Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Round-Up: March 18

Here is a round-up of today's blog posts - and for previous posts, check out the Bestiaria Latina Blog archives. You can keep up with the latest posts by using the RSS feed, or you might prefer to subscribe by email.

HODIE: ante diem quintum decimum Kalendas Apriles. You can add a Roman calendar as a widget to your blog or webpage, or display it as a Google Calendar: here's how.

TODAY'S PODCAST:

Heri Hodie Cras Podcast: Today's audio podcast is Latin Via Proverbs: Group 31, which features this famous saying from Horace: Ars longa, vita brevis (in other words, we are not going to live long enough to ever become truly great artists, alas!).

TODAY'S PROVERBS:

You can get access to all the proverb of the day scripts (also available as random proverb scripts) at the SchoolhouseWidgets.com website.

Proverbiis Pipilo: You can see my Twitter Aesopus feed of Latin proverbs which I "tweet" while I am online each day (for English, see AesopusEnglish). Here's one of them - another maxim about the brevity of life, this time from Seneca: Vita brevis est, licet supra mille annos exeat (English: Life is short, even if it go on longer than a thousand years.)

Audio Latin Proverbs: I've added a NEW blog essay and audio for this Latin proverb: Calidum et frigidum ex eodem ore efflat (He blows hot and cold from the same mouth), with a story about a satyr which warns us to beware of hypocrites!

Proverbium Perbreve of the Day: Today's two-word proverb is Aethiopem lavas (English: You're washing the Ethiopian - which is to say, you are wasting your time since, as the prophet Jeremiah reminds us: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?").

Proverbium Breve of the Day: Today's three-word proverb is Conscientia grave pondus (English: Conscience is a heavy weight - you can use the gender of grave, neuter, to see the break between subject, conscientia and predicate, grave pondus, in this brief saying - and don't be fooled by pondus; it may end in -us, but it's a neuter noun of the third declension, not a masculine second-declension noun).

Vulgate Verse of the Day: Today's verse is Unusquisque onus suum portabit (Gal. 6:5). For a translation, check out the polyglot Bible, in English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek, at the Sacred Texts Archive online.

Latin Animal Proverb of the Day: Today's animal proverb is Hirundo aestatem loquitur (English: A swallow speaks of summer... but also remember: one swallow does not a summer make, as the boy in Aesop's fable learned to his peril).

Proper Name Proverb of the Day: Today's proper name proverb is Orphica vita (English: The life of Orpheus - a saying used proverbially to refer to someone who lived a clean and pure life, and in particular to someone who refrained from eating meat and was a vegetarian, based on a reference in Plato's Laws; for more about the practices of Orphism in the ancient world, see this Wikipedia article).

Greek Proverb of the Day: Today's proverb is Λύκου πτερὰ ζητεῖς (English: You're looking for wings on a wolf - something like the proverbial "hen's teeth" - but a bit more dangerous, since there's a wolf involved!). If you look at the Greek Proverb of the Day widget, you'll see it comes with a Latin translation, too.

TODAY'S FABLE:

Fable of the Day: Today's fable of the day from Barlow's Aesop is DE RUSTICO ET COLUBRO (the story of the foolish farmer who took pity on a snake). You can use the Javascript to include the fable of the day automatically each day on your webpage or blog - meanwhile, to find out more about today's fable, visit the Ning Resource Page for this fable, where you will find links to the text, commentary, and a discussion board for questions and comments.




Aesop's Fables in Latin now available at Amazon.com.