī adventum Frontōnis avidus exspectat, per vīllam festīnat architectum salūtātum.

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• What do you think about the cum-clauses with indicative verbs? Those are awfully common in “real” Latin even though our textbooks often claim otherwise. Check out this link, for example, and the relevant part of Allen and Greenough on GoogleBooks.
• What do you think of the interactions between Caelius and Vipsania?
• What’s your initial impression of Frontō architectus?
• What do you think will happen once the renovations actually begin?
• And how well does this story relate to our themes for the week?

Tune in next time, when we’ll witness the negotiations between Caelius and Frontō – and the beginnings of the actual construction. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.

More about Casina, III

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! As I continued to reflect on the themes of community and identity we’ve been addressing in this series of posts, I noticed several things. First, of course, there are obvious connections between these themes and the core beliefs of the Tres Columnae Project. Even our commitment to providing for various types of learning stems from a passionate commitment to the very different identities of our participants: Some of you learn best in one way, while others learn best in another; some would like to make and create a lot of Submissions to the Project, while others would prefer to focus on their reading and listening-comprehension skills. Rather than dictate every step of the learning process, we aim to provide you with lots of different material, and we’ll guide you (if you need some guidance) to find the right path for you. At the same time, though, if you do join our community, we ask you to commit to building your Knowledge, Skill, and Understanding of Latin and of the Roman world.

In order to join any community – and perhaps especially a Joyful Learning Community – you, the potential member, have to make a conscious choice to identify with the values and expected behaviors of that community. In our case, of course, those values include Joy, Learning, Community, and Ownership, and expected behaviors include extensive reading, active creation, participation in thoughtful dialogue, and an avoidance of what Dexter Hoyos calls “translation in order to understand.” A lēctor fidēlissimus made an excellent point about the connection between values and behavior in an email to me the other day, which I’m quoting with his permission:

I suspect that it is true of the human being that anything we do, repeatedly over time, both expresses and shapes who we are. Early on, it may express more, and through time, shape more.

So, that language that we use about what we do does express and shape who we are. A teacher who chooses to speak of what “we are doing together” is expressing something and, I believe, radically reshaping the work of education. I find that when I run into a parent in the grocery store or somewhere, and we begin to chat, I usually tell them that I have enjoyed “working with” their son or daughter. I just find it uncomfortable and really not quite true to say “I’ve enjoyed teaching your child.” Some days, some class sessions, it’s not always clear who the teacher is!

We could probably spend at least a week unpacking all the implications of this comment, and relating it to the points about I, they, and we that we’ve been considering this week! For the moment, though, I invite you to read it again and let each phrase and clause sink in.

Speaking of Joy, Learning, Community, and Ownership – and Identity, too, for that matter – check out this amazing video from our faithful friend and collaborator Ann M and her Year 7 students in England. It’s the beginning of their slightly adapted version of the story of Cnaeus and the horse from Lectiō XIV. I’m told that there’s more to come!

Themes of identity and community are also important to the development of the story-line itself. By their decision to seek a cure for Casina’s morbus, Valerius and Caelia have clearly chosen a form of community with their ancilla: they’ve taken the whole familia on a difficult, expensive trip to Rome in an attempt to cure her, and Valerius himself has faced some surprise (and even some ridicule) from friends and acquaintances in the process. He seems to be committed to the spirit as well as the letter of notions like pietās, and of the complicated customs and laws that govern the interactions between dominī and servī in the Roman world – in sharp contrast to his brother-in-law, who has displayed a very different attitude about servī (and ancillae in particular) in stories like this one and this one. In fact, even Caelius’ friend Claudius Pulcher, with whom the familiae are staying in Rome, seems shocked and surprised by Valerius’ pietās, despite his not-entirely-serious exclamation of respect near the end of this story.

As the overall story-line of the Tres Columnae Project continues to unfold, we’ll see some further repercussions of Valerius’ pietās, and we’ll also find out whether young Lucius fulfills the childhood dream he expresses in this story. But that’s for another day! 🙂 Today, let’s continue to explore the sequence of stories about Casina and her morbus novissimus with the story, now available from this link at the Tres Columnae Version Alpha wiki site, in which Valerius is explaining the initial treatment plan to a bewildered, but ultimately delighted Casina:

hodiē māne Casina ē lectō anxia surgit. Valerium quaerit et “mī domine,” inquit, “cūr mē tantō honōre afficis? nōnne ancilla sum tua? cūr igitur mēcum iter Rōmam facis? cūr remedia mihi quaeris? plūrimī enim dominī, cum servī aegrotant, illōs vel pūniunt vel vēndunt.”

Valerius “Casina mea,” respondet, “nēminem oportet servum aegrum pūnīre vel vēndere. nōnne enim et legeēs et pietās ipsa tālia prohibent? praetereā, nōnne somnia tua sunt ōmina perīculōsa? sī lemur dominum tuum quaerit pūnītum, haud mē decet tē vēndere; lemur enim sine dubiō et mē et dominum novum sānē petere potest! num quis dominōrum tam audāx est? num quis tam stultus? perīculum ā familiā meā āvertere volō, sed hospitī vel clientī trānsferre certē nōlō. nōs ergō decet tē cūrāre et remedia tibi quaerere. fortasse et dīs et lemurī sīc placēre possumus!”

Casina attonita nihil respondet. haec Valeriī verba in animō iterum iterumque volvit. tandem Valerius, “heus!” exclāmat, “tibi ad cubiculum regrediendum et quiēscendum est, Casina. hodiē enim ad templum Bonae Deae cum Caeliā Valeriāque festīnāre dēbēs, et iter longum est.”

Casina anxia, “mī domine,” rogat, “cūr ad hoc templum prōcēditur?”

et Valerius, “in hortō templī,” Casinae respondet, “sunt plūrimae herbae, quae remedia morbōrum plūrimīs aegrōtīs iam praebent. tum hodiē vespere in templō Aesculāpiī dormiendum est. nōnne deus Aesculāpius saepe somnia mīrābilia aegrōtīs mittit? fortasse vel Bona Dea vel deus Aesculapius tibi remedia praebēre potest.”

Casina, “tibi gratiās maximās agō, mī domine,” Valeriō respondet et ad cubiculum regreditur quiētum. “heus!” sēcum susurrat, “fortasse īnfāns meus lībertātem quam mortem mihi fert? nōnne enim servī aegrī, quōs dominī prope templum Aesculapiī relinquunt, sunt līberī sī forte convalēscunt? dīs dominōque grātiās maximās agō! sī enim mors mihi imminet, cum īnfantī meō erō; sī vīta manet, fortasse līberta erō; et dominus mē Valeriolae meae dōnō nūptiālī nunc iam prōmittit. grātiās maximās dīs vōbīs īnfantīque agō, quod nūntium optimum mihi fertis!”

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• As I wrote this story, and even more so as I read it in preparation for this blog post, I was struck by the many issues it raises. Issues of gender, of silence and speech, of authority and the response to authority, of freedom and slavery – we managed to pack quite a lot into a relatively simple little story! Which issues do you think would be the most productive to discuss with your students, and how would you want to shape the discussion? Are there issues you would not want to raise with them?
• What do you think about Casina’s morbus now – especially her visions of the īnfāns? Do you suppose that, at some level, the sickness and the dream might have been caused by Casina’s desire for freedom? What evidence from this or other stories might you use to support such an interpretation?
• If you accept that interpretation, I suppose it raises a number of other questions. For example, is Casina taking advantage of Valerius’ generosity and pietās? If so, is she doing it consciously or unconsciously? And would that – or should that – make a difference in Valerius’ response to her?
• Or, if you don’t accept that interpretation, what do you suppose did cause the morbus and the dreams? And how do you respond to Casina’s sudden realization about the potential for freedom if, in fact, it is a sudden realization – or at least a sudden conscious realization?
• How do you want the story to end? Should Casina recover? Should she join her īnfāns and be at rest? Should she become a līberta? Or should she go with Valeria as a dōnum nūptiāle? Or should this be one of the cases where we provide several alternate endings and let you, our lectōrēs fidēlissimī and subscribers, choose the one that works best for you?

Tune in next time, when Casina and her domina travel to the first of the two templa. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.

Casina ancilla, IV

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! Sometime in the next week or so, I think we’ll have a big announcement about Version Beta of the Tres Columnae Project. Most likely, since our hosting friends at Arvixe offer unlimited disk space, we’ll be showing you a mock-up of what the stories, images, and audio for Lectiō Prīma of Cursus Prīmus would look like with a few different backend software packages. We’ll ask you – and our existing subscribers who don’t read the blog regularly – to look at the options and rank them from best to, um, least good on a fairly simple survey. Then, based on your feedback and on our own experience adding content to the site, we’ll have some good data to make our final choice about the behind-the-scenes software for Version Beta. Don’t worry, though, if you love the Version Alpha Wiki. It will still be there, though we may not add new stories past Lectiō XX to it.

If you subscribe to the Latin-BestPractices mailing list, you may have seen this recent message and my response to her. I’m sure there are lots of heroic volunteers like Tova out there, keeping Latin alive – or bringing it for the first time – to places where there’s not a historically strong tradition of Latin in most schools. How exciting to learn about them – about you, I should say, since I hope many of you heroic volunteers are reading these words! If you are, and if you haven’t taken a look at the Tres Columnae Project, I hope you’ll check us out and see if we meet your needs. If you just want declensions, conjugations, roots, and prefixes, we’re probably not a good match for you … but I hope you’ll take a closer look if you do want

• engaging stories that work well with younger children as well as preteens, teens, and adults;
• careful explanations of Latin morphology and syntax, usually using the Roman grammarians’ own terminology as well as more “modern” English terms;
• a focus on Understanding the big ideas and values of the Romans, and on developing Skill at reading, writing, hearing, and even speaking Latin, along with Knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary; and, of course,
• a way to build deep Ownership as your learners actually contribute to the learning materials.

In the meantime, though, we’ll continue with the story of poor Casina, ancilla Valeriī, whom we first meet at the very first Lectiō of the project. At that point, we just know that she’s an ancilla, and that she belongs to Valerius, one of our main characters. We soon find out that Lucius, Valeria, and Caeliola, Valerius’ children, are very fond of Casina – and so is Milphio, Valerius’ main servant. Gallicus, the cook, may not be fond of Casina, but he depends on her to keep him organized and unflustered, especially when he’s preparing for a big dinner party, as in this story. Eventually, we discover that Casina suffered a tragic loss at the hands of a vēnālīcius in the city of Pompeii, and then she witnesses a brutal attack on a fellow-servus by his own dominus in this story. Perhaps all these factors – and the upcoming wedding of Valeria to Vipsānius, a young man from far-away Mediolānum – have combined to cause Casina’s morbus novissimus, or perhaps there’s a purely physical explanation.

Either way, we find in this story and this one that Casina is unresponsive and having some sort of vision. Milphio and Gallicus inform Valerius in this story, and in this story Valerius and Caelia attempt to find out what’s wrong with Casina. As we pick up with today’s story, which you can now find here on the Tres Columnae Version Alpha Wiki site, Valerius is just returning from an unsuccessful attempt to seek divine assistance with the problem:

duās post horās Valerius ad domum regreditur et cubiculum Casinae intrat. “quid agit Casina?” Milphiōnem rogat, quī nunc iam prope lectum stat et ancillam dormientem dīligenter spectat. “ō domine,” respondet Milphiō sollicitus, “sine dubiō Casina graviter aegrōtat. diū enim dormit vel exanimāta iacet; aliquandō tamen surgit et īnfantem absentem adloquitur. tum paulīsper mē et Gallicum agnōscit, tum somniīs sē trādit. perterritus sum, quod nihil intellegō!”

Valerius sollicitus, “ego quoque nihil intellegō,” Milphiōnī respondet. “augur enim hoc dīcit: ‘necesse est tibi ipsī trēs noctēs vigilāre et revenīre.’ haruspicem cōnsulere nōn possum, quod ille Rōmam nunc iam iter facit diēs fēstōs celebrātum. nunc iam prō templō Apollinis sacrificium offertur, sed … quis deōrum nōbīs auxilium ferre potest? quem deōrum cōnsulere dēbeō?”

Valeria sollicia et trīstis cubiculum ingreditur et, “pater, mī pater, nōnne nūntium fers?” rogat. Valerius fīliam amplectitur et, “ō Valeria, duās horās per tōtam urbem ambulō deōs precātum et auxilium quaesītum, sed nēmō Casinam adiuvāre potest. fortasse mors iam imminet.”

Valeria tamen, “mī pater, nōlī tālia dīcere!” respondet et “heus!” subitō exclāmat. “nōnne etiam nunc Rōmae stat templum Aesculāpiī?” rogat. “nōnne et templum Bonae Deae? et nōnne diēs fēsti Bonae Deae nunc iam adsunt?” Valerius, “ēhem!” respondet. “nōn hodiē, sed paucīs post diēbus – cūr hoc mē rogās?” et Valeria, “mī pater, sine dubiō nōs oportet cum Casinā Rōmam prōcēdere. nōnne aegrōtī, quī in templō Aesculāpiī dormiunt, remedia morbōrum per somnia accipere solent? et nōnne Bona Dea ipsa herbās aegrōtīs praebet?”

Valerius cōnsentit, et Valeria, “et pater, mī pater, nōnne tē decet mihi dōnum dare quod nūbere parō? quid, sī Casinam mihi das? tum facile est tibi aliam ancillam emere.”

Valerius rīdet et “libenter cōnsentiō, Valeria mea,” respondet. “nōnne tamen Vipsānius –?”

et Valeria, “ō pater, mī pater, paucīs enim mēnsibus uxor Vipsāniō erō. paucīs mēnsibus mātrōna Rōmāna erō. nōnne māter mea rēs mātrōnārum nunc iam mē docet?”

Valerius attonitus tacet, et Valeria, “pater, mī pater, tibi exeundum est! mē oportet, ut dominam Casinae, cum ancillā meā colloquī!”

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• I keep asking myself whether a “typical” Roman dominus would be so solicitous of a sick slave … but of course Valerius seems to be rather tender-hearted. We’ve seen him pay for the education of his client’s son in this story and weep almost inconsolably at the thought of his daughter’s upcoming marriage. Still, I wonder whether even the most tender-hearted dominus would treat a sick slave so kindly. What do you think? And do you have any supporting evidence, either from Roman law or from hisory or literature?
• If you’ve read the whole sequence, you may have noticed that Valerius’ response is at least partially motivated by superstitious fear as well as kindness. Given what you know about the Romans, does that seem appropriate to you?
• What about Valeria’s response to her father, and her plan for Casina? Do you suppose she’s motivated by genuine concern for a beloved servant? Or is she more concerned with bringing a little piece of home with her when she moves to Milan? Keep in mind that Valeria is, like most Roman brides, a young teenager in our terms, so the picture may be more complicated – or more simple!

Tune in next time, when Valerius explains the plan to Casina and the trip to Rome begins. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.

Casina ancilla, III

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! Before we continue with the story of Casina’s morbus novissimus, I want to share some good news. As of yesterday, the Tres Columnae Project has received our first request for a full-school subscription, to start in the fall. (With well over 50 students involved, they’ll be paying US $7.50 per Basic subscription per year, or 75 cents a month. We think that’s a pretty good deal, since the students will

• have access to Tres Columnae materials (stories, images, audio, video, explanations, exercises, quizzes, and the Virtual Seminar) from home, school, or anywhere, without having to carry any heavy textbooks;
• get immediate feedback on their responses to exercises and reading-comprehension questions; and even
• periodically make Single Submissions of stories, images, audio, and video to the project.

We challenge you to find a textbook that can do all of that … especially for $7.50 per user per year! 🙂

After talking with the teacher, I think they’ll save even more money by having students do joint submissions and split the editing fee several ways – and I’d encourage you to consider that approach, especially if budgets are a concern for you. Even with a Standard subscription, groups of 4 could make 4 submissions each month without overwhelming themselves or the Tres Columnae Project.

To celebrate – and to prepare for what lies ahead as our subscriptions grow – we’ll probably be migrating from the Version Alpha Wiki to a different software system. The Version Alpha will still be there, but we’ll also offer a link from it to the “production” version of the site when it’s ready. We’re still thinking about the best “backend” software to use, since we want something that

• makes various levels of subscriptions, and Single Submission purchases, trouble-free for you, the community, to purchase;
• allows for different types of access for different levels of subscribers, without requiring complicated log-in procedures;
• makes it easy and painless to upload multimedia submissions – and to edit, approve, and publish them; and
• doesn’t require a lot of complicated maintenance or programmer time to keep going.

If any of you lectōrēs fidēlissimī have good suggestions about CMS packages – or wiki engines, or anything else – that could serve as the backbone of Version Beta of Tres Columnae, please let me know! Or, for that matter, if you have any horror stories, please let us know about that, too. (The top contenders, if you’re fascinated by that sort of thing, are Drupal, Joomla, and MediaWiki (in no particular order), but we’re open to other suggestions, too. Feel free to gloss over that sentence if it’s meaningless to you!)

Regardless of our final decision about backend software, we have a lot of work to do between now and the Fall. But it’s really exciting to know that folks do want to be involved in the project on that type of scale. If you’re interested in a school-wide subscription, or know someone who might be, please let us know!

As we face important decisions about The Future, I’m glad I’ve chosen to feature the sequence of stories about Casina’s morbus this week. After all, everyone involved with Casina’s life has some decisions to make … especially Valerius, her dominus. I was interested to find, here at Google Books, an extensive preview of W.W. Buckland’s The Roman Law of Slavery; it seems that even as early as the reign of Claudius, slaves who were not treated for illness, but left to die on the island of Aesculapius, were automatically freed if they recovered … and that a master who did seek treatment for a sick slave could deduct the medical expenses from the slave’s peculium. In later stories, we’ll see how these factors and others affect Valerius’ and Caelia’s response to Casina’s sickness.

At the moment, though, we’ll pick up with this story, in which Valerius and Caelia have only just learned about Casina’s sickness … and they’re about to discover some other things they didn’t know about their favorite ancilla:

Valerius et Caelia ad cubiculum Casinae contendunt, ubi Milphiō pius et sollicitus nunc iam deōs precātur et ancillae vīnum offert. Casina tamen Milphiōnem haud agnōscit. iterum iterumque surgit et manūs extendit. iterum iterumque “ō mī infāns, nōnne mē quaeris?” rogat. iterum iterumque fessa et aegra in lectō resīdet vel ad pavīmentum lābitur. Valerius et Caelia extrā cubiculum haesitant et rem tōtam tacitī spectant. tandem Valerius “quid hoc est?” rogat. “num Casinae nostrae est īnfāns?” et Milphiō, “ō domine, īnfāns Casinae nōn vīvit, sed in urbe Pompēiīs insepultus nunc iam iacet, ā vēnālīciō necātus et disiectus. nōnne Casina ipsa mihi rem tōtam nārrāre solet ubi diēs Lemurālia adsunt?”

tum Caelia, “heus! rem intellegō!” exclāmat. “nōnne Casina saepe ē domō festīnat flētum, ubi līberī nostrī diēs nātālēs celebrant? et nōnne urbem Pompēiōs plōrāre solet? vae Casinae! et vae īnfantī sepultō! et vae nōbīs!”

et Valerius attonitus et territus, “edepol! ecastor! dī omnēs!” respondet, “fortasse Casina aegrotat, quod umbra īnfantis insepultī iniūriās suās ulcīscī vult! sine dubiō iste vēnālīcius impius nunc iam poenās scelerum luit! etiamsī dominus sum pius, fortasse lemur advenit nōs pūnītum! vae! heu! nōs oportet multa sacrificia offerre!”

subitō Casina oculōs aperit et “heus! quis clāmat?” fessa et languida rogat. omnēs ad lectum festīnant et “Casina? an nōs iam agnōscis?” sollicitī rogant. illa attonita, “domine! domina! Milphiō mī amīce!” respondet, “cūr hoc mē rogātis? nōnne semper vōs agnōscō?”

Milphiō attonitus Casinae rem tōtam nārrat. et Casina, “vae! heu!” ululat. “nōs haud decet rēs tālēs memoriā tenēre. mē oportet surgere et aquam trahere!” ancilla surgere cōnātur, sed frustrā! membra sua movēre haud potest!

Valerius, “Casina mea,” inquit, “tibi in hōc lectō manendum est! perīculōsum enim est nōbīs talia ōmina contemnere! mihi nunc ē domō exeundum est, quod mē decet augurem vel haruspicem quaerere.”

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• As I mentioned above, I’d really love your feedback if you have experience, good or bad, with any of the software we’re considering for Version Beta.
• Were you surprised by anything you learned about Roman laws regarding slavery?
• What about Valerius’ and Caelia’s rections to Casina’s morbus?
• And what about Casina’s own reaction? Why do you suppose she tries to minimize what’s happening to her?

Tune in next time, when we’ll address these questions and others … and when we’ll find out whether Valerius was successful in his quest for an augur or a haruspex. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus!

Casina ancilla, II

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! Today we continue with our series of posts about the morbus novissimus that mysteriously afflicts Casina, Valerius’ and Caelia’s frequently-grumpy ancilla, shortly after she witnesses the horrible near-death of a servus who reminds her of her own brother in this story from Lectiō XIX of the Tres Columnae Project. Since Casina has also suffered the tragic loss of her own child, as we discovered in this story, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she’s upset! And given the close connections between mind and body, it’s not surprising that her emotional distress would show up as physical symptoms! Perhaps such a claim would have been surprising 100 or even 200 years ago, when the post-Enlightenment worldview was fully dominant, and when “everyone” knew that there were clean, separate categories for things like mind and body – or, for that matter, for things like language and culture. Fortunately, in our post-modern 21st-century world, we’ve rediscovered that things are connected to each other … often in surprising ways! I just finished re-reading Daniel Pink’s amazing book, A Whole New Mind, and was struck once again by his point about synthesizing the emotional and the rational, the mind and the body, the logical and the intuitive. It also struck me that what “sophisticated and educated” Western culture forgot for a few hundred years and is now rediscovering was, of course, known all along to people that “sophisticated and educated” Western culture despised and marginalized. How ironic … and yet, how hopeful!

And that brings us back to Casina, who is about as despised and marginalized as anyone in Roman society could possibly be – she’s an enslaved woman. And yet, when she’s overcome with her mysterious morbus, we’ll find that her dominus doesn’t react in the “expected” way – with punishments, threats, torture, or death – as she may well have feared. Is it just that Valerius is unusually compassionate? Or does something else cause him to treat Casina better than most Romans would have expected? We’ll find out as we look at the next two stories in the sequence. First, though, Casina’s fellow servī have to discover how sick she is in this story, now available here at the Tres Columnae Version Alpha wiki site:

Milphiō et Gallicus ad cubiculum Casinae celeriter regrediuntur. Milphiō extrā cubiculum stat et “Casina, Casina mea, nōnne iam surgis?” rogat. Casina tamen nihil respondet. Milphiō solliitus cubiculum ingreditur et, “Casina, Casina mea, quid agis?” rogat. Casina tamen nihil respondet. ancilla in lectō immōta iacet. subitō oculōs aperit et “īnfāns, mī īnfāns!” exclāmat. Milphiō perterritus, “nōn īnfāns, sed Milphiō adsum, Casina mea! num aegrōtās?”

Casina subitō surgere cōnātur. “īnfāns, mī īnfāns, utrum mē ad tē vocās annōn? Casina adsum, māter tua – ō mī īnfāns, quaesō, ignōsce mihi!”

Gallicus perterritus, “num umbra adest ipsa? num lemur?” clāmat. “mihi exeundum est, quod … quod … quod mē oportet ientāculum dominō parāre!” et coquus ē cubiculō perterritus festīnat. per tōtam domum currit et “vae! heu! lemur adest ipse!” identidem clāmat. Milphiō tamen, quamquam perterritus et sollicitus est, in cubiculō manet. manūs ad caelum tollit et dīs omnibus precēs effundit.

There’s no doubt that something is seriously wrong with Casina, is there? In the language of contemporary psychology, perhaps we would diagnose her with post-traumatic stress disorder. As you might imagine, Valerius and Caelia are both surprised and terrified when they hear the news of Casina’s affliction in this story:

Valerius ē lectō attonitus surgit et “heus! quid est?” clāmat. Caelia quoque surgit et “vae! heu! quis clāmat?” attonita rogat. Valerius et Caelia ē cubiculīs ēgrediuntur et “nōnne Gallicus iterum sē vexat!” rogant et respondent. coquus enim per tōtam domum festīnat et clāmat, “vae! heu! umbrae et lemurēs mē petunt! vae! heu!” Valerius coquum clāmantem tandem prēnsat et “mēhercle!” exclāmat, “Gallice! quid clāmās? num umbrae? num lemurēs?”

Gallicus dominum suum amplectitur et “ō mī domine,” clāmat, “mī domine, umbrae et lemurēs, imāginēs quoque et dī Mānēs ipsae!” Caelia bracchium Gallicō quoque prēnsat et, “Gallice noster, num mediā nocte vīnum bibis?” rogat. Gallicus tamen, “ō domine, domina, haud ēbrius, haud īnsānus sum! quaesō, amābō vōs, mē audīte! hodiē enim māne, ut semper, Casinam in culīnā exspectō, quod illa aquam ē fonte pūblicō mihi trahere solet. Casina tamen nōn adest! ad cubiculum igitur festīnō illam excitātum – sed nihil respondet! sine dubiō Casina est mortua! sine dubiō omnēs Lemurēs cum umbrīs et imāginibus et dīs Mānibus ipsīs adveniunt mē pūnītum! vae mihi! vae vītae meae!” Gallicus perterritus lacrimīs et ululātibus sē trādit.

Valerius tamen, “Gallice, siste” clāmat, “dēsine ululāre! tē haud decet tamquam īnfantem vāgīre!” et coquus attonitus tacet. tum Valerius, “mī Gallice,” inquit, “quaesō, mihi rem tōtam nārrā – umbrās tamen cum ululātibus omitte!” Gallicus tandem sē colligit et rem tōtam nārrat.

quid respondētis, amīcī?

I realize it’s possible to go in many different directions in interpreting this story. We might choose to focus on

• the psychological issues behind Casina’s illness;
• Casina’s reactions to her dream about the īnfāns;
• the responses of Casina’s fellow servī, especially poor Gallicus;
• the responses of Valerius and Caelia;
• the cultural and religious issues raised by the story;
• potential issues of social class and gender; or
• countless other possible issues raised by the stories.

Which ones would you want to focus on, and what would you want to say about them?  And can you imagine how it would feel to be any of these characters in this situation?

Tune in next time, when Valerius and Caelia observe Casina’s condition for themselves, and when we’ll take a closer look at their (rather unexpected) response. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.

Casina ancilla, I

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! For our readers in the United States, I hope your Fourth of July weekend was wonderful, meaningful, and very relaxing. For readers elsewhere, I hope we didn’t overwhelm you with Saturday’s reflections about Freedom and Opportunity. I realize they’re very American concepts, but they’re also at the heart of the Joyful Learning Community that the Tres Columnae Project will be. Anyway, I appreciate your patience, and I promise we’ll be returning to the real core of the project – the stories, characters, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and cultural ideas on which we focus. Today, as I mentioned in Saturday’s post, we’ll begin a series of posts about a series of stories – stories of a morbus novissimus that afflicts Casina, the sometimes-grumpy ancilla of Valerius and Caelia. If you haven’t read all of the stories in Lectiōnēs I-XX on the Tres Columnae Version Alpha Wiki site, all the background you really need to know is

• Casina has evidently belonged to familia Valeria for some time, but is not a verna;
• She’s sometimes a bit grumpy, especially when Gallicus the coquus gets flustered (as in this story from Lectiō XI) or when Milphiō, her fellow servus, seems to express a bit of romantic interest in her; and
• As we discovered in this story from Lectiō XIII, she has good reason to hate the city of Pompeii, where she was once sold (perhaps to Valerius?) and where her īnfāns died and (as far as she knows) still lies unburied.
• Just before the sequence of events in this post, she’s had a very unpleasant and painful reminder of the way some servī are treated in this story from Lectiō XIX, in which a servus who looks like (but turns out not to be) her own brother is almost killed by his master.

Imagine, if you can, what it must be like to be Casina! We’ll find out how she came to be sold in Pompeii later on (actually, we’ll have several possible explanations; I’m not sure whether we’ll ever find out the whole story). But imagine the pain of losing a child – and then compound that unimaginable pain with an inability to say goodbye properly, and with the lack of a grave, or even the freedom to visit a grave if there had been one! Of all the Tres Columnae Project stories I’ve written, the one about Casina’s īnfāns was, without a doubt, the hardest – not because of the grammatical constructions, but because of the subject matter. As a parent myself, I don’t want to imagine Casina’s pain, but as I wrote the story, I could feel it … and I really didn’t want to! I did want poor Casina to find some peace, though, which is probably why this set of stories came to me. I originally had a different idea in mind for the stories in this Lectiō, but then I realized I could

• give Casina some resolution;
• get our characters to Rome for a brief visit;
• explore some of the interesting Roman holidays from the spring months;
• explore issues of healing (both medical and, um, non-medical) in the Roman world; and even
• get our characters to some fascinating places in Rome.

And I also thought the etiology of Casina’s illness might be interesting for our participants to consider … but I’m getting ahead of myself!

I deliberately avoided uploading the stories in this sequence to the Version Alpha Wiki Site until now … and I’ll only be uploading them as we look at them. If you get impatient, you’ll Just Have To Wait … or, if you’d prefer, you can create your own suggestions about possible endings or Next Steps. For a couple of weeks, as I mentioned on Friday, you won’t be able to make official contributions to the site; we hope you’ll use that time to develop some really exciting multimedia versions, either of existing stories like these or of stories that you create. Anyway, here we go with the first story in the sequence, now available at this link at the Version Alpha Wiki site:

Casina, ancilla Valeriī, in cubiculō parvō prope culīnam dormīre solet. hodiē māne Gallicus coquus cubiculum intrat et, “heus! Casina! num dormīs?” exclāmat. “tibi surgendum est, quod hōra prīma adest. tē oportet aquam ē fonte publicō trahere.”

Casina tamen neque surgit neque respondet. Gallicus sollicitus, “Casina! quid agis?” clāmat. “num aegrōtās? tibi surgendum est!” clāmat. Casina tamen nihil respondet. Gallicus anxius Milphiōnem quaerit.

Milphiō in ātriō pavīmentum verrit. Gallicus ātrium ingreditur et “vae! heu! Milphiō!” exclāmat. Milphiō attonitus verrere dēsinit et “mī Gallice, quid est? cūr clāmās?” respondet. Gallicus trīstis “ō Milphiō, mī Milphiō, Casina moritūra in cubiculō iacet! quid facere dēbeō? quid facere dēbeō?”

Milphiō sē colligit et, “mī Gallice,” respondet, “nōnne saepe tē ita vexās? num Casina rē vērā moritūra est?”

Gallicus tamen lacrimāns, “ō Milphiō, Milphiō, sine dubiō moritūra est Casina. nōnne prīma hōra diēī iam adest? Casina tamen in cubiculō nunc iam manet. neque surgit neque mihi quid respondet. vae! heu! nōnne necesse est nōbīs dominum arcessere? nōnne vespillōnem quoque?”

Milphiō, “ō Gallice, mī Gallice,” respondet. “nōs oportet ad cubiculum regredī. sine dubiō Casina nunc iam surgit tē dērīsum!” Milphiō tamen sollicitus cum Gallicō ad cubiculum regreditur Casinam excitātum.

quid respondētis, amīcī?

Tune in next time, when we’ll find out whether there was, in fact, a good reason for Milphiō and Gallicus to be worried or whether, as so often, Gallicus has been overreacting “just a bit.” intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.

A Turning Point

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! Today marks a transition point for the Tres Columnae Project. We’ve officially finished our Free Trial period, though a few folks who attended the American Classical League Institute have a “secret code” that will give them a few more days of Free Trial access. Of course, you can still

• read the stories,
• hear the audio,
• see the pictures, and
• use the exercises and quizzes at the Instructure Demo Course site.

But for the next few days, you won’t be able to upload new stories, images, audio, or video, or, as we say, you won’t be able to make Submissions to the project for a few days.

Before too long, though, we’ll make our regular subscriptions available, so you’ll be able to follow the “regular” process for making Submissions. In the meantime, we hope you will have a chance to

• explore the existing stories for Lectiōnēs I-XX;
• find some intriguing “gaps” in the storyline that you might want to fill;
• start writing stories to fill those “gaps,” or even to create your own independent “branch” of the storyline, as our subscriber David H. has done with his stories about Ortellius; and
• start planning the images, audio clips, and/or video clips that will accompany your story.

If you’d rather not write your own story, you can still choose to base a Submission on an existing story. For example, you might decide to

• create your own illustrations;
• create your own audio narration;
• create your own video;
• create your own reading-comprehension questions, with suggested answers;
• create your own vocabulary pre-teaching activity (or post-reading assessment) to accompany a story;
• create your own set of grammatical analysis questions, with suggested answers; or even
• do something we haven’t imagined yet! The possibilities are endless.

Of course, if you do create such things just for yourself or your own students, go right ahead! We’d love for you to Submit them to us, but you don’t have to. On the other hand, if you’d like to have your creation officially become part of the Tres Columnae Project – in other words, if you’d like us to publish it for you on the Version Alpha Wiki site or its successor, or include it in the Instructure course – we do need to make sure that it meets our quality standards and doesn’t conflict with our philosophy. (For example, an exercise called “Translate this story into English” might well work for your class, but it wouldn’t be a good fit with our commitment to extensive reading and direct comprehension.) We’ll let you know here, on the site itself, and on popular listservs like Latinteach and Latin-BestPractices as soon as you can sign up for a subscription or a Single Submission. In the meantime, though, please spread the word about Tres Columnae to your friends, coworkers, students, and local homeschoolers. And please keep reading and exploring the stories and other content on the Version Alpha Wiki site and the Instructure Demo course.

And speaking of stories, tomorrow we begin a series of posts focusing on the sad life of Casina, ancilla Valeriī. When we first meet Casina early in Cursus Primus, she seems to be a bit of a complainer, but we don’t exactly know why she’s bitter and unhappy. We learn more in this story, featured in this post from May, in which we learn the cause of Casina’s hatred for the city of Pompeii … and the sadness that continually seems to gnaw at her. Then, with this story from Lectiō XIX, which we featured in this post from May, poor Casina is confronted with the near-death of another innocent servus. Perhaps the combination of memories and shock is the immediate cause of the situation we’ll feature in our upcoming series, or maybe Casina’s woes only grow as she considers the upcoming wedding of Valeria, daughter of her dominus, and the (presumably) happy fate of any children born to Valeria and Vipsānius – a stark contrast to the awful fate of her own child. Anyway, something causes Casina to become extremely ill – and her illness, in turn, will give us an opportunity to explore a number of facets of Roman culture that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to address. As we find out whether, and how, Casina will recover, we’ll also explore

• various forms of healing in the Roman world;
• Roman attitudes toward sickness and healing;
• Roman attitudes about death and what lies beyond;
• some issues regarding social class; and even
• the geography of Rome itself, as the Valeriī decide to take Casina there (for reasons that may surprise you).

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• What do you think of our plans for the future?
• What do you think of the subscription model? If you can think of a better way, I’d love to hear about it!
• What do you think of the upcoming series of posts about poor Casina?
• And what ideas are you starting to have about Submissions?

Tune in next time, when we’ll begin to explore poor Casina’s fate. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus!

Live from ACL, II

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! As you read this post, I’m on my way home from the 2010 American Classical League Institute. I’ll have a longer report about the Monday sessions another time; at the moment, I’m eager to get home. So let me just say that the typical comment at closing banquets – that the Institute feels like a family reunion every year – has always been true for me. What a great way to reconnect with old friends and make new ones, all the while knowing that those friends share your passionate commitment to teaching, and to the languages, cultures, and enduring legacy of the Greco-Roman world. It’s easy to lose sight of that, at times, when one is arguing over methodology!

For those lectōrēs cārissimī who are also traveling today, I wish you safe travels and a happy return home, and I hope to see all of you (and many more) at next year’s Institute in Minneapolis.

Speaking of families, we’ll continue our wedding-themed stories today with this one, in which young Lūcius is sad about Lollia’s wedding.  It, and its sequel below, will soon be available at the Tres Columnae Version Alpha Wiki site, but at the moment I’m eager to get home, so I beg your forbearance for a few hours.  I’ll get those links updated and include them in tomorrow’s post!  Meanwhile, here we go:

Lūcius Valerius tamen, postquam Marcus Vipsānius Lolliam uxōrem dūxit, trīstis per viās urbis Herculāneī errāre solēbat, quod Lollia sibi magnō cordī erat. nōnnūllōs post diēs Fabiō magistrō in viā ambulantī forte occurrit et, “salvē, mī magister veterrime,” inquit. Fabius, quī rēs maximī mōmentī in animō volvēbat, “heus!” exclāmāvit, “quis mē appellat?” mox tamen Lūcium agnōvit et “mī discipule, mī Lūcī, quid agis?” laetus rogāvit.

postquam Lūcius cūrās suās Fabiō explicāvit, ille subrīdēns, “heus!” respondit, “iuvenēs saepe sē propter amōrem ita vexant! tē tamen haud decēbat illam Lolliam dūcere. nōnne enim cliēns patris tuī est Lollius, et vir pauperrimus? tē tamen haud decēbat illam concūbīnam habēre, quod cīvis est, et quod atāvus erat poēta et comoedus nōtissimus. fortasse ancillam illī puellae similem emere poteris? nōnne cum ancillā sīcut puellā lūdere et cūrās tuās sīc levāre poteris, ut āit ille poēta Catullus?”

Lūcius tamen, “num tū discipulōs versūs Catullī legere nunc iam sinis?” attonitus rogāvit. Fabius rīdēns, “haudquāquam sinō!” respondit, “tū tamen, quod iuvenis iam es, sine dubiō Catullum legis!” Lūcius cōnsēnsit sed “num pater meus pecūniam in hoc dabit?” rogāvit. “fortasse, sī ancilla tōtam domum ūnā hōrā purgāre poterit!” inquit Fabius rīdēns, “nōnne rēctē dīcis?” respondit Lūcius. “pater enim meus cum assēs tum līberōs dīligenter custōdit!” tum Lūcius et Fabius cachinnīs sē trādunt. tandem Fabius, “praetereā, mī Lūcī, cum iuvenēs dolent, fābulae multō meliōrēs sunt quam ancillae. nōnne ōlim, cum discipulus meus erās, fābulam leōnis, quī mūrem dūcere volēbat, tibi nārrāvī?”

And then, of course, here’s the story that Fabius tells to cheer his young friend up (grātiās maximās to our friend and collaborator Laura G, who suggested the underlying fable):

“ōlim,” inquit Fabius, “leō, per silvās ambulās, forte laqueō captus, auxilium magnā vōce quaerēbat. cui appropinquāvit mūs minimus et ‘mī leō,’ attonitus rogāvit, ‘cūr tē ita vexās? cūr vehementer fremis?’ leō trīstis et īrātus laqueum dēmōnstrāvit et, ‘mī mūs,’ supplex rogāvit, ‘nōnne mē adiuvāre potes? tū enim, quī minimus es, dentibus laqueum abrōdere potes. sī mē in hōc tantō discrīmine adiuveris, beneficiōrum tuōrum semper meminerō! semper tibi beneficia libēns reddam, mē sī līberāveris!’ mūs libenter cōnsēnsit et mox rem cōnfēcit. tum ‘mī leō,’ inquit, ‘nōnne mē adiuvāre nunc iam potes? mihi enim est puella pulcherrima sed innūpta, quam nūllī mūrēs dūcere volunt, quod nihil dōtis praebēre possum. nōnne tū fīliam meam dūcere potes?’ leō attonitus, postquam rem cōgitāvit, ‘certē, mī amīce,’ respondit. ‘caelebs enim sum, et leaenam dignam haud invenīre possum. praetereā, haud opus dōtis mihi est, quod leō sum! quid mihi dōtis? libenter igitur fīliam tuam dūcam.’

“diēs tamen nūptiārum cum advēnit, rēs dīra accidit. leō enim, ad lectum nūptiālem prōgressus, uxōrem suam vidēre nōn poterat, quod tam parva erat. eam pede suō forte pressit et contrīvit! lūgēbant omnēs, sed frūstrā, quod nūpta erat mortua!”

haec verba locūtus Fabius tacēbat. Lūcius tamen, “hercle!” respondit, “rēctē dīcis, mī Fabī! etiamsī Lolliam dīligō – et proptereā quod Lolliam dīligō – mē haud decet nūptiās Lolliae cupere! tibi grātiās maximās agō, quod semper mihi optimē suādēs!”

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• What do you think of the interactions of Lucius and Fabius?
• What do you think of the fable itself?
• And, perhaps more important, if you are involved in the wider profession of Classics and/or language teaching, what lessons might we draw from the fable? Are there ways it might guide us to avoid some of our more petty disagreements, while reaching a creative synthesis on the really important ones?

Tune in next time for more thoughts about the Institute, and a story in which members of the mouse-family talk about weddings in their world. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.

Live from ACL, I

salvēte, amīcī et sodālēs! This post really is coming to you “live” from the American Classical League Institute; in fact, as I write, I’m sitting in the Benson Center at Wake Forest University, mid-morning on June 28, 2010. It’s been a wonderful Institute, with some fascinating presentations, including a couple of really interesting, engaging, and helpful plenary sessions – and if you’ve been to very many conferences, you probably share my feeling about the value (or lack thereof) of a lot of plenary sessions. In this case, though, those have really been a highlight. I was especially pleased by

• a very well-attended session about the ACL/APA Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation (well, to be fair, since I was on the Task Force that wrote the Standards document, I did “have a dog in that fight,” as an old friend says);
• a fascinating session previewing the Latin Reading Proficiency Examination (designed for both teachers and students, and really intended to show proficient reading and comprehension rather than “quick translation”) that’s under development by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages; and
• the highlight for me, this morning’s presentation by Dexter Hoyos about his Rules for Fluent Reading of Latin.

I actually met and talked with Dexter at lunch the other day, and he is as charming, funny, and humble in person as you’d expect if you’ve read his Latinteach posts or his published work. He had positive things to say about the Tres Columnae Project, too, and after talking to him, I felt … well, I felt like a Little League baseball player who looked up into the (rather small) bleachers after the game, saw his favorite Major League player sitting there, went over to get his autograph, and the player complimented his grip or his stance! I’m still on a bit of an emotional high from that.

We had a full house for my presentation about the Tres Columnae Project on Saturday evening, as well, even though it was right after dinner (and right before the welcoming plenary session and all-important reception) on Saturday evening. And it was a very receptive, engaged crowd, too! grātiās maximās omnibus quī vēnistis audītum! We even had time for participants to “play” for about 20 minutes, and enough folks had brought laptops (and iPads – I was jealous! 🙂 – and smartphones and iPod Touches) that everyone (who wanted) was able to get some hands-on time with both the Version Alpha Wiki and the Instructure demo course. grātiās quoque maximās to all who had good suggestions! Thanks to you, we’ll be adding a Scope and Sequence page that describes the grammatical and syntactic points of each Lectiō in the next few days, and I’ll also have more detailed information about subscription options before too long. (Oddly, I had expected people to question why we’d need to charge for access to things – I really don’t know why I expected that, in retrospect – but no one did! We did have a great question about how, exactly, the editing process would work, and when I described the types of feedback we’re planning, the questioner seemed extremely pleased both with the process and with the fee. So, for some reason, that was a big relief.)

I’ll have more to say about the Institute in tomorrow’s post, and probably throughout the next several days. But I do want to keep my promise from last week, and so I do have a new Tres Columnae story for you today. As I mentioned last week, in the wedding sequence in Lectiō XXIV we’ll see not only the wedding of Vipsānius and Valeria, but also (in a flashback) that of Lollia, daughter of Valerius’ client Lollius (and sister of young Lucius’ friend Caius) to Vipsānius’ “poor” cousin Marcus. “Poor,” of course, is a relative thing in the Roman world; compared to Lollius, who really does depend on Valerius’ sportula, young Marcus Vipsānius is quite well off. He owns a “small” book-copying business in Naples with “only” twenty slaves! But to Quartus Vipsānius, and to Caelius and Vipsānia, that means he, gasp, works for a living – hardly appropriate for a relative of theirs, and certainly a disqualification to marriage to anyone they know! There’s a whole series of stories about M. Vipsanius and Lollia, but we’ll begin with this one:

Marcus Vipsānius, pātruēlis Vipsāniī, iuvenis ingeniī optimī maximaeque industriae, orbus pārentibus erat. quamquam Quārtus Vipsānius ipse senātor Rōmānus et dītissimus erat, Marcō Vipsāniō nūllae erant dīvitiae. librāriam parvam in urbe Neapolī tenēbat, in quō vīgintī scrībae cotīdiē labōrābant.

ōlim Vipsānius “vae Marcō nostrō!” inquit. “sēdecim enim annōs nātus, uxōrem dignam invenīre haud potest! quis enim hospitum nostrōrum fīliam Mārcō dabit? nēmō certē, quod modō tam plēbēiō labōrat ille! vae Marcō, et vae familiae nostrae!”

Vipsānius igitur sorōrī suae, Vipsāniae Caeliī, epistulam dictāvit, in quā cāsūs Marcī Vipsāniī patefēcit, et servō trādidit. Caelia epistulam acceptam servō suō trādidit et, “Ūtilis,” inquit, “tibi ad domum Valeriī festīnandum est. nōnne illī sunt multī clientēs pauperēs? fortasse ūnus ex illīs fīliam dare cōnsentiet.” et Valerius, postquam epistulam lēgit, maximē gaudēns Lollium vocāvit, cui epistulam dēmōnstrāvit et, “hercle,” inquit, “nōnne dī tibi favent? fortasse hic Marcus Vipsānius Lolliam tuam uxōrem dūcet!” Marcus celeriter cōnsentit. “nōnne enim atāvus Lolliae erat ille Maccius Plautus, comoedus nōtissimus?” inquit. “quam fēlīx sum! praetereā, Lollia ipsa docta et formōsa, pater doctus et benignus est. nōnne dī nōbīs omnibus favent?”

duōbus igitur mēnsibus ante nūptiās Valeriae et Vipsāniī, ille Marcus Vipsānius Lolliam uxōrem dūcere parābat. nūllī tamen servī lēctum sacrificiave parābant. diē enim nūptiārum, Lollia, ut Valeria, ante prīmam hōram surrēxit et togam cum bullā pupīsque lāribus dēdicāvit. Maccia, ut Caelia, crīnēs fīliae ōrnāvit, et Lollia tunicam rēgillam cum flammeō induit. Maccia tamen cum Lolliā iam cibum vīnumque cēnae nuptiālī parāverat. septimā diēī hōrā advēnit Marcus Vipsānius cum patre familiās et ūnō servō. Lollia et Marcus dextrās iunxērunt et verba sollemnia prōnuntiāvērunt. tum Cāius, ut pātrīmus et mātrīmus, facem per viās tulit, et tōta familia Lollia gaudēns pompam sequēbātur. Lūcius quoque, cui Cāius et Lollia cordī erant, pompam comitābātur et versūs Fescennīnōs cantābat. Lollia tamen et Marcus nōn domum magnam, sed īnsulam intrāvērunt; nōn in ātriō sed in cēnāculō stābat lectus nūptiālis. postrīdiē, omnēs ad cēnāculum revēnērunt repōtia cōnsūmptum. Lollia ipsa lentēs Aegyptiās et panem parāverat. Lūcius amphoram vīnī, ā patre suō datam, sēcum tulit, et omnēs hospitēs grātiās maximās Valeriō agēbant. duōbus diēbus post nūptiās, Marcus et Lollia ad urbem Neāpolim abiērunt, ubi ille librāriam prope forum tenēbat. “haud dīvitēs, sed certē fēlīcēs sumus,” Marcus et Lollia inter sē cotīdiē āiunt. in cēnāculō enim pulchrō habitābant, et Marcus uxōrī suae saepe dōna dare poterat.

quid respondētis, amīcī?

• If you were at the ACL Institute and did attend my session on Saturday, I’d love to know your unfiltered, unvarnished impressions and responses. I’ve spoken to a number of lectōrēs fidēlissimī (some of whom I’ve corresponded with for years, but never met in person until today) and reconnected with a lot of old friends. But it would be great to know what you really think … especially if you have concerns or suggestions for improvement.
• If you weren’t at the Institute and would like to see either the handout or the slides from the presentation, just let me know … or check the Version Alpha Wiki site in the next few days. I’ll try to get them uploaded there if people want them.
• What do you think of this story of Lollia and M. Vipsānius’ wedding … and of M. Vipsānius as a new character? He’ll be important, as it turns out, in the stories of Cursus Secundus … but I don’t want us to get too far ahead of ourselves! 🙂
• Do you think the relatively sudden jump to multiple verb tenses in Lectiōnēs XX – XXIV is too sudden, or too big of a jump? And if so, what would you suggest as an alternative?
• What issues of social class – and what comparisons between and within cultures – are raised by the story, and how might we encourage our participants to explore them in greater depth?

Tune in next time, when we’ll hear about the last day of the 2010 ACL Institute, respond to your questions and concerns, and share another story about M. Vipsānius’ and Lollia’s wedding. intereā, grātiās maximās omnibus iam legentibus et respondentibus.