Written by Elizabeth Sommers
Photography by Kevin Fellezs
San Francisco State University
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When I ask for permission to observe Professor Pamela Vaughn's Latin Class in the S.F.S.U. Collaboratory during Spring of 1998, I am especially interested because I know how much classical scholarship takes advantage of new technologies, having discovered more good scholarly websites and educational resources for the Classics than for any other field. Besides, I studied Latin in high school and want to see if I can remember anything whatsoever. As it turns out, I remember very little but have a great time anyhow.
Just before class begins I walk into the Collaboratory, its centerpiece a stately hand-crafted mahogany conference table carved into a v-shape. Each seat has a slender computer terminal placed on a rolling platform below the table itself, a design that seems to privilege human interaction, allowing face-to-face discussion and eye contact as well as on-line discussion.
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Pamela explains to me that the class has just completed the basic grammar of Latin and is now, in her words, "cut loose from the umbilical cord of the text." Her purpose in using the Collaboratory that day is to introduce students to poetry by Martial, Marcus Valerius Martialis, who lived roughly from 40-100 A.D. Using the epigrammatic genre, Martial wrote sophisticated work that is both satirical and clever, appropriate for adult learners while still within their grasp as new students of Latin. I find myself fascinated by the first and each subsequent poem.
Pamela begins by explaining the origins and form of epigrammatic poetry, which is usually but not always two to four lines long and generally both satirical and comical. She enjoys a remarkable rapport with her students, many of them graduate students in the Humanities, most very responsive to this lesson--partly about Latin, partly about Roman society, partly about the sly witty poems that serve as barbs, darts aimed at other poets, hypocritical peers and immoral leaders
The class is carefully introduced to Martial's poetry with a poem about a dinner party at which only the host eats, offering nothing to his guests. The poet suggests that this oaf eat poisonous mushrooms. Pamela explains that this poem plays on the old rumor about the Emperor Claudius dying after having been done in by poisonous mushrooms. She translates for the group: "a rude host invites people over to watch him eat delicacies! So our poet says, 'Here's an idea, eat those same poisonous mushrooms that did in Claudius.'"
After introducing students to Martial's poetry, Pamela puts the following poem up on the Collaboratory screen, a large screen easily viewed by each participant. She prefaces the poem with the comment that "legacy hunters" are the prey of this particular poet:
Petit Gemellus nuptias Maronillae
Martial 1.10
Working at the big screen, Pamela makes the connection between "Maronilla coughs" (tussit) and Robitussin, now a common cough medicine. She then places the cursor on each word, explaining grammatical conventions and satirical themes. Students seem engrossed in this poetry, as I am, interested in the complexity of the themes and capable of making creative translations.
Pamela elaborates more upon Martial's poetry--its insulting intent, invective lines, origins in Greek poetry, relevance to our own society, hendecasyllabic or eleven syllable form. "Supposing we were to publish this poetry today," she asks the class. "How could it be topical, relevant? Does this sort of behavior go on today? Do people marry for money?"
"Oh, yes," the class responds, most of us apparently having observed such liaisons. Pamela nods and goes on to point out that the right choice of names gets people thinking of the right sort of characters, reinforcing this with her next example.
She then asks students to start translating some lines she has placed on the screen. The movement from her own explanation to student interpretation seems natural, spontaneous. While students work she explains and elaborates upon the themes. Students sit at the mahogany table, terminals pulled out and keys clicking, while Pamela presides at the front of the room. Each student has a copy of the text in front of her and a copy on the big screen, in color, of both the original and translated works. They seem intrigued, diligent, glad to be in this lovely room with its stately wooden table and comfortable chairs. I feel lucky to join a group that has worked together all year, scholars who seem to be both meeting their goals and creating a humanistic learning environment with the help of their gifted instructor.
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Petit Gemellus Nupitas Maronilae
et cupit et instat et precatur et donat
Adeone pulchra est? Immo foedius nil est.
Quid ergo in illa petitur et placet? Tussit.
As Pamela points out to her rapt students, Martial's poetry is "the outline of every basic soap opera." She then helps students to translate the poem above, explaining that it is about the "this young girl Maronilla with the annoying cough":
Gemellus seeks the hand of Maronilla
And he longs and he urges and he begs and he bribes
Is she so beautiful? Nay, nothing is more foul.
What then does he see in her? She coughs.
Pamela explains that the relationship is promising not because Maronilla is so beautiful but because she is consumptive, a promising sign that she will die early and leave Gemellus a fortune. Many of us laugh at this unflattering but somehow reassuring glimpse at the darker side of human nature, so much the same after so many centuries. This seems an especially good lesson to me because so many of us both idealize and stereotype Roman society (or did before the "I, Claudius" series on PBS), seeing classical times as larger than life and so irrelevant to today.
Next: Prof. Vaughn's Latin Class, pg. 2
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