Sallust's Bellum Catilinae

(Picture: Cicero Denouncing Catiline by Cesare Maccari)

I've just spent an entire semester scrupulously deciphering and interpreting Sallust's Bellum Catilinae (War of Catiline). Catiline seems to have led quite a notorious life since all the prose I have read in college has been about this man. Apparently, he posed a great threat to the Roman republic and had tried to procure a consulship position for himself several times, using violence as a last resort.

It has been a tedious and incredibly challenging semester, but the story has been quite interesting. I find that much of Roman politics foreshadows the situations and procedures that take place nowawadays in the US. It's fascinating to see how history actually does repeat itself.

Anyway, below is my polished translation of an excerpt from Sallust for my final exam. I spent about 6 hours on it, consulting several commentaries and dictionaries. In this paragraph, Sallust pauses in his narrative to remark on the current state of the Roman republic, and how far-reaching Catiline's influence had become.

Latin: Ea tempestate mihi imperium populi Romani multo maxume miserabile visum est. Cui cum ad occasum ab ortu solis omnia domita armis parerent, domi otium atque divitiae, quae prima mortales putant, adfluerent, fuere tamen cives, qui seque remque publicam obstinatis animis perditum irent. Namque duobus senati decretis ex tanta multitudine neque praemio inductus coniurationem patefecerat neque ex castris Catilinae quisquam omnium discesserat: tanta vis morbi ac veluti tabes plerosque civium animos invaserat.

English: At that time, it seems to me that the empire of Rome was in a most exceedingly pitiable state. Although everything from the rising to the setting sun, since they had been conquered, was subject to her arms, and although at home peace and prosperity abounded, which mortals believe to be the foremost, nevertheless, there were citizens who, with obstinate wills, would proceed to destroy themselves and the republic. For despite the two decrees of the senate, not one out of such a multitude of people had been induced by motives of reward to lay open the conspiracy, nor had any one of them deserted the camp of Catiline: such was the potency of the disease that, like a plague, had invaded many of the minds of the citizens.

I have to say that my professor for this class, Serena Connolly, is the best professor I've had at Rutgers. She has excellent communication skills, is patient and willing to help students in any way possible, is not a slacker and makes us work hard, and she is also very knowledgeable in her field. To give you an example, Prof. Connolly met with each student individually after our midterm to discuss our exam and anything we would like to work on. I would recommend all classics majors to take her classes. Professors like her make studying worth it.

Train wreck

Bob Kauflin just shared this video on his blog, Worship Matters. It's a recording of one of the worship sessions at the 2008 Worship God Conference, a teaching conference for worship band musicians, leaders, and pastors. And it's absolutely hilarious because I've had the same exact experience, not to mention more than once.


In Two Keys at the Same Time from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

I'll never forget playing keyboard for Fred's team last semester. The song was supposed to be in B, but Fred started in C and we had a train wreck. Then we started over and he started in Bb. Haha. It was quite a memorable experience.

Glory days

The other day, I was randomly sorting through my itunes playlist and found some recordings from my high school senior recital. Those were the days when I would practice 3 hours a day and take lessons with Eleanor Sokoloff and Susan Starr (from the Curtis Institute). Those lessons cost my parents $125 each! That is one heck of an investment. So credit for the following performances goes to my parents.


Ravel Jeux D'Eau


Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor - 1st movement

Greek New Testament

I read on Justin Taylor's blog about this Annual Greek New Testament reading program. It looks awesome! The plan is to read through the entire Greek NT in one year. It was created by Lee Irons who has also put together a syntax guide to go along with the reading. Frank and I are going to attempt this for 2009. Exciting stuff!

Thoughts on Latin and Education from Victor Davis Hanson

On Latin:
Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.

On education: I found this to be very witty and sadly, true.

The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

Full article

Teaching and Learning

I came to the realization a few days ago that the only concepts I remember from the 4 semesters of music theory I took in college are the ones that I am putting to use right now. For example, I can only clearly recall chord theory that I currently use in playing on our worship band. Things like major sevenths, secondary dominants, or transposition are still clear in my mind. But I don't remember a thing from set theory and all that strange contemporary stuff.

I also remember the things I teach. I've been teaching piano for 6 years now. It's amazing how teaching really solidifies knowledge. When I have to actually spit back out the concepts that I learned passively, it takes twice as much brain power and creativity to explain it in a clear way that young students can understand. But when I do that, I remember it for so much longer.

It just occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have my students teach sometimes instead of always being the learner. It would kill two birds with one stone: they learn the material well, and it won't be as boring. That should work well with my Latin students...

Even if one never becomes a teacher in the professional sense, learning and teaching should always go hand in hand.

Thesis

After 3 long months of brainstorming, reading, and deliberation, I've finally settled on a thesis topic. Demographics of early Christians at Rome. My adviser introduced me to a great new resource last month: Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (ICUR). It's this huge collection of inscriptions found in the Christian catacombs at Rome. It's a bit tedious translating all of them since they're all in Latin, but they're so interesting to read, especially the ones with little tributes written by their spouses, or by parents to their children. It has also been interesting to note that Christians seemed to die fairly young (in their 20s) undoubtedly because of persecution.

It's going to require a lot of tedious work, but no one has ever done this before so at least my research will be a contribution to classics and antiquity, however small it may be.