Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus

Goete. This guy did everything. He was speculated to have had an IQ as high as 210. Granted, I don't put much stock in IQ's, but that is a really high number. Not only was he a writer, he was also a philosopher and a scientist and even held a cabinet position in the German government. Bob Dylan might be the smartest living person.

Read Horace's Ode to Cleopatra. He begins with the passive periphrastic: Nunc est bibendum! - Now it must be drunk! They are really quite simple. Take the present stem + ndus, nda, ndum couple it with a form of esse (make sure it agrees in Gender Number and Case) and put the obliged in the dative. Haec lingua tibi discenda est. This language must be learned by you. That said, don't worry about it, you are only in Latin 1. Spend your energy memorizing your principal parts and your endings.

bumastus - an adjective meaning "having large grapes" One wonders how many different ways this was used...

Angelae pulchrae meae, maxime amo. Vita mea te illumenatur flosque delicata ut sole florescerat es. I made up a couple of words and she now "lights up your life" instead of "being the light," but that should be alright. Also, I did this pretty quickly so forgive any errors (and please correct any you see). More to come.

That's a lot. It may come in sections.

I did not mean to offend. It is my nature to be overly thorough where explainations are concerned. Please forgive. It is difficult to get out of "teacher" mode sometimes. That said, studeo often does take the dative (when intransitive) especially when it means "study." nice work.

noster, nostra, nostrum is the adjective and nos is the pronoun. I like to use the pronouns a little more than the adjectives. That said, "nostrorum" is by no means wrong and was very often used in later Latin (more so? I don't know). Obsequor is indeed used with the dative and means "to comply with" or "to give in to" and also is by no means wrong, but because of the "blood," I figured a more "parental" verb was appropriate.

I love baseball. I am a life-long Dodgers fan and assistant coach for a high school team. Baseball is a beautiful game. What is your partner's brother's name?

I was thinking about this and it dawned on me that those on the right wing are often refered to as "nuts" and that those on the left are often refered to as "fruits." Nuts on the right, fruits on the left. Hail, Pomona!

In nomine progenitorum nostrorum semper vincetis. A sanguine audimus, sed a verba obsequimur. 1) If "nomine" is in the ablative, you don't need "In." Furthermore, "sub" is usually used as the preposition for "in the name of," as in "sub nomine" + gen. (this can also be translated as "by the authority of"), but it is not necessary. Use "proavus, i" for ancestors, I think that works better. Also, "nostrum" or "nostri" is the genitive plural of the personal pronoun "nos." I would use "nostri" as "nostrum" is generally only for use as the partitive. Ergo: Nomine proavorum nostri semper vincetis. 2) Once again, you do not need "A" necessarily, there is a sense in which this is ablative of means and therefore, no preposition is needed. Also, I am not sure if the phrase is refering to a singular "you" or a plural (that is why I teach my students to say "y'all") but I will go with the plural since it is more respectful and whoever "you" is they are being respected. Finally, I think using "parere" conveys the meaning a little better (remember that parere takes the dative!), so that said: audimus sanguine vobis sed vobis verbis paremus ain't that pretty?

BEN: Oh, you'll probably get away with crucifixion. BRIAN: Crucifixion?! BEN: Yeah, first offence. BRIAN: Get away with crucifixion?! It's-- BEN: Best thing the Romans ever did for us. BRIAN: What?! BEN: Oh, yeah. If we didn't have crucifixion, this country would be in a right bloody mess.

After Ecce III, we spend a semester on Ovid and then spend two semesters on Virgil. We follow the AP cirriculum for both of those authors. Pretty standard really. As for readers, I really like my Catullus reader: Writing Passion by Ronnie Ancona. Read this along with Catullus & His World by T.P. Wiseman. I also have a really well written Ovid Reader that I use as a supplement for my class called Love and Transformation by Richard LaFleur. I am much more interested in elegiac poetry than anything else, so please forgive me for not directing you to more traditional texts. It is good to see another Memphian on the board.

Here is where I feel we may disagree. I have real troubles believing that anything is arbitrary-especially things involving human interaction.

Please excuse my ignorance.

What is there that we do not already know about Ms. Arc that we could learn from her rib that we would ever need to know?

Limited in terms of grammatical constructions not vocabulary. But even as far as vocabulary is concerned, it is logical that writing is going to be pictographic (or evolved from pictographs) and that sounds are going to be onomatopoetic (or evolved from onomatopoeias). Language is not random. Words look and sound the way they do for reasons. That said, I am probably crazy.

Scerio makes a good point though. Tracing the evolution of language back too far has almost no point. As I tried to say in my last post, any similarities would have as much to do with limited options as with actual connections.

Feminae wearing nothing but their stolae!

I am a member of the ACL. I teach middle and high school Latin (ages 12-18). Ecce is not an ideal text but it gets the job done.

You wouldn't happen to be dealing with Ed.D. and Education Ph.D. are you? They're from another planet. I was well on my way to an education degree before I realized this.

So, you never found a job in a Irish pharmacy? I am sympathetic to your plight. My expertise lies in applying modern language acquisition theories to Latin teaching texts. Despite being a Latin teacher, I have had little use for this.

Lupercalia is tomorrow. This is an especially bizarre (by modern standards) holiday. Read Plutarch's The Life of Romulus 21.3-5 for a good description of the day. Here is a link: http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/romulus.html Look towards the bottom of the page.

I am currently a Grad School dropout.

Agreed, Doco. There seem to be so few possible options where oral communication is concerned that all languages are going to have similarities. I have no problems with PIE. PW, however, seems like quite a stretch.

Needless to say, the Roman alphabet was designed specifically for the Latin language, thus every sound is represented. This being the case, Latin is extremely easy to pronounce properly once one learns the few simple rules. It is only in cases like dipthongs (which are really just instances where Latin speakers smushed the sound of two vowels into the space of one) and Greek letters (ch, ph, th, etc.) that Romans had to "adjust" their rules. English, being the hodge-podge that it is, does not have the advantage of consistency that Latin does.