By Selima Aousheva
“And first place in Advanced Latin Oratory goes to…Selima Aousheva.” That was the last thing I expected. Yes, I had poured hours into memorizing an excerpt from Cicero’s Against Verres and perfecting the style of Roman oration that it demanded, but this was my first time trying my hand at reciting prosaic Latin. Before, I had only ever translated such works or recited poetry. Despite my points for accuracy, I had had zero confidence that my interpretation would be considered superior. Nonetheless, I enjoyed stepping into Cicero’s shoes as my hand extended to my imaginary jury, and I made all appropriate elisions, save for the ending accusation “a Gaio Verre ex”—as opposed to a Gaio Verrex—“suis templis ac sedibus esse sublatam” (that is, the statue of Ceres was stolen from her own temple and seat by Gaius Verres). That day at the National Junior Classical League Convention, a quiet curiosity about how the Romans lived, in word and deed, and how I could embody it, was set aflame.
Currently, opportunities to truly capture the Latin or Greek experience are few and far between. Programs like the Ancient Language Institute and the Paideia Institute’s Living Latin are remarkable examples of students learning and speaking Latin in modernity. YouTube channels like Scorpio Martianus and polýMATHY1 feature videos with fresh ideas, including but not limited to Latin being spoken to Italians, sentence and pronunciation exercises, and lyrics to songs2 translated to and sung in Latin, ancient Greek, and even ancient Egyptian. These individuals and communities set out to learn or already practice speaking Latin and ancient Greek; unfortunately, none of them speak only the dead languages.
For the rest of the modern classics community, our study of the ancient languages and cultures is limited to drilling noun declension and verb conjugation charts into memory. I am sure, decades later in my life, that my first thought one morning will be “bo, bi, bu” or “o, eis, ei, omen, ete, ousin.” And when that fails, we swear by mnemonic devices. We study these languages the way we do rigid math and science courses, maybe picking up a few conversational phrases like salve(te), gratias tibi ago, or quid agis? along the way. But for the most part, we are dealt overwhelming loads of information intended to be understood but never replicated. We are given pieces to a jigsaw puzzle but not the tools to paint a picture ourselves. We should aim to replicate; we should be our own craftsmen; we should well and truly speak Latin and Greek.
You may be telling yourself the same thing that most classicists do, that I did: “But Latin and ancient Greek are dead languages!” Is their influence on English and other global languages dead? Are history, archaeology, and other subjects that pertain to classics no longer needed? Instead of living with a strictly practical mindset, we should reframe our perception of ancient languages. Instead of deeming them dead and done, we should teach them like we are still greeting our patrons at their villa threshold before dawn or prosecuting a statue-stealer for committing an utmost disgrace against the goddess of agriculture. We should be stepping into the shoes of the historical figures we have studied, as opposed to passively grasping for meaning in roughly translated passages.
When we speak Latin and Greek, we are not simply parsing verbs for person, number, tense, voice, and mood or finding an acceptable translation for the fifth mixed conditional sentence in our 100-line assignment for tomorrow’s seminar. When we speak these languages, we are not making a scientific discovery; we are immersing ourselves into the ancient Mediterranean world, instead of putting its lively significance on the back burner. Just as we speak English and other modern languages not to be dissected like a Shakespearean monologue, the ancients—Cicero included—did not write for their works to be dismembered and reconstructed. They wanted simply to communicate and to resonate. Why can’t we resonate with them? And so hopefully, in the future, when non-classicists ask classicists in excitement, “You speak Latin?” the common answer will be: “Yes.” We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Selima Aousheva (College ‘28) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Classical Studies (Classical Languages and Literature) and Linguistics.
Photo Caption Credits: Augustin Pajou, Ceres, ca. 1768–1770, terracotta, 24 5/8 × 7 1/2 × 7 1/2 in., Louvre Museum, Paris, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/206711?searchField=All&sortBy=relevance&ao=on&od=on&ft=*&offset=160&rpp=80&pos=188.
Endnotes
- Both channels—https://www.youtube.com/@ScorpioMartianus and https://www.youtube.com/@polyMATHY_Luke, respectively—are run by Luke Ranieri.
- These include family favorites like Disney’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” and pop hits like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.