Every once in awhile it happens that I will ask myself a certain obscure question, and that through the seemingly random events of the next day or two that question will be answered through no explicit effort on my own behalf. This is a record of some of those instances which prove, I believe, that ...
I don’t study Latin. I have friends who do, but I’ve always had an affinity for Latin. Thinking in another language, even a dead one, opens the mind to a whole different mindset. Here are my fifty favorite Latin mottos, quotes, and phrases. Absum! – I’m outta here! Ad astra per aspera – To the ...
The Royal Gold climber was planted seven years ago. It is a Dennison Morey origination that was introduced by Jackson and Perkins in 1987. It is a cross of climbing Goldilocks X Lydia. Goldilocks is a dainty, deep yellow floribunda that was introduced in 1945. One of the plants in the Jackson & Perkins, fields ...
Much like his contemporaries, Ben Jonson utilized the iambic pentameter, though not in the traditional sonnet form. Within “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare”, Jonson uses couplets to monumentalize the passing of one of the most prolific dramatists of the sixteenth century. While the poem is a testimony to the ...
I used to think that the phrase “Halcyon days” meant the “early days” or “the days before one was experienced.” However, this usage is actually incorrect. The phrase “Halcyon days,” means “calm, peaceful days.” It turns out that the phrase is very old. The origin starts with Ovid’s Metamorphoses which was thought to be written ...
A figure of speech is a rhetorical device that involves a particular verbal pattern, a repetition or other creative use of sound, or comparisons that amount to illuminating but technical falsehoods. Not much, seemingly, is done in the way of instruction in figures of speech at lower school levels any more, perhaps because of the ...
Schools don’t teach Latin Anymore. It’s a shame really, because now when these uneducated fools get into real life, and find themselves in legal trouble, or with a medical condition, someone will have to stupefy the meanings of terms for them. And I would imagine if anyone who wants a chance at being a return ...
The mystery of Ovid’s exile has haunted scholars for centuries. Why would a famous poet of first century Rome be exiled to possibly the worst location in all of the Roman Empire? Why was he sent to Tomis, a city lying on the Black Sea in the frigid climate of Romania, surrounded by barbaric tribes ...