A Latin class (Collaboration)

Carlos Cabanillas Núñez is a one of the best teachers of Latin you can find in Spain. He is working for several years in renewal of Classical Languages methodology, incorporating the use of New Technologies in the classroom. His Curriculum is very extensive, but I'd like quote his contribution to foundation of Chiron, important group dedicated to promove the classical world on the net.

First, I would like to thanks Angel L. Gallego for inviting me to participate in this blog, what I'll do with great pleasure.

I will show some things we do in the Latin 4th ESO at IES Santiago Apostol from Almendralejo.

In our class we give great importance to the development of oral expression. We think, if you can express correctly to any audience you will be able to obtain personal and professional success. However, we see that orality is seldom used in our classrooms.

In addition, we think we have to learn Latin in a active way, using and talking it.

So, during this course we have made a number of activities to practice speaking. Here you have a short review:

1. Students have done many work expositions. They have always been teamwork, and the exhibition was supported by presentations: The structure of the buildings of Entertainment, The Roman Empire.

2.. We have also dramatizations of small dialogues in Latin, and have recorded on video some of them: Gloria et Paulus, In saevitia amphitheater.

3. We have made small recording podcast, interviewing some Roman poets: Interview with Horace, Ovid interview.

We hope that some of the work are interesting for you. To ask any question you like, we are at your disposal in Hic laboramus, the workspace of Latin students from IES Santiago Apostol.

curate ut valeatis

Carlos Cabanillas Núñez
Latin Teacher, ies "Santiago Apóstol", Almendralejo

Dioscorides (Collaboration)

Francisco Cortés Gabaudán is Professor of Greek at the University of Salamanca. His main research interests are: Greek Rhetoric, Oratory, Historiography, Medicine, Etymology of scientific vocabulary. It is responsible for institutional page of the Department of Classical and Indo-Europea Philology, at the University of Salamanca. He is also known for his medical-biological Dictionary (historical and etymological) from helenismus. With this post we can understand the relationship between the world of plants with the classical world.

The treatise on medicinal remedies who wrote the greek Dioscorides in the s. I a.C. is one of the most influential works in scientific culture from ancient times to the development of modern science from s. XVI. The current reader's attention is caught by its strictly scientific writting.

It is a single drug product inventory, listing its therapeutic properties without mixing each other. Most of them are of plant origin, but there are also animal or mineral. It is of great interest the botanical description which is made for easier recognition of these plants, supported with images, so this is an antecedent of printed herbarium necessary to the development of modern botany since s. XVI.

On the left, image of the opium poppy in the manuscript of Dioscorides (Salamanca, s. XV). The image of the same plant in a modern treatise.

A sample chapter of the 957 that make up the work: Honeysuckle.

The leaves are similar to ivy, but smaller, the stems are fat, knotty, they are curled up in the adjacent trees in a spiral way, white, sweet-smelling flowers. Its fruit is like the berry of clusters, similar to the ivy, soft, mildly pungent taste, viscous. They grow in steep areas.

If you drink their fruit in the amount of one drachma (4.3 gr.) with two ciatus (90 cc.) of white wine for 40 daysand your spleen is reduced. You can drink also for orthopnea (difficulty breathing in a different position than up); If you drink it, you remove waste of labor.



Images of honeysuckle (left the manuscript of Salamanca, right in a current treatise).

Francisco Cortés Gabaudán
Professor of Greek. University of Salamanca

Nubes: Clouds (Collaboration)

Margalida Capellà Soler develops a superb blog, El Fil de les Clàssiques, awarded con several prizes, among others with Premi Espiral d’Edublogs 2009. We
asked her a small contribution to our project on classical references. And she offers us this splendid presentation about clouds.

Thank you, Margalida. We are on cloud nine!!!

Nubes prima pars

View more presentations or Upload your own.

The tapestry “Tarquinius Priscus” (Collaboration)

We also asked personalities from Culture to give their two cents to our project on classical references. José Ángel Rivera de las Heras, Director of the Cathedral Museum of Zamora, explains the magnificent tapestry “Tarquinius Priscus”.

The Cathedral Museum of Zamora has a tapestry dedicated to Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (616-578 BC), fifth king of Rome. Measuring more than four meters high and eight and a half meters wide, the piece was woven of wool and silk in Arras, Brussels or Tournai sometime between 1475 and 1485. It is inspired by The History of Rome by Titus Livius. There are three sections and four narrative passages.

In the first part we see Lucius and his wife Tanaquil who are travelling toward Rome with their attendants. We can make out the city walls in the distance. An eagle flying above Janiculum Hill snatches the hat off of Lucius’ head, only to return it following a quick turnabout. Tanaquil interprets the event as a sign of her husband’s future coronation.

The central scene focuses on the coronation of Lucius as king of the Romans, under the name of Tarquinius Priscus. Tarquinius himself, now king, appears in the scene as he inspects the construction of the city walls and waterworks.

In the third section we see one of the battles waged against the people of Latium, in which Tarquinius, mounted upon a white steed, is victorious.

The upper part of the tapestry features three Latin inscriptions in gothic lettering, which describe the events pictured here.

José Ángel Rivera de las Heras
Director of the Cathedral Museum of Zamora