Toddler English of the day: “Turn the dark off!” (i.e. ”Cause it to no longer be dark!”)

Reading Cornelius Nepos again

The first Google result for Helvia, mother of Cicero, is from Gr*kipedia, which is problematic in and of itself, but after two paragraphs it confuses her with a kind of mantis. Didn’t know Cicero’s mother is hypothesized to have engaged in post-mating cannibalism to supplement her diet

I really have a love-hate relationship with my local used bookstore. Loeb new from publisher: $30 Loeb from used bookstore, underlining in pen throughout, toddler’s scribbles on dust jacket: $25. WHY

As a kid, I remember being disappointed that Halley’s Comet’s last appearance was two years before I was born, and I would have to live such a long time to see it. But as of November 3, 2023, we are closer to the next passing than we are to the last one!

I'm working on an anthology of Roman moral exempla, and my selection for temperantia/continentia is giving me a little trouble. Gellius 1.14, on Fabricius's response to being offered gold by the Samnites:

Five years ago, we set out to make a series of open-access editions of Latin texts written by women. Today we published volume 5, a collection of letters written by fifteen women in ancient Rome, from Cornelia (120s BCE) to Gudeliva (530s CE). pixeliapublishing.org/series/exper...

New Sallust Green & Yellow! Edited with Introduction and Notes by A. J. Woodman, University of Virginia www.cambridge.org/highereducat...

Penn State faculty vote yes to unionize! ✊ www.pennstatefacultyalliance.org/news/2026/05...

Aquí unha señoriña de Jersey recordando o día da liberación da illa na lingua local, o jèrriais.

Whenever I see a Spanish word without a clear Latin origin, I like to spin the etymology wheel and see where it comes from. Is it from Arabic? Germanic? An indigenous language? Who knows! "chancla" was a fun one... it's from Parthian!

So my kid is into this audiobook series called Brain Bots, and let me tell you I’ve never been more excited for a new Brain Bots set to drop

I gave my last lecture of the year today, "The Roman Republic in Perspective." I have studiously avoided commentary on or even allusion to contemporary concerns in this course on the Roman Republic. Not today. Here's a bit of what I said (none of it particularly original). 1/5

Looking up something in the TLL and having trouble parsing this definition (for "probus"): "significatur, qui (quod) cui videtur ita esse, ut debeat, sc. fere i. q. bonus, rectus sim." I get the gist of it, but what's the "cui" doing there?

I always thought the idiom “come out of one’s shell” had to do with turtles, but now I’ve learned that the French version is “sortir de sa coquille” (come out of one’s eggshell) and now I’m not so sure

I'm in final revisions for the first part of my Latin novella, and I decided to feed it through ChatGPT on a whim to see if it could pick up any errors. And it didn't find any errors, but it did totally glitch out in the most hilarious way possible

Looking into uses of the Latin noun “error” gets a little difficult when the PackHum database search engine interprets the word “error” as an error and shows no results

If you have taught Latin at the college level at any time since fall 2022, the AP Latin people have a survey for you! They say compensation will be involved soooo go for it! app.smartsheet.com/b/form/efb2a...

Weird etymology fact: English "ingot" and French "lingot" are (probably) not at all related. (The English is from the Old English for "poured in"; the French is related to Latin "lingua" due to its tonguelike shape)

This one gets me every time theonion.com/bush-regales...

So, um... this is bad. Really bad. I looked at the letters that were translated by the AI, and the very first one I found was almost entirely hallucination. Thread:

Does anyone happen to have the 1985 reprint of the Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse handy? I just want to check one page in this edition

I'm turning this into a thread of Classicists whose names I never knew how to pronounce

I never know how to pronounce the names of famous classicists. How do you say Betty Radice's name? Because I'm always inclined to pronounce it as the ablative of "radix," but that's not it...

My 2-year-old has been saying “Buddy’s not here!” when looking into an empty room. Took me a while to figure out that he was trying to say “Nobody’s here” and rephrasing it as “Body’s not here”

This is basically Ovid’s version of it in Met. 15

NEROSPASIAN

As some of you know, I've made student readers for some of the IB Companion Texts. I have a new one out now: Pliny the Younger's daily routine and other musings about fame! Like all my readers, this is FREE TO USE as you wish! magisterconway.blogspot.com/2026/03/plin...

The more I think about the AP Latin Pliny backlash, the more I believe it stems from a core misconception that Latin prose is supposed to be easier than Latin poetry. Poetry isn't easier or harder than prose, it just takes a different set of skills

I did a comparison of the vocabulary load in Pliny vs. Caesar. Spoiler: it's a lot lower in Caesar. But I wasn't going to let the anti-Pliny brigade have this W, so this post turns into a harangue against De Bello Gallico midway through magisterconway.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

Toni Morrison Olaf in Frozen II 🤝 “water has memory”

I helped edit this super cool story of a dude from India who wrote his name on Egyptian tombs 2,000 years ago! 🏺🧪

I will say one good thing about AP Latin: thanks to the Project Passages, I'm obsessed with the Laudatio Turiae now

I have a very bright Latin 2 student who’s a zoology major and wants to do an independent study reading Pliny the Elder next semester. Are there any student editions of any part of the Natural History? I’m not getting paid extra so I’d rather not have to prepare my own notes for them.

“2026 is the year of the horse” The horse:

Gather round everyone, we're going to read the opening of Pliny Ep. 6.16 and psychoanalyze Pliny a little bit magisterconway.blogspot.com/2026/02/fame...

Well this certainly changes my reading of "praedata puella est" in Amores 1.3

For no particular reason, here’s a list of weird omens in Livy raining stones (frequently) raining chalk (24.10) raining blood (42.20) raining milk (27.4) raining soil (34.45) fish come out of the ground (42.2) black wool come out of the ground (42.2) ravens eat the gold on the Capitol (30.2)

I made another blog post for the Pliny haters. This one's about his omissions of esse, which are neither very unusual nor very challenging for students, but people need something to complain about I guess magisterconway.blogspot.com/2026/02/comi...

Just in case you're at a Super Bowl party and need an excuse to talk about Latin poetry, the coin used in the Super Bowl coin toss has a Horace quote on the reverse (Odes 3.4.20) Non sine diis animosus infans – "a courageous infant, not without the gods' help"

Latin question: how would you say "three more times"? Like, "Someone rang the doorbell, and then they rang it three more times"?

Katherine McDonald’s truly marvelous “Four footprints, two languages, one tile”deserves your time: “Two slaves, working in conditions that were no doubt very difficult, taking a little time to mess about as friends and enjoy each other’s company.” katherinemcdonald.net/2016/01/14/f...

I've got another Pliny appreciation post. This one's about antithesis. Say what you will about Pliny, but the man loves a good antithesis magisterconway.blogspot.com/2026/02/anti...

My kids have been into Wild Kratts lately, so I was pleased to find that a species of mantis was named after them, and even more pleased to see the proper Latinity of the scientific name!

I'll be offering a follow up online class on Pliny, specifically those Suggested Letters for AP Latin - 1.6, 2.6, 7.5, 7.24, 9.6, 10.33, 10.34, 10.38, 10.39, 10.40 and includes materials & strategies to ease your workload! #LatinTeach #ClassicsSky thepatrologist.com/product/lati...

Back with another instalment of Pliny genius, @gregorystringer.bsky.social teaching Pliny's Letters for #SeumasU thepatrologist.com/product/lati... starts Mon 23rd Feb

All the Pliny haters in the AP Latin teachers Facebook group got me so worked up that I started a multi-part blog entry series on the unique features of Pliny's style. Because someone needs to stick up for Pliny boi magisterconway.blogspot.com/2026/01/plin...

I'm certain that this is now lost media, but what I wouldn't give to play these games advertised in The Classical Outlook in 1990