SELECTIO SCRIPTORVM

Websites

• http://www.roman-empire.net/founding/found-index.html

Reading level: 9^th grade and above.

This is a massive website, with sections going from the mythical founding of Rome all the way through the fall of the western half and a short section on the east/Byzantium. The interface is a bit dated, but it works well. An excellent reference if you know the time period for something/one.

• http://www.unrv.com/

Reading level: 9^th grade and above.

Another website; this one covers a wide variety of topics as well. Its sections on daily life are quite good and to the point. The site also features a forum (to use at one’s own peril) and has prominent links to reviews of Rome-related media.

• http://www.roman-emperors.org/

Reading level: 10^th

This is an older, but impressively detailed website with biographical sections on every Roman (and Byzantine) emperor and usurper from Augustus to Constantine XI. The biographies feature hyperlinks to other important figures in each emperor’s life and to sources used for the article if one wishes to see what the sources say. The list can be viewed chronologically and alphabetically, if you are looking for someone but cannot remember what number he was.

• http://quizlet.com/12674180/roman-emperors-flash-cards/

Grade: 9^th and up

A short deck of flashcards with the basics about the first 13 emperors (Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, typically the end of Roman history in most social studies classes). All the features and ease of use we all know and love that Quizlet has.

Books (Print and Electronic)

• http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/

Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Reading level: Teachers, gifted/advanced students

This is the big one. A meticulously (if biased) account of the twilight years of the Western Roman Empire and at the same time the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. Gibbon made extensive use of primary sources and used secondary ones with the greatest of reluctance. The text is difficult, but phenomenally rewarding. The link is to an electronic (and stable) version of the entire text. All six volumes of it.

• Mithridates the Great: Rome’s Indomitable Enemy

Philip Matyszak

Reading level: 9^th grade and above

This is a very engaging and informative work about a disappointingly obscure eastern king (who came far closer to checking Rome than one would initially believe), the life of whom, in the words of the author, reads like, “an overblown film script of the 1950s.” There are illustrations and maps of battles and maneuverings, so you do not need to be an expert on Anatolian and Aegean geography to understand what is going on.

• The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

Reading level: 10^th grade

If one wants to understand the Roman Empire, one must understand the Roman emperors. And Suetonius, who was the personal secretary of the emperor Hadrian, had easy access to the imperial archives for primary sources and eye-witness accounts. Again, some of the Latin words (which just don’t translate) can be off-putting, but it is a highly interesting and engaging read. While racy at times, few histories give such detailed accounts of humanizing characteristics, like personal habits and appearances of Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors.

• The Annals

Cornelius Tacitus

Reading level:  11^th

A contemporary of Suetonius, Tacitus’s surviving work covers the period from the beginning of the reign of Tiberius to the year 68 AD.  Tacitus, while occasionally bitter and quite pessimistic, is widely considered one of the greatest Roman historians and his year-by-year approach is highly informative.

• The Histories

Cornelius Tacitus

Reading level: 11^th

Another work by the same author, with all the bitter pessimism and bemoaning the fallen state of men in his day. This work covers the suicide of Nero through the rise of Vespasian (which was roughly a year, but what a year it was).

• The Romans for Dummies

Guy de la Bedoyere

Reading level: 9^th

This is an easy-to-read overview of all of Roman history. It has plenty of diagrams and side-bars, not to mention sub-section headers so you can make a reasonable guess as to what it is you’ll be reading if you go further (for example, not everyone may find the history of the grain supply of Rome to be as enthralling as I).

• Greece and Rome: Builders of Our World

The National Geographic Society

Reading level: 9^th

This book has chapters on the Greeks, Carthaginians, Etruscans and Romans. The text is lively and engaging (although a bit dated) and there are numerous, and excellent, illustrations and photographs of the modern state of ancient sites.

• The Jewish War

Titus Flavius Josephus, aka Joseph ben Matityahu

An account of the war which helped propel Vespasian to the throne, Josephus, a leader in the Jewish revolt, managed to ingratiate himself to his enemy, and later patron, by telling (and convincing) the future emperor that the messianic prophecies in 1^st century Judaism were actually about Vespasian becoming emperor. As he was on both sides of the war, and stepped in both cultures, this is a fascinating (if somewhat biased) work.

• History of the Later Roman Empire

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/BURLAT/

John Bagnal Bury

Grade: 12^th

An older, but detailed work about the later part of the Roman empire, from the time of Stilicho (395 AD) to Justinian (565 AD). It also discusses the religious sentiments of the era, the Romans’ neighbors, and the shifting barbarian kingdoms that established themselves in Spain, France, Africa and Italy. I particularly enjoyed the section on the Nika Riot, when a massive mob of dissatisfied chariot fans nearly brought down the empire.

• Ab Urbe Condite (History of Rome)

Titus Livius Patavinus

Grade: 11^th

You cannot discuss the history of Rome without Livy. While he is a fan of impressively long sentences, and many of his translations tend to use polysyllabic words, his texts is engaging and quite comprehensive, covering the span of history from the mythical founding of Rome to the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean. Unfortunately, we are missing the vast majority of his work, but what remains is a treasure.

• Letters of Pliny the Younger

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus

Grade: 10^th

Pliny the Younger and his correspondences are a very humanizing body of work. Some are more difficult to read than others, and the correspondence with the emperor Trajan are hilariously flattering (all the more so because Trajan was not the sort of man to demand the fawning deference Pliny shows him). Of particular interest are the letters which Pliny wrote to Tacitus upon receiving the historian’s request (letters six and sixteen of the sixth volume) for an eye-witness account of Vesuvius’s eruption.

Teaching *English* Vocabulary

I found the Bromley article not only interesting, but infinitely more useful (and engaging) than the Bauman & Graves piece.

As an aspiring foreign language teacher, I'm going to end up teaching a good-sized chunk of English grammar alongside Latin. And these vocabulary-building strategies can easily be adapted to a Latin class (although there is still a place for vocab quizzes, or at the very least, I can’t bring myself to jettison them).

Fortunately for me, I’ll be all over the advice to teach students Greek and Latin roots of English words and that strategy (unsurprisingly) will do double duty as knowing Latin roots really helps one build up and strengthen Latin vocabulary. And, as if the roots weren’t enough, Latin will help students get used to a word having multiple meanings. My favorite example is the verb “aggredior” which can mean “advance to,” or “address” or “run up and stab” depending on the context in which it is used. Or, if that does not help students grow accustomed to words having multiple contextual meanings, it will show them that they cannot escape that phenomenon and had best get used to it.

The mention of “vocabulary notebooks” is particularly intriguing and one which I will have to experiment with. It sounds far more interesting than a deck of flashcards or a series of notes sprinkled about the notebook between bits of grammar and practice exercises.

Vocabulary and ways to build it

It is almost impossible to understand a passage if one cannot understand at least 95% of the words in it. This is true for all subjects, not just English. Fortunately, the readings which I did for this week list and describe a number of strategies which the enterprising educator can implement to aid their students.

Having said that, let us look at my favorite.

The first strategy described in the textbook (and a very similar one was buried near the end of the article) was the “Personal Glossary.” This is quite similar to the standard deck of flash cards which I remember seeing when I was a wide-eyed high schooler years ago; when an unknown word is found, it is written down on something (ideally an index card or something similarly shaped) on one side. On the other is a simplified definition (essentially what you’d find in the dictionary, sans the pronunciation and syllable indication) and an example sentence.

This handy little technique will work with anything which has text and a teacher can add a bit of guidance by “suggesting” certain words be added to the students’ growing glossaries. The fact that most of the work will be done by the students is a happy occurrence.

The Etymologia and Morphologia techniques are almost certain to get use in my classroom; I distinctly remember one of my professors telling us that the verb insulto which means “to be insolent, scoff, revile, abuse, taunt, insult” literally means “to jump up and down, blowing raspberries.” Whereas morphology is far more reliable in Latin, as you can reliably guess the meaning of a word if you know what its morphemes mean (a fossilized language does wonders for nailing down definitions).

Clever and Original TItle

Another week, another set of readings and another posting done after my Sunday morning activities.

First, I'll get the unpleasantness out of the way: The best thing about the BBR article, once again, was that it was short. That will be all which I shall say about that.

Next, is our Daniels and Zimmerman chapter. This, unsurprisingly, was more helpful, although it did echo a good bit of what we saw in Torvani last week (and even cited it, too). Of particular interest to me was that students tend to have trouble visualizing what they read. This typically shows up in math and science (according to our readings), but also in other subjects, like Latin. For instance, if you were to look at one of the (depressingly brief) readings on the Roman legions in the textbook, you'd see depressingly short description stating that a legionary wore iron armor made out of "banded strips," with a short sword and large shield.

Take a moment to picture that.

Now, look at these fellows:

Get some, Germans

This plays into another thing which I found quite helpful in Daniels and Zimmerman, and that's something I found between the lines, so to speak (and something which I struggle with): Avoid jargon/strange new words. I love big, borderline incomprehensible words. My students, however, do not. If they can't follow you, or visualize what you're saying/talking about, they're lost. And lost students do not learn.

Building Anticipation and Comprehension

I started with the BBR text this weekend, and I'll briefly sum up my thoughts on that chapter: Seen it already. It seems like I actively try and tear on this text, and I most assuredly did not have that in my mind this weekend. The primary 'new' thing which I took away from all the "comprehension builders" was the doodle diagram, which works quite similarly to a Venn diagram, except drawings are used in place of circles. And I don't see myself making use of these, given that I can't draw to save my life and would sooner translate Tacitus again than try and produce a sketch.

Torvani 6 can best be summed up as "provoke controversy and model for students." Not that there's anything wrong with that, but much of the chapter felt like, well, fluff to me. Having said that, the description of how to deal with recalcitrant struggling readers was quite helpful, and something which I jotted down to put in my folder of good ideas I intend steal from others.

Torvani 5 I summarized with a fun little phrase coined by Augustus: Fetina Lente, or "make haste slowly." Students tend to equate "reading quickly" with "reading well" and are loathe to do anything that will slow down their pace. Teachers also tend to have problems with turning into experts in their field. This usually means that the more we know, the harder and harder it is to decide what is worthwhile enough to be covered in class and what should be "secondary" material. That said, this may not be as big a problem for classical language teachers as it is for others, as our end of course exams tend to be either a passage to translate for accuracy or a large grammar test. And, as I've doubtlessly said dozens of times before, Latin builds off of what you learned earlier. For instance, if you can't keep your endings straight, your chances of reading a short passage are not good.

No relation to anything