The Classics Society Mk II

Tbh, if you really want to capture what Catullus was saying, I'd stick with something like that.
That line has been described as, "One of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin — or in any other language, for that matter."
Wikipedia has an alternative translation, the wonderfully smooth and romantic, "I will sodomize you and face-**** you."

Here is a list of Catullus poems with notional titles so you can scroll through and pick those which appeal to your feral side.
And underneath is a translation of the lot of them - should keep you occupied ferra bit
A quick search for the word 'whore' flags up poems 6, 10, 99 and 110, for example.


EDIT: Oh, and you're actually not doing your EPQ a week before the deadline!
You're part of a rare breed.
But it will definitely pay off.
Those in my sixth form fell into two camps: the early ones and the late ones - and the divide between the marks was pretty astonishing.
(I know this because my gakaerafjasodipfjpao of a school published everyone's mark on their stupid website, without even letting us know that that they'd put them there - or even what our own scores actually were!).

Out of curiosity, why Cambridge? Most people tend to go for oxford

Because I haven't got the languages at A-level, and I like the way the Cambridge course has a prelim and then (as far as I can tell) sticks you in with the normal people and teaches you the same course. Plus our head of sixth pushes people towards Cambridge anyway (bad track record with admissions tests at Oxford, although I think the language aptitude test for classics is very similar at both); Cambridge is closer, which my parents like (I don't really ); and when I went to Oxford for the classics open day I didn't really like the city (because I got lost, mostly). Primarily it's the course structure, the other factors just mean I'm more certain about my choice I do recognise that Oxford is better overall, but I think Cambridge is better for me.

I've always been told by lecturers to avoid trying to draw similarities between the Roman and British Empires because it's terribly old fashioned. In addition to Gibbon, try finding more recent journal articles etc (ask if you need help with this, as uni students have access to loads of articles )

I've always been told by lecturers to avoid trying to draw similarities between the Roman and British Empires because it's terribly old fashioned. In addition to Gibbon, try finding more recent journal articles etc (ask if you need help with this, as uni students have access to loads of articles )

Doesn't oxford have courses for people who don't know the languages?
Fair enough! Good luck with your applications. If Cambridge funds my PhD I might see you there
What college do you want?

I'm actually not too keen on a completely different course, I like that Cambridge basically get you to A-level Latin in a year (in a small group, it's like ten places or something) and then you join the incoming three-year students (sure, they'll be a year younger, but I see it as like a gap-year to learn Latin but with all the benefits of a first year student at Cambridge!)
I'm torn between Churchill and King's. I thought I wanted King's, and they have a big Classics presence, but at the Churchill open day I could really see myself there. I've been reliably informed that Churchill are big on really high UMS, so I'll let my results decide for me which I apply to; and I think classicists get an interview at a second college anyway, so it's slightly less risky going for an oversubscribed one (I know, ignore the stats, but this is the justification I have to give to my teachers!)
Good luck with the funding then? When do you find out?

That's because there really aren't that many similarities when you put away the tinted victorian school boy glasses and look at the evidence in context and critically. Plus, let's be honest, most Classicists are useless bastards.

I'm actually not too keen on a completely different course, I like that Cambridge basically get you to A-level Latin in a year (in a small group, it's like ten places or something) and then you join the incoming three-year students (sure, they'll be a year younger, but I see it as like a gap-year to learn Latin but with all the benefits of a first year student at Cambridge!)
I'm torn between Churchill and King's. I thought I wanted King's, and they have a big Classics presence, but at the Churchill open day I could really see myself there. I've been reliably informed that Churchill are big on really high UMS, so I'll let my results decide for me which I apply to; and I think classicists get an interview at a second college anyway, so it's slightly less risky going for an oversubscribed one (I know, ignore the stats, but this is the justification I have to give to my teachers!)
Good luck with the funding then? When do you find out?

That's because there really aren't that many similarities when you put away the tinted victorian school boy glasses and look at the evidence in context and critically. Plus, let's be honest, most Classicists are useless bastards.

I'm not even seeing many similarities, it's irritating. My question (adjusted by my teacher, I think it's better than it was apart from the Gibbon focus ) is something like "when Gibbon wrote x how far was he holding up a mirror to his own society" so I don't have to go far from Gibbon in terms of the Roman history because it's more about what he thought. I like that I can argue about the massive differences, but I'm worried that it'll be a bit ridiculous if it isn't accepted as historical truth that he was making such a comparison!

And thanks for the poems, I'll stagger my reading of them so I have something to look forward to when it all gets a bit too much for me

Harsh words.

I don't think that the comparison is entirely redundant, since the British Empire was, of course, modelled in many ways on the Roman (hence the Victorian specs), ideologically as well as administratively. I mean, civil servants in India had to pass exams in Latin and Greek right up until the partition. (Although French civil servants still have to answer questions on literature, which Sarko tried to get rid of to some uproar.) One similarity at least was that the British supported local aristos and had a very sparse administrative structure which was just overlaid on top of the existing social structure -- and if anything went untoward, then obviously the military would come to restore order, a bit like how the Roman legions were used to quell disorder within the Empire. Of course, it's more interesting to see the ways in which the Brits distorted, adapted and idealised the classical models etc. though. But it was a very different situation, not least because Europe had become a balkanised group of strong nationalistic, competing states that relied on foreign resources to fuel their growth. But then I'm not much of a historian, so...

Historian or not you always come out with some erudite and mark hitting. They might seem harsh by and large its true, I've seen so much stuff in respected scholarly publications and even done some myself that in another discipline I would never get away with...

It's not just the very large problem of arguing with ideology, it's the way Classicists are trained now a days too, for example you can take a degree only by doing literature, which is NOT how Classics should function and the reason the subject is guilty of such idiocies. Then you get things like people ignoring evidence: take Alexander the Great, not only is he idealised by fat useless bastards sitting in their chairs with dreams of military grandeur but how many Classicists are aware of the vaaaaaast amounts of Mesopotamian evidence? Exactly...

What do you mean by the last sentence btw?

Classicists, I am woefully ignorant of the literature side to ancient history (which does nothing but hinder my studies!), so can anyone recommend a list of Greek and Roman literature to read? I'll have to start to with the free versions, but in September I'll be back at uni and so able to access decent translations.

The whole of extant Greek tragedy only takes a day or two of reading to knock off in English if you read the whole day, start there.

You must be a bloody fast reader, since there are over 30 extant plays.

Maybe I was being a little over-optimistic but it definitely shouldn't take more than a week. 19 plays by Euripides (counting Rhesus), 7 by Aesychlus (counting Prometheus Bound) and 7 by Sophocles. Each takes maybe an hour and a half to read if you're a slow reader. When I go on reading binges and have the day off work I'll do 14 hours reading in a day, if I'm at work that'll go down to maybe 7. If I'm not on a reading binge and were doing Greek plays I'd still do one a night or so.

Classicists, I am woefully ignorant of the literature side to ancient history (which does nothing but hinder my studies!), so can anyone recommend a list of Greek and Roman literature to read? I'll have to start to with the free versions, but in September I'll be back at uni and so able to access decent translations.

Depends on era and what you want. In general you really should get yourself up on the literature which had a massive impact at the time.

It's alright people shouting out names like "Homer! Virgil! Cicero!" with their school boy eagerness, and indeed these are authors which we all should get acquainted with at some point but simply streaming out names like this betrays an ignorance of the literature in question, its influences and its place in society.

It's all very well shouting out Homer for example but Apollonios had a far, far, greater impact on Virgil than he if you really want to look at the Roman side of things. In fact you can not do any meaningful work on Roman Literature without knowledge of the Alexandrians. Full stop.

Everyone knows Plato and (some) Aristotle but who can profess acquaintance with Empedokles or Labanios? Just because we've blown Plato and Aristotle up into these huge looming messiahs doesn't mean it was necessarily that way in antiquity and if you want to understand the way Ancient philosophy progressed and functioned well then you had better get stuck in there.

So it entirely depends on what era. The short of it is read anything you can get your hands on. The long version is 1) Contextualise. 2) Avoid a schoolboy/Wikipedia approach.

There are texts far more representative of the literary scene at the time and interested for a Historian than the most common names. How many people have read Statius for example? Considered the poet par excellence by the Romans of later periods yet ignored nowadays largely due to the opinions of our predecessors who for some reason felt able to dictate what was "tasteful and poetic" better than the Ancients did themselves.