I can totally hear it!

These last lines are so telling. Aeneas' decision to kill Turnus (who is defeated and submitting) directly sets him against Anchises' assertion in book 6: Rome's destiny is "to spare the defeated and to conquer the proud" (parcere subiectis et debellare superbos). Virgil knew what he was about.

This is an excellent piece! Thank you for writing it and advocating for all of us so well. (I especially love this bit: "the greatest danger to university funding today is without a doubt a product of a catastrophic failure of public communication in his own field: medicine." Crit.)

We used Shelmerdine's Introduction to Latin in undergrad. I feel like maybe it tried to take a middle road between those two approaches (grammar-/reading-first). And I remember liking it a lot. But it was a lo(ooooo)ng time ago so I can't completely vouch for my memory.

But because there's no giant 'history formula,' no tables of strange symbols (well, amusingly, there *are* but you don't work with them until you are much deeper in the field), folks assume that history is easy, does not require special skills and so contemptible. 12/

To form a more perfect Union, implies as we all know, that we have something imperfect. But to strive for the betterment of all, and to keep striving no matter what - that is the American legacy. “For that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

We strive still.

The article tries to determine when and in what circumstances acts of mass violence "became" atrocities for (some) Greeks and Romans. Link: ruhm.es/index.php/RU...

Many thanks to @badancient.bsky.social for suggesting my name to the editor, since otherwise I probably wouldn't have written it! (2)

No problem! Tbh I wasn't 100% and had to double check it, too. A lot of this stuff is just rattling around my brain unmoored and half-remembered.

penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Rom...

It's in Suetonius, I believe!