Reactions to the secret vice (was: Steg's

wonderful sig.)
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 15:42:20 -0600
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Barry Garcia wrote:

> DMorris12@aol.com writes:
> >  Just a plug for Latin: the greatest poet I ever read (well, in my humble
> >opinion) was this guy Catullus.  Now this was in high school, and so we
> >were'nt supposed to read the "racy" poems.  Of course, these were the
> >ones we
> >translated with glee, and I'll just say that there's at least one ancient
> >who
> >has a lot of..interesting...things to say.
>
>
> Hmm, maybe Catullus could change my mind. I just never got into it because
> it seemed so dry and clinical to me (i.e. like describing a medical
> condition when conversing in it).I'll have to search for his stuff .
That's the fault of Latin's position as a status language for
scholarship; if you had to talk about unmentionable body parts or
actions you could always talk about it in Latin and it sounded erudite
rather than naughty.

The side effect is that naughty Romans merely sound erudite. :)

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             edheil@postmark.net
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