Wheelock's Latin and the works of Jan Morris

This morning my Latin students were reading an adapted sentence from Horace, "Et fortunam et vitam antiquae patriae saepe laudas sed recusas" (You often praise but refuse the fortune and life of the old homeland (= old Romans). I had to explain to them the whole array of symbolism that the Romans place on  their virtuous, simple-living ancestors.

I might have wished for the literary abilities of Jan Morris. Bookslut's piece on her wonderful travel books sums up her lyric prose and her ability to capture the spirit of a city in a few paragraphs:

To the ancient Greeks, history was the realm of the muse Clio, and throughout literary history most readers have thought of history as a branch of literature like the play or the poem. Morris’s histories are literature, and reading them is a startling experience in an age when “history” means either cutesy bestsellers or tedious academic cinder blocks.A small sample of Morris’ historical writing, the setting Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee:Victoria returned to her palace in the evening, exhausted but marvelously pleased, through the blackened buildings of her ancient capital, whose smoke swirled and hovered over the grey river, and whose gas-lamps flickered into tribute with the dusk.

Pin It