Latin Class: An Introduction

The institution that framed these brilliant creative offerings sought, with half its heart, to instill in its students an understanding and love of the classics. To that end, it offered two years' worth of Latin study, then demanded the students abandon the language for something more useful (French, Spanish). Latin class became prime seeding ground for Archival material, because it was loaded with goofballs, class clowns, and people who quietly got on with the business of studying not a whit. The instructors were patient and good-natured, for the most part recognizing that this was behavior to be contained rather than stopped. It could even be said that, once in a while, they got into the act, as with this (censored) sheet of Latin invectives given as a handout:

Giving this list to a classroom of seventh-grade boys is like floating your Cincinnati fire kite at the local propane factory. Who doesn't want to call a teacher a "contributor to the delinquency of minors" - in Latin?

 Perhaps more shocking is this Catullus poem, given to the ninth-grade Latin II class as a translation exercise:

Our awkward class translation gave the following reading:

"O what a ridiculous thing, Cato, and funny,
And worthy of gold and your laughter!
You like to laugh at Catullus, Cato, to the extent that
The thing is ridiculous and too funny.
I just caught a toy-boy thrusting into a girl;
I struck, if it pleases Aphrodite,
With my rigid one to form a team."

Sex-ed class wasn't for another two years, but ours was a typically randy school, and so perhaps it is best that we had the Ancients to teach us the finer points on birds and bees.

To follow over the next several weeks is a long series of Latin-related triumphs and catastrophes, mostly the latter. Updates to follow presently!