this semester's reads (spring '24)

been reading cicero's rant about words being given obscene meanings and i don't think i've ever seen a latin sentence that made me burst into such immediate and violent laughter before

i think it’s important everyone knows about the little roman girl who died at only five years and seven months old, and her grave reads "dum vixi, lusi" or "while i lived, i played"

𝕽𝖎𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉 𝕻𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖓

Najwan Darwish, "In Latin America" Nothing More to Lose: Selected Poems (trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid) [ID'd]

i love r/latin it's insane and today theyre having another thread where they fight about macrons, and im increasingly suspecting that at the root of this years-long feud there is actually a case of wikipedia citogenesis that can only be solved by reading a bunch of old paleography research

Winnie Ille Pu

Who the heck translated Winnie the Pooh into Latin. Why would you ever do that.

(It is a rhetorical question: I am aware of the translator on the cover.)

I found another Pooh book in Latin!

idk why excerpts of pliny the elder aren't in more intro/intermediate latin curriculums, i just saw him expound on the degeneracy of hot drinks because, and i quote, "it must be noted that no other animal seeks out hot drinks, and thus that they are not natural"

as a 16th century clergyman what does machete think of the printing press

I think by the time he was born the printing press had been around for almost a century and a half, so I'd reckon the society as a whole was largely past it's initial novelty and controversy. Machete himself is bookish and nerdy, he's very invested in gathering knowledge about various topics and trying to piece together a good picture of how the world works. Getting access to reading material would be a lot harder if every book was still copied individually by hand. His standards are pretty high though, there's a lot of poorly translated, shoddily printed and flimsily bound books around and he's prone to scrunching his nose at them.

can people PLEASE stop making the secret history moodboards a dark academia shitfest? sure they're very aesthetically appealing and they study the beloved classics, but these people are the type to snort cocaine in the parking lot of a burger king, eat cherries at the odd hours of the night, have bacchanals and soak in pigs blood after killing a man... i really don't think your hogwartsesque castle and a stack of books truly get the vibes across. you didn't read the book if you think a ceramic cup w/ some lipstick on it is gonna cut it for this masterpiece

you can study the ghosts of the ancient past. but watch out! they will haunt you

My 16-month-old son *insists* on flipping through an Indonesian amphibian fieldguide every evening. I think I have peaked as a parent 🥲

is it the classics that make you mentally ill or is it your mental illness that draws you to the classics

when people say it's stupid to learn latin because it "isn't useful" i literally go crazy wild like i get violent and aggressive and start gnashing my teeth looking like a dog with rabies or something

Resurgam:

‘I shall rise again’

(Latin)