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Latin for Life. Whether you are curious about Latin or want to prepare for the AP, you can find it here. Amamus Latinam!
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2007
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February
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- Vergil Journal 5
- Quiz- Book II: Lines 25-34 (Because Tyler Had A Go...
- Vergil Journal 4: Impressions of Carthage
- Bryn Kass Vergil Journal Tuesday, February 19
- Posting Vergil Journals
- Amor Vincit Omnia: Love in the Aeneid (In Honor of...
- Poetry Device of the Day: Tricolon Crescens
- Virgil Journal 3: Aeneas' Pietas
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February
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7 comments:
Well since all you losers are refusing to post your Vergil Journals online out of selfconsciousness, I will go ahead and post this journal for all to mock.
To be honest, I forgot what the entry was supposed to be on, now a good webmaster for this site would have it posted. If my site had gotten any endorsements I would have bothered writing it down and then posting it online, but nope mine gets ridicules and the Latin online universe suffers. To get my other ramblings out of the way, going back to my David Eckstein comment last journal, I drafted Eckstein in the ninth round of my NL only fantasy league after about eight or so other shortstops had been drafted in the national league. This is the "inferior" league and he is below half the shortstops in that league, he isn't that amazingly talented. Just works hard. Also, these guys drafting the other guys pay $50 to be in the league, the know something about baseball.
I have to admit I've been having trouble paying attention to the actual Latin, its hard listening to freshman struggle through there lines and it takes half an hour or Claire doing all the work confusing everybody, so I don't know the story as well as I should. Through the predictions (which eerily turn out mostly right) I was able to gather that most of the things written about are violent and negative, predicting Hajir's death by choosing the passage about the snakes swallowing up the annoying guy telling everyone to get rid of the horse was just a classic moment. I actually do know what went on in that scene though, I'm just surprised Vergil doesn't talk more about the emotions of the actual people. I know that they are supposed to be implied and all, but he can at least mention why people think what they did, that they were happy after a ten year war for it to be over and just accept the gift. I still want to know how the soldiers inside the horse went to the bathroom, that must have been the most painful twelve hours imaginable. Now to be a feminist I can ask stupid questions like "Were there any women in the Trojan horse?" but of course the answer is no, no woman could possibly keep quiet for over twelve hours. That's a fact don't deny it. Come to think of it, the Greeks didn't need to waste all the time making a horse, if they wanted to get rid of some virgin as a sacrifice. Seriously, all they had to do was give orders to burn her alive to please the gods and promise that both sides will be friends, and then conceal a bomb that will go off when they burn her... Could have been the world's first suicide bomber if Vergil wanted to be more creative, if the bomb was big enough a sizable dent could have been made in the heart of Troy. Might not have ended the war, but it would have been more interesting than the Trojan horse. I'm also trying to figure out why Claire hasn't been whining about all the poor trees they had to cut down to make the horse, they might have destroyed an entire rain forest! wah wah wah. The Trojan horse in general fascinates me, I wonder if they had any secret parts in the secret compartment holding lots more cool things or could have made it more showy. They could have had the horse move its head or something and seem like a machine and the Trojans would have thought for sure it was sent from the gods and been even nicer to it, would have taken out some of the risks, but fortunately for the Greeks there weren't that many people that agreed with the idiot that was eaten by the snakes.
Tyler...I wish you wouldn't be so bitter...
:D
BTW...there was NO SPECIFIC TOPIC for this weeks Vergil Journal...
Oh, and on a side note: Journals on this site are not meant to be MOCKED...that would be mean. We are simply here to share stuff we've thought about to help each other enjoy Latin to an even greater extent, as well as to prepare for the AP exam...
Thanks for UNDERSTANDING...
Again, I'm bored for one more time, so I'll post another Vergil Journal.
By the way, the first period Latin is not as pathetic as Tyler puts it... well... second thought, since the only ones who actually know Latin are Clair, David Sedgewick and myself. Besides us, the class is full of freshmen; not to mention the monkey. Besides that, since I am one of three people who actually do anything, I learn better in the first period Latin. One of these days, I need to start typing up my collection of the translation of the entire textbook we have. People will suddenly be happy then. hahahaha
In book 2, Aeneas pretends to be Odysseus and rips him off of his story telling scheme in the island of Phaeacea. Aeneas talks at a banquet in front of Queen Dido, as Odysseus talks at a banquet in front of King Alcionus. It is obvious that Vergil ripped this idea off of Odyssey of Homer. However, this technique of story telling (which the English teachers refer to as "in medias res")seems to be very effective means of story telling anyways. The only difference that occurs with this kind of story telling by a character is that the story shifts from a third person writing (lord Vergil) to a first person narrative (Aeneas) Since one purpose of book 2 is to arous pity for Aeneas and his followers, the story being told in a first person narrative adds to the effect. In fact, I believe that Homer did the same in the Odyssey to arouse pity for Odysseus.
Obviously, the key point of this book was the description of the Trojan Horse for sure. Vergil's Aeneid seems to be the best source of literature to find any information about the fall of Troy, so I am currently assuming that most scholars accept Vergil's story as "the fall of Troy story." There is a short selection of this in Ovid's Metamorphosis, but that does not seem to contradict anything Vergil(Aeneas) says. There are some realistic problems with the Trojans not noticing the horse or not having much doubt about it (at least this issue was raised in the first period by an annoying freshman whose voice is quite close to becoming an annoyance to me), there should be no such debates because Vergil explicitly describes the horse as "the divine art of Pallas." If Minerva makes something, it works, period.
The fall of Troy seems to show the beginning of Aeneas's suffering and the motivation of Aeneas and the source of his purpose in leading the exiles of Troy to Italy. Book 2 seems to do a good job telling the important story of Troy while arousing the emotional pity for Aeneas and his followers.
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