Dear Friends,

My apologies that this issue of eLitterae is hitting your inboxes so late in the month. Alas, circumstances necessitated its post-turkey delivery!

All of the Bolchazy-Carducci team, a lean and hardworking group (as is the case with all small businesses!), hope you and your families enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We are very grateful for your ongoing patronage and your support of our endeavors to keep the classics community supplied with materials for your teaching and your students’ learning. We take our role as the only publisher in the USA devoted exclusively to the classics very seriously.

Allow me to call your attention to a few items in this month’s issue. Take a look at our webinar scheduled for December 5, 2023. All AP Latin teachers should tune in to hear Henry Bender, a longtime AP instructor, share talk about using visuals to enliven the Vergil classroom and deepen comprehension. Under Teaching Tips, you’ll find the just recently issued ACL and SCS guidelines for Latin teacher preparation. Make sure you print this out and give it to your language department chair. Do enjoy the article about the beautiful Riace bronzes. I fondly remember traveling to Florence in the fall of 1975 to see them after their restoration there. I was studying at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies at the time.

It's been a busy time for classics conferences. For the first time since 2014, I was able to attend the annual meeting of the Illinois Classical Conference as it was the same weekend as the celebration of life for my dear friend and editor colleague, Laurie Haight Keenan. It was great to catch up with old friends and colleagues at ICC and to see so many new faces. I’ve been a member of ICC since 1978, spring semester of my first year teaching. That meeting at Northwestern University connected a newbie me to a wonderful group of teachers whose insights and experiences improved my teaching. It was my honor to serve ICC in a number of capacities including about fourteen years as treasurer.

The Lewiston, ME, tragedy struck home. My husband Ray and I were halfway to Lewiston the day after the shooting when we learned that the inauguration of the new president at Bates College was cancelled because the shooter was still on the run. Ray was looking forward to representing Williams College at the inauguration. We hope the rescheduled date will fit his schedule! This change in plans afforded me the opportunity to attend the Classical Association of the Empire State’s gathering at Union College.

While at the meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South–Southern Section in Greensboro, NC, I played hooky. While the meeting moved to the UNC-Greensboro campus Friday afternoon, I explored downtown Greensboro. The highlight of the afternoon was experiencing the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro. The museum is located in the former Woolworth’s, where its infamous lunch counter, with its fifty stools and original fixtures, is preserved and pays tribute to the four boys (two eighteen-year-olds and two seventeen-year-olds), freshman at UNC-Greensboro, who, in 1960, bravely launched the non-violent lunch counter boycott that spread to segregated lunch counters across the south. Such a moving experience and, yet, such a profound reminder that we have so much more to do.

 

 

CAMWS-SS also provided a little homecoming experience for me. At the banquet, I ended up sitting beside Jim O’Hara of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jim, I learned, is a 1977 graduate of my alma mater, Boston College High School. Sunday morning, I met Charlie Chiasson, retired classicist who taught at the University of Texas at Arlington. Casual conversation as his wife picked out B-C buttons for family members revealed that Charlie is a 1970 BC High graduate. I’m class of 1973 and ,like Jim and Charlie, praise our classics training at the high school and outstanding teachers like the late Brian Donaher and the late Rev. John “Waterbury” Kelley, SJ. We are honored to be part of their legacy!

All good wishes for the weeks ahead, holiday preparation, and end-of-semester activities!

 

All best,
 

Don

 

This is the second in a series of five stories to accompany the five review units of Latin for the New Millennium, Level 2. While complementary to LNM, the stories can serve all second-year Latin students.

 

This tells the story of a Roman soldier accompanying Emperor Trajan as he sets out upon his campaign in Parthia. By the reign of Trajan, the Roman army had become a more efficient, bureaucratic-like means of expanding and maintaining the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Under Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, the Roman Empire reached its largest geographical extent. As evidenced, however, by the severe measures against deserters, the Roman military was not always completely fearless or single-minded as the poet Horace praised in his Odes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vocabula Nova
an sēriō – or seriously
imperō, imperāre, imperāvī, imperātum – to command, to order
infēlīciter (adv.) – unfortunately
legiō, legiōnis, f. – legion
mundus, mundī, m. – world
plūs, plūris, n. – more; regularly used with a partitive genitive, also known as the genitive of the whole, here, with pecūniae.
plūrēs, plūra – more
trāns (prep.) – across

 

Editor’s Note: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers is pleased to provide this Latin story for Latin teacher subscribers to use with their own classes only. The PDF version includes a full-color illustration and caption.

About the Author
Emma Vanderpool has taught Latin at the university, middle school, and high school levels—currently at Goffstown High School in New Hampshire. Vanderpool earned her Bachelor of Arts in Latin, Classics, and History from Monmouth College in Illinois and her Master of Arts in Teaching Classical Humanities from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She serves as a state rep for CANE, as an executive board member of Ascanius, and as an organizer for Our Voices and Lupercal. Vanderpool is the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award from UMASS Amherst and was honored as the Lincoln Laureate for Monmouth College. She has self-published ten novellae. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers is pleased to have had Vanderpool launch our novella series with Explore Latin: Aves and the first three titles for the Encounter Latin series—Augury is for the Birds: Marcus de Avibus Discit, Under His Father's Wing: Marcus de Auguribus Discit, and Princess, Priestess, Mother, Wolf: Fabula de Romulo et Remo (forthcoming).

 

 

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CAMWS-SS resurrexit! For the first time since 2018, the Classical Association of the Middle West and South–Southern Section held its fall meeting—its 103rd! The indefatigable T. Davina McClain in her role as CAMWS-SS president was ubiquitous at the Downtown Marriott Greensboro, NC, as she made sure all the moving parts of the meeting were operating smoothly. Bolchazy-Carducci’s Don Sprague took great delight in spreading books and learning materials across five tables in the exhibit hall. The meeting drew a hundred preregistrations and nearly thirty walk-ins. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro proved a gracious host with an enthusiastic group of classicist undergraduates staffing the registration table, who took great delight in showering college swag on the attendees. The program offered a broad range of presentations, including eight by B-C authors, whose eager speakers included professors, graduate students, and undergrads. Moving forward, CAMWS-SS hopes to meet again in fall 2024 and then return to its biennial, even year gatherings. May the success of this year’s meeting in Greensboro bring forth pre-Covid numbers for next fall!

 

 

 

 

While circumstances did not allow for a full-fledged staff display at the Classical Association of the Empire State’s 60th Annual Institute hosted by Union College on October 27, B-C sent a set of titles for the event’s annual drawing fundraiser. The B-C titles were all authored by Milena Minkova and Terence Tunberg, who were keynote speakers. B-C’s Don Sprague enjoyed reconnecting in real time with CAES folks after several years, including the Covid years, and the six B-C authors at the event! Minkova and Tunberg delivered two talks: “Experiencing Latin as a Communicative Language and a Global Literature: Origins, Philosophy and Goals” and “Experiencing Latin as a Communicative Language and a Global Literature: Activities, Method, and Format.” These beliefs and practices informed the authors’ work in creating the Conventiculum Lexintoniense (now Latinum) and Latin for the New Millennium, Levels 1 and 2. B-C author Kenneth Kitchell addressed the group remotely from Kentucky as he shared his insights on “Building a Strong Future for Latin Programs.” Other B-C authors in attendance included Marianthe Colakis, Hans-Friedrich Mueller, David Pellegrino, and John Stark.

 

 

Congratulations to ICC Vice-President Yoandy Cabrera Ortega for an outstanding program of talks and to local UIC chair Krishni Burns and the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies for graciously hosting ICC’s annual meeting, October 20–21, 2023. Amelia Wallace, as is her custom, represented Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, and Don Sprague surprised her mid-morning Saturday. B-C has been a proud participant in ICC meetings since its first years!

B-C author Stephanie Quinn of Rockford University began her presentation, “Three Hesitations in the Aeneid: A Speculation on Liminality,” with a tribute to the late Laurie Haight Keenan, who edited Quinn’s Why Vergil?: A Collection of Interpretations (bolchazy.com). The Keenans and Quinn were also longtime friends.

 

Bolchazy-Carducci Representatives: Bridget Dean, PhD, Donald Sprague, and Amelia Wallace 

 

 

Booths 69/70
Bolchazy-Carducci Representative: Donald Sprague

 

  

 

From Stephanie Quinn's introduction: We lack automatic and simple answers to the question "Why Vergil?"—or many similar questions for that matter: why literature, why art, especially why old literature— and at that—why literature in an old language? Yet even after 2,000 years, the voice of Vergil still resonates with the universal human cry.