SPECIAL NOTE: I posted a comment at Mary Beard's blog post about Google Translate, singing the praises of NoDictionaries.com. If any of you have been seduced by the allure of Google Translate, take a look at NoDictionaries.com instead - it accomplishes a similar task but is so much more useful! Here's my comment at Mary Beard's blog.
HODIE: ante diem quartum Nonas Octobres (and yes, you can have your own Roman Google Calendar).
VERBUM HODIERNUM: Today's word is NUNC - read a brief essay about the word at the Verbosum blog. Here's one of the sayings you can find in the essay: Vetera quae nunc sunt fuerunt olim nova, "The things which are old now were once new." (As in the saying, "Technology is anything invented since you were born" - a saying I like to use with people who heap scorn on things like the Internet but love printed books - as if printing a book were not technology!)
MILLE FABULAE: New materials at the blog include lots of new illustrated fables along with some new slideshows, including a marvelous 17th-century Aesopic Dutch emblem book that I stumbled upon at Internet Archive. This is also where you can download your free PDF copy of the Mille Fabulae et Una book.
FABULAE FACILES: The new easy-to-read fable is Pisces, Magni et Minuti - this is one of those "small is beautiful" fables which I like so much!
PODCASTS: Today's Latin audio fable is Serpens et Vespa, a fable about a cure that is worse than the disease!
ENGLISH AESOP: Today's English fables are from Sir Roger L'Estrange, Wright's verse translation of La Fontaine and the limericks that accompany Walter Crane's illustrated Aesop.
TODAY'S MOTTOES & PROVERBS: Widgets available at SchoolhouseWidgets.com.
Tiny Proverbs: Today's tiny proverb is: Occasionem cognosce (English: Know the moment - or, as we say in English, timing is everything!).
3-Word Mottoes Verb-less: Today's 3-word verb-less motto is Mens et manus. (English: Mind and hands - a great motto about using all your powers, mental and physical).
Latin Animal Proverb: Today's animal proverb is Cattus de caseo tarde depellitur eso (English: It is too late to drive the cat away from the cheese once it's already been eaten - plus the Latin version rhymes!).
Proverbs of Polydorus: Today's proverb from Polydorus is: Spiritus ubi vult spirat (English: The spirit blows where it will).
Proper Name Proverb from Erasmus: Today's proper name proverb from Erasmus is Spartam nactus es, hanc orna (English: You have Sparta as your inheritance; adorn her; from Adagia 2.5.1; These are words that Agamemnon speaks to his brother Menelaus in Euripides's play Telephus - the idea is that it is best to accept whatever is your lot and make the most of it).
Greek Proverb of the Day: Today's proverb is Ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δῶρα, κουκ ὀνήσιμα (English: The gifts of enemies are not gifts and they are not profitable - literally, the gifts of enemies are "un-gifts," ἄδωρα).
Today's image is from the beautiful Medici Aesop, illustrating the fable of the doctor and his dead patient: 899. Medicus et Mortuus. Medicus aegrotum curabat. Cum hic autem obiisset, ille ad efferentes dicebat, “Vir iste, si vino abstinuisset clysteribusque usus esset, profecto minime interiisset.” Tum quidam ex iis, qui aderant, protinus respondens, “Haud nunc,” ait, “O praeclare, oportebat ista te dicere cum iuvare nihil possunt, sed tunc aegrotum de his admonere debebas, cum uti poterat.” (source)
