I took a latin class a few years ago and in honor of The Ides Of March: here are (in no particular order) my favorite memories from that class:
- we had this mid-year project where we had to make something resembling a news source (video, newspaper, gossip magazine, etc.) about a prominent figure/event from ancient rome. for some reason, cleopatra vii was an option, so i chose her. so…i did a *latin* project on a greek-egyptian girlboss instead of like an actual roman emperor. i also got the due date wrong for this project, thinking it was due the day after winter break. so i spent most of my christmas working on a PHYSICAL gossip magazine about cleopatra only to return to school and find out i was done a WHOLE WEEK early. i think i ended up getting like a 98 or smth because i didn’t meet the latin words/phrases requirement lmao.
- there was a guy who had a crush on me in my class the first year that i took it and he very frequently let me copy his homework. i loved the language, loved the class, loved the projects, loved the teacher, absolutely *despised* translation homework. he was also in my math class, and i explicitly remember telling him during math class that i didn’t do my latin homework only for him to HAND me is homework for me to just turn in as mine (which i didn’t do. i just ended up copying his. which is still cheating).
- there was only one teacher in my school (at the time) who taught latin. everyone who didn’t take latin was absolutely terrified of her, since she was the only teacher in our school with a doctorate and *insisted* on everyone calling her “Dr. [last name]” instead of Ms. or Mrs. this was the *only* thing she was strict about. litterally. you could eat an entire family sized bag of chips in the middle of class and she would not care as long as you didn’t make too much noise. most of us assumed she lived alone with her two cats (who she LOVED and were both named after roman gods if i remember correctly) but i didn’t find out until we went virtual that she had a HUSBAND?? AND KIDS??? like, older kids, but still. her last name was also a common word, but spelled the british way. so i blame her for my regular misspelling of that word. she is my inspiration.
- i remember very little about the language itself, but i remember “felis” means “cat,” “vituperat” means “curses,” “tu es mensam” very loosely translates to “you are a table,” and “eram, eras, erat, eramus, eratis, erant” are all…something? my teacher came up with a song for it and i remember the song i just don’t know what it means
