IRIS

De Augusti Pinochet interitu
Diem summum denique obiit unus ex ferissimis dictatoribus Americae Latinae, cui Civitates Americae Unitae faverant.
Turcia et Unio Europaea
Die Lunae civitatibus Unionis Europaeae placuit, ut aliquot consultationes de Turcia in unionem asciscenda in posterius differrentur.

Fuglesang astronauta Suetus
Scandinavi iam suum proprium astronautam habent, cum Christer Fuglesang Suetus et Robertus Curbeam Americanus naviculae spatiali Discovery […]

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Word from Brown University about a new production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Flies, a retelling of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. They plan to take the play’s title a touch too literally:
Producers of the Jean-Paul Sartre play “The Flies” at Brown University will subject the audience to 40,000 fruit flies to bring to life the existentialist work about […]

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Sine pennis volare haud facile est. (Anonymous)
pron= SEE-nay PEHN-nees woh-LAH-ray -howd FAH-kih-lay ehst.
Without wings it is not easy to fly.
Comment: Pay attention. It is not impossible to fly without wings–just not easy. This proverb makes me think…[more]
(via Bob Patrick’s Latin Proverb of the Day)

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Via Laura Gibb’s outstanding blog, Bestiaria Latina, comes this list of Latin Christmas Carols:
December 1: RudolphusDecember 2: Angelus ad VirginemDecember 3: Aquifolia OrnateDecember 4: A Solis Ortus CardineDecember 5: O Viri, Este HilaresDecember 6: Conditor Alme SiderumDecember 7: Angeli Canunt PraeconesDecember 8: Regis Olim Urbe DavidDecember 9: Gaudium […]

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The latest from YLE Radio 1’s Nuntii Latini, Finland’s Latin-language radio service (I did not just make that up… you can listen to it here):
Finnia constitutionem Unionis Europaeae accepit
08.12.2006, klo 10.18
Suffragio facto parlamentum Finniae legem fundamentalem Unionis Europaeae accepit. 
Halonen de statu Russiae sollicita
08.12.2006, klo 10.17
Praesidens Finniae Tarja Halonen dixit se caedibus in Russia politicis […]

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From Michael Gilleland comes word that knowledge of Greek particles can save you from an unwelcome engagement:
Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Blood for the Ghosts: Classical Influences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), p. 82:
We are told that when Gaisford said to his pretty daughter ‘You can’t turn down Jelf; he […]

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Today is the birthday of the Roman poet Horace. We know the exact date from Suetonius’ Life of Horace (tr. J.C. Rolfe):
He was born on the sixth day before the Ides of December in the consulate of Lucius Cotta and Lucius Torquatus [65 BCE].
natus est VI Idus Decembris L. Cotta et L. Torquato consulibus.
Suetonius’ De […]

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The latest from Ephemeris (world news round-up in Latin): De commutatione apud Fidzienses (Fiji), De Beryti intercessionibus, and Polonio plures, quam antea putabatur, veneficio Londinii affectos esse.

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The latest world news in Greek from Akropolis World News: New manager for the Opera of Paris, Berlusconi challenges Prodi, 100 condemned in India.

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Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti posts several translations of Homer’s meditation on the vicissitudes of life in Odyssey 18.130-137. Among other insights, we can see how true Richard Bentley’s comment on Pope’s Iliad is: “it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.”
Homer, Odyssey 18.130-137 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):
Of all […]

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