Annus Mirabilis: More Latin for Everyday Life [Hardcover]

With its user-friendly, non-academic style this book is of interest to anyone learning Latin. Looking at topics ranging from Ancient Roman curses found at Bath and a birthday invitation from Hadrian's Wall to fascinating extracts from post-Renaissance Latinists like Descartes, Annus Mirabilis picks up where Annus Horribilis left off. It explores the joys of Latin poetry via Medieval lyrics and verse epitaphs. Letters reveal the gossip of emperors and the passion of lovers. Other passages show that Latin was the language in which some of the most important scientific and philosophical ideas of the modern age were expressed. Featuring many previously unpublished texts, all accompanied by extensive notes, full English translations and an appendix of useful grammar, if anyone asks 'Why do you want to learn Latin?', Annus Mirabilis provides the answer: because Latin is so much more than just the dead language of a fallen empire.

This is the 'sequel' to ANNUS HORRIBILIS: LATIN FOR EVERYDAY LIFE -- but it is not just more of the same. Several texts featured in ANNUS MIRABILIS have not been published before, to my knowledge. Many others are rarely studied by Classics students -- including several examples from Neo-Latin authors -- making this both an ideal follow-on to the original book as wel as companion book for Latin students pursuing more traditional Latin courses.

Where else will you get to read Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne's Latin letters, alongside those of Cicero and Augustus!

Mark is a Latin teacher, writer and house-husband (vir domesticus). His other books include: ANNUS HORRIBILIS and AMIDA: A NOVEL

Introduction:

`More Latin for Everyday Life', yes, but not just more of the same. In Annus Horribilis we began our Latin studies with examples drawn from everyday life; in Annus Mirabilis we become more ambitious, exploring new topics and extending the original quotidian concept to encompass those many different kinds of Latin - from ephemeral notes to letters to literary works - that have been written and used `everyday' from antiquity almost to the present day.

In the first book, some Roman inscriptions notwithstanding, we encountered a great deal of Latin from the Medieval period. But the Church and the Medieval world were not, to coin a phrase, the Alpha and Omega of post-Roman Latin. From antiquity right up to the end of the eighteenth century - a period of some two-thousand years - Latin remained central to all aspects of Western culture. The modern dominance of vernacular languages and the sidelining of the Classics curriculum in recent times has tended to obscure this important point. Even in modern University Classics departments you will find people whose interest in Latin is restricted to the works of about a dozen or so canonical authors, all of whom lived in the two centuries around the beginning of our era. Such a narrow focus seems almost intentionally perverse in the face of so many centuries of important, stimulating and often beautiful Latin literature. Can any Latinist really fail to be moved by the power of the Dies Irae or the pathos of the Stabat Mater? (Annus Horribilis, Chapters 11 and 12.) Can any Latinist really think that Thomas More's Utopia or Peter Martyr's vivid account of Columbus' voyages are infra dignitatem merely because the writers did not wield Latin as their native language? Are Erasmus' letters any less fascinating, revealing and funny than Pliny's? And is there anything from antiquity to match the impassioned exchanges in the correspondence of Heloise and Abelard?

Annus Mirabilis, then, casts its net a little wider than that of its predecessor, taking in a little of what is now called Renaissance or Neo-Latin, a woefully underappreciated corpus. Hopefully after reading (and enjoying!) these selections you the reader will be inspired to be more adventurous in your own ramblings through the glories of Latin literature.

You will also find here many other examples of `everyday' Latin. There are enough and more than enough learned tomes about Classical Latin literature to make me very wary of encroaching on their hallowed territory, but - carpe diem! - in our pursuit of the `everyday' language it would be remiss to neglect entirely the letters of Cicero and some of his Roman successors (Chapter 4) - they were, after all, the inspiration for all who followed. We will also explore more humble Roman correspondence from the families of soldiers stationed on Hadrian's wall and civilians visiting the spa town of Aquae Sulis (Chapter 1). The tradition of epistolary Latin on the Ciceronian model survived in the Middle Ages, as the letters of Heloise and Abelard reveal, and it positively blossomed thereafter (Chapter 5). We shall also see that Latin was the language in which many of the most important scientific and philosophical ideas of the modern age were expressed (Chapter 6). And let us not forget the fascinating and seductive topic of Latin poetry - arguably the greatest literary achievement of the ancient Romans - which never ceased to flourish in every age, from graceful Medieval lyrics (Chapter 2) and elegant epitaphs (Chapter 3), to solemn and satirical imitations of Classical models (Chapter 7).

Taken together the two books, Annus Horribilis and Annus Mirabilis, can be viewed as an attempt to answer that irritating question every Latin student has to endure over and over again from bemused interlocutors: `Why learn Latin?' Because it is so much more than just the dead language of a fallen empire.