Humanities and the Liberal Arts is the personal website of former Middlebury classics professor
William Harris who passed away in 2009.
In his retirement he crafted a wonderful site full of essays,
music,
sculpture,
poetry and his thoughts on anything from
education to
technology. But the heart of the website for me is, unsurprisingly,
his essays on ancient Latin and Greek literature some of whom are book-length works. Here are a few examples:
Purple color in Homer,
complete fragments of Heraclitus,
how to read Homer and Vergil,
a discussion of a recently unearthed poem by Sappho,
Plato and mathematics,
Propertius' war poems, and finally, especially close to my heart, his commentaries on the poetry of Catullus, for example on
Ipsithilla,
Odi et amo,
Attis poem as dramatic dance performance and
a couple of very dirty poems (even by Catullus' standard). That's just a taste of the riches found on Harris' site, which has been around nearly as long as the world wide web has existed.
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 30, 2011 -
18 comments
Salve! Do you have trouble finding your way from Brindisium to Antium or planning a vacation at your villa in the Appenines because no one produces an online map with directions in good Latin these days? Well, be of good cheer, friend,
OmnesViae has what you need.
[more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit
on Sep 26, 2011 -
23 comments
A year ago this August, 72 migrant workers -- 58 men and 14 women -- 'were on their way to the US border when they were
murdered by a drug gang at a ranch in northern Mexico, in circumstances that remain unexplained. Since then, a group of Mexican journalists and writers have created' a "Day of the Dead-style Virtual Altar" Spanish-language website,
72migrantes.com, to commemorate each of the victims, some of whom have never been identified. The New York Review of Books has
English translations of five of their profiles. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 7, 2011 -
7 comments
"We certainly cannot follow the example of Odysseus and, going down to Hades, tempt with a bowl of blood a representative sample of native speakers to label particular areas of the standard Munsell color continuum ..."
David Wharton's
Latin Color Bibliography collects quotations from ancient literature and modern research on how languages classify colors, and tries to work out the meanings of color words in classical Latin.
[more inside]
posted by nangar
on Jul 18, 2011 -
15 comments
Scene and heard: Electro champeta |
Champeta.net |
I came across this dream collection of picós pictures on Africolombia's blog. Picós are these huge, powerful, customized, hand painted, highly fetishized sound systems from the Colombian Carribean Coast (Barranquilla, Cartagena, Palenque de San Basilio...). |
Sound Systems, World Beat, and Diasporan Identity in Cartagena, Colombia [pdf] |
Techno Tribal guarachero | Bonus cool link:
Brazilian Dual Mix Dance Free Step.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Jun 19, 2011 -
3 comments
We see it every day on signs, billboards, packaging, in books and magazines; in fact, you are looking at it now — the Latin or Roman alphabet, the world’s most prolific, most widespread abc. Typography is a relatively recent invention, but to unearth the origins of alphabets, we will need to travel much farther back in time, to an era contemporaneous with the emergence of civilisation itself.
The origins of abc.
posted by netbros
on Aug 10, 2010 -
24 comments
From 1864 to 1904, the Russian Empire tried to quelch the nationalism of Lithuanians by ordering all Lithuanian texts to be printed with Cyrillic characters instead of in the Latin-derived Lithuanian or Polish alphabets. But they didn't count on the Knygnešiai -
the Booksmugglers.
[more inside]
posted by mdonley
on Jul 12, 2009 -
18 comments
John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg emigrated from Germany to the United States, where he was eventually a Chaplain in the American Civil War. He also really liked maps; in the course of traveling over his lifetime, he collected
hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 16th century.
[Most maps in Latin]
posted by Rykey
on Jul 26, 2008 -
6 comments
If the Tiber rises so high it floods the walls, or the Nile so low it doesn't flood the fields, if the earth opens, or the heavens don't, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl goes up, "The Christians to the lion!" What, all of them? To a single lion? So wrote
Tertullian. In the huge intellectual project that was the foundation of the Christian Church he was the great wit, most powerful rhetor and finest writer. Starting out as a pagan delighting in adultery and gladiator combat he became a great champion of martyrdom, defender of Christianity against its malefactors and heretics. His most famous contribution to our culture is undoubtedly the doctrine of the trinity. Towards the end of his life he threw his lot with a small group of hardcore ascetics called
Montanists and was denounced as a heretic. Ending his life among the defeated of ecclesiastical history he was forgotten for a millennium until
rediscovered during the Renaissance.
The Tertullian Project collects all his extant writing and information about his lost texts as well as biographical information,
selected quotations and much more.
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 15, 2008 -
14 comments
In Parentheses is a collection of many ancient, medieval and classic texts from all over the world, many of whom are hard to find anywhere, let alone on the internet. There are translations from
Greek,
Old Norse,
Medieval Irish,
Japanese,
Incan,
Old French,
Medieval Latin and many more! As well as all that they have
papers in medieval studies and
vaguely decadent and
orientalism series. Adding to that there's a
linguistics section with wordlists and language flash cards in languages such as
Icelandic,
Quechua,
Basque,
Classical Armenian and a whole bunch more.
[flashcard links go to pdf files]
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 10, 2008 -
18 comments
Nihongo Bongo! - Latin music by Japanese artists from the 40s, 50s and 60s. "Mambo, rumba, cha cha cha, bossa nova, calypso, you name it... it was big in Japan. The exodus of Japanese migrants to Brazil ensured a lasting connection with South American culture as many Japanese artists toured Brazil."
posted by carter
on Oct 9, 2006 -
14 comments
Nueva Orleans Before Katrina, Hispanics accounted for 3 percent of New Orleans’ population, with just 1,900 Mexicans showing up in the 2004 Census. No one knows for certain how many new ones have arrived, but estimates put the number between 10,000 and 50,000.
posted by ColdChef
on May 9, 2006 -
105 comments
Latin
America
Turning
Left?
From the top
:
Lula da Silva*,
Lopez Obrador,
Nestor Kirchner,
Hugo Chavez*,
Alvaro Uribe,
Michelle Bachelet*,
Ollanta Humala,
Alfredo Palacio,
Oscar Berger,
Leonel Fernandez,
Oscar Arias,
Tony Saca,
Tabare Vazquez,
Martín Torrijos,
Evo Morales*
Manuel Zelaya,
Nicanor Duarte,
Daniel Ortega,
Rene Preval*.
posted by airguitar
on Apr 13, 2006 -
30 comments
Latin Podcasting is now available featuring recordings of neo-Latin colloquia saved as mp3 files. From Willard McCarty on the
Humanist Discussion List: "So far there's only the Prima Salutatio of 3 minutes 21 seconds, but more is promised." They've already registered the project with the iTunes Podcast Directory and Bloglines. Future plans include adding captions.
posted by leo
on Nov 24, 2005 -
3 comments
Can't hack Catullus in
Latin? How about
Brazilian Portuguese,
Catalan,
Chinese,
Danish,
Dutch,
English,
Estonian,
French,
German,
Hungarian,
Irish,
Italian,
Japanese,
Norwegian,
Polish,
Portuguese,
Rioplatense,
Romanian,
Russian,
Scanned,
Serbian,
South African,
Spanish,
Swedish, or
Welsh? You can also compare two languages side by side.
posted by kenko
on Apr 11, 2005 -
15 comments
Doctor Ammondt. When
Jukka Ammondt is not too busy teaching European Romantic Literature at Finland's
Jyväskylä University, he enjoys recording rock'n'roll covers in Latin. For Dr. Ammondt's 1997 CD, "
Rocking in Latin", he has covered, among others,
Shake, Rattle and Roll (Quate, Crepa, Rota) and
All Shook Up (Nunc Distrahor). More recently, Dr. Ammondt has released
an EP in which he sings Sumerian, featuring a cover of the Elvis hit "Blue Suede Shoes" ("E-sír kusv-za-gìn-g-á", which roughly translates to "On my sandals of sky-blue leather do not step!"). Live, he wears a leather kilt, blue sandals and is "
backed up by musicians dressed as Sumerian governors". He has received the Pope's Medal in 1994. Ammondt will release a single,
Codex Fluitans, and dedicate it to the Pope on the day of his funeral. (Previous Metafilter mention
here.)
posted by ori
on Apr 7, 2005 -
1 comment
Alphabet Evolution
See the evolutionary progression of alphabets through time and cultures. Examples include Cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, modern Cyrillic and the Latin character sets. The Latin is the best documented character set and requires a wide screen to see all the evolutionary events (especially Y and Z)
posted by Irontom
on Oct 7, 2003 -
9 comments
Quanto putas mihi stare hoc conclave ? That's "How many prostitutes does it take to change a lightbulb?" in Latin. No, actually it's "How much do you think I paid for this apartment?". Here's hoping, in the wake of the BBC's superb
The Roman Way series, written and presented by David Aaranovich, that good old Latin is on its way back, albeit in an Internet, soundbitey way. Those intending to smuggle some into MetaFilter should definitely start
here. The owner, for instance, might find
Ne ponatur in mea vicinitate useful - "Not in my backyard". And
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione - "I'm not interested in your dopey religious cult" should prove popular in the God threads.
Vale!
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Feb 3, 2003 -
26 comments
Nuntii Latini: Tired of the same old spin from the big news agencies? Try a "new old" spin from Finland's YLE: news updates in Latin.
posted by gimonca
on Nov 22, 2001 -
3 comments
