Manca discusses the possibilities for using social networks in modern teaching of Latin and Greek, but then he offers some caveats about the wrong way to use computers in the teaching of classics. Mastandrea’s essay highlights the vocabulary of Roman epic, which show a tendency to repetitiveness that assigns fixed positions to certain words, especially at the beginning and end of the hexameter, Ennius having established the foundations of artistic diction in dactylic sequences.

The attempt to render Latin reading and learning in the intended inversion of the slogan “Latinum est, et legitur” in the title, against more formalistic imperatives, 1 is the main reason which led me to request this volume for review especially as it seemed to enrich already existing or under discussion philological approaches and cultural semantics in the perspectives of teaching Latin, designed primarily for the Italian audience (at least, in a country with a huge heritage and claim to ancestral tradition and origins of colloquial language).Ĭitti opens the volume by writing about intertextuality, reminding us that Greek lyric poems are perhaps the first examples of intertextuality in our poetical tradition words, phrases and ideals as well were borrowed from Homer’s formulaic language, but with the Hellenistic poetry intertextuality became the general rule of the poetical production in ancient Greece and Rome. This collection of essays, growing out of a conference at the University of Calabria in the fall of 2009, displays a variety of methods, traditional and contemporary, of interpreting Latin texts and implicitly argues for Latin culture as an indispensible part of our secondary and university education curriculum. The rising disaffection with Latin displayed by students in Italian society justifies intelligent approaches to the problem of keeping Latin teaching courses alive and sound.

Latinum networks