For some years the Latin Department of the High School in Oak Park, Illinois, led by Miss Frances E. Sabin, has been engaged in preparing An Exhibit in Answer to the High School Boy's Question, What's the Use of Latin? Holding that the answer to the question must be concrete, that, in the words of Horace,

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem
quam quae sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus,

Miss Sabin and her colleagues gathered much material, consisting of wall maps, charts, photographs, newspaper clippings, cartoons, advertisements, etc., covering a very wide range of illustrative matter; this material was sifted, classified, and arranged on the walls of two large rooms in the Oak Park High School. The material was intended to demonstrate the following points:

I. Latin makes the English language more intelligible.

II. Latin and Greek are of supreme value to the mastery of literary English.

III. Latin is the foundation of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Roumanian. It is also a good basis for the study of language in general.

IV. Latin affords excellent mental training. V. Latin and Greek are essential to an intimate knowledge of art and decorative designs in general.

VI. Latin and Greek words form a large part of the terminology of science.

VII. Latin contributes more or less directly to success in the professions.

VIII. Latin illuminates textbooks of Roman history and gives a deeper insight into that great civilization from which our own has inherited so largely.

IX. Other ways in which the study of Latin makes the world about us more interesting.

In April, 1912, Miss Sabin transported the Exhibit to Cincinnati and displayed it in connection with the annual meeting of The Classical Association of the Middle West and South. It attracted so much attention and was accounted so valuable that a committee of five was appointed by the Association to consider ways and means for the publication of a manual with accompanying charts which should effectively spread the knowledge of the Exhibit and facilitate its use throughout the schools of the country. In May, 1912, Miss Sabin gave a brief account of the Exhibit in The Classical Journal, 7.349-351.

No. 7

As a result of conferences between the Committee of the Middle West Association and Miss Sabin a Manual of 126 pages, entitled The Relation of Latin to Practical Life, has been prepared by Miss Sabin, assisted by Miss Loura B. Woodruff.

Accompanying the Manual are 85 sheets of durable cardboard, 22 inches by 28 inches, some with printed headings, some left entirely blank, by the aid of which the material in the Manual may be set before the eyes of whole classes in a school or of the whole community within which the school is located. Before I attempt a description of the Exhibit I may notice that the interest manifested in it has led to its display in places widely removed from Oak Park; at a Classical meeting to be held in Syracuse, during the coming Christmas vacation, probably at the Central High Scohol, the Exhibit will be on view. The price of the Manual and the cards ($5) is not high, when one takes into account the enormous labor and expense involved in the preparation of the Exhibit.

Of the Manual 107 pages are devoted to the illustration of the nine main theses quoted above as conveying the points which the Exhibit was intended to demonstrate. To the first topic pages 6-16 are devoted page 6 suggests, by such examples as carbuncle, secretary, trivial, rival, exonerate, tent, lieutenant, manicure, that Latin helps us to see the real meaning of well-known English words; page 7, again, by such examples as veridical, gregarious, littoral, minatory, recondite, obloquy, points out that Latin is the key to the meaning of many unusual English words. On pages 9-10 there are passages from Burke, Addison, Shakespeare, Milton, Macaulay, George Eliot, and, finally, from newspapers and magazines, the Latin words in which are underlined. These pages make me think of a statement made to me once by a friend in the Middle West. As he was listening to President G. Stanley Hall condemn the Classics, with the argument, among others, that the percentage of Latin words in English has been very much overestimated, he was struck by the preponderance of Latin words in President Hall's own remarks. The local newspaper quoted in extenso Mr. Hall's remarks on the Latin element in English: my friend found that seventy per cent of the words used by Mr. Hall to condemn Latin were themselves Latin words. Reference may be made here to a table

showing the percentage of Latin words in English, quoted by Professor Lodge in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 6.137-138. On pages 11-12 there are suggestions for bringing home to pupils the value of Latin 'roots' as an aid to mastery of the meanings of English words. On page 13 there is a long list of common English words which are in reality Latin words wholly unchanged, such as census, animal, pauper, sinister, victor, terminus, genus. Page 14 shows how largely modern scientific words are derived from Latin and Greek. Here is a good place to point out that, though the Exhibit is concerned primarily with Latin, Greek matters inevitably figure in it. Page 15 shows how a knowledge of Latin helps one to spell correctly in English: compare e.g. culpable with culpa, portable with portare, pessimist with pessimus, separate with separare and separatus. Finally, on page 16, it is made plain that the Latin student understands or at least has excellent opportunity to understand such common abbreviations as A.D., cf., e.g., ib., ibid., scil., q.v. (on the need of such knowledge see Professor Dunn's paper in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 4.130-132).

To division III pages 34-44 are devoted. On page 35 there is a table showing the extent to which Latin words appear in Spanish, Italian, French, and English examples are fructus, fruta, frutto, fruit, fruit; honor, honor, onore, honneur, honor; flos, flor, flore, fleur, flower. Page 37 gives a page from a French magazine, with the Latin words underlined. Page 38 shows how a knowledge of Latin simplifies many points in French grammar. In this section, too, the extent to which Latin words figure in Italian and Spanish is made visually apparent. The way in which musical terms become intelligible through knowledge of Latin is also shown.

There is not space to show how ingeniously, under V and IX, for example, it is brought home to the pupil how much a knowledge of Latin (and Greek) will add to his appreciation of such common things in his life as magazine covers, advertisements of all sorts, cartoons in newspapers, etc. The Appendix, 116-126, answers certain common objections to Latin.

From the foregoing description some idea can be derived of the material in the Manual. Scattered through the book are dozens of quotations from printed utterances or letters (written, with a view to publication, to teachers in the Oak Park School or to pupils there), in which faith in the value of Latin is expressed. For obvious reasons the quotations are from persons not engaged in the teaching of Latin.

Of the large cards some contain headings corresponding to those in the Manual. To these cards teachers and pupils may transfer, in whole or in part, the material in the Manual, or, far better, they may inscribe on the cards supplementary material gathered by themselves. The blank cards will be especially serviceable for the recording of new

material. Pupils like to help in such matters, and, by helping, will derive much profit.

It is easy to see, if one looks through the Manual, how immense was the labor involved in the preparation of the Exhibit. Miss Sabin, her colleagues, and the pupils in the School conducted, for a long time, an active correspondence with hosts of persons in many different walks of life. To collect the material, to sort it, to determine which of it should be used was a most exacting task. Not all of the results will appeal to every one into whose hands the Manual may come. But if every one who sees the Manual will remember that the Exhibit was intended primarily for the High School pupil, with his limited experience and narrow horizon, and for the High School pupil's parents, who, it may be fairly said, in some cases in our country need education even more than the High School pupil himself, if he will remember, too, that the Exhibit is using in a way the (moving) picture method which has recently been so effective, here and abroad, he will agree with the writer of the editorial in The Classical Journal for October last, that congratulations are due to The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, for helping to make the Exhibit available, through publication, and in far greater measure to Miss Sabin, her colleagues, and their pupils, for working out into concrete, visual form a sound pedagogical idea. C.K.

ARCHAEOLOGY IN ROME SINCE 1908

It was in 1908 that the Italian government voted six million lire toward the creation of a Zona Monumentale or Passeggiata Archeologica, to consist of a magnificent system of parks and avenues in the 'ancient quarter' of Rome, including the Forum, Palatine, Colosseum, Baths of Titus and Trajan, north and west slopes of the Caelian, east and west slopes of the lesser Aventine, and the valley between these hills to the three gates of the wall of Aurelian. The hope was expressed that this work would see completion in 1911'. Reports also went abroad that the unsightly gas-works were to be removed from the Vallis Murcia, in order that the Circus Maximus might be splendidly reconstructed and used for games. The Circus has not been reconstructed, though the gas-works have been removed, and the old gas-buildings will presently be demolished. Work on the Zona itself was carried forward at the outset with such mistaken zeal that its avenues were on the point of being graded before archaeologists were given the opportunity of excavating them for remains, and it promised to deserve the epithet W. A. Becker once applied to Nardini, atrox ac paene exitiabilis topographiae Romanae calamitas. But the protests of the archaeologists were eventually effective, and the parliamentary commission

1 See THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 3.147.

on June 10, 1910, passed a resolution urging the government to provide for the excavation of land included in the Zona. Such excavation has since been successfully carried on, notably within the limits of the Thermae Antoninianae, where remains have been found of a splendid colonnade bordering the gardens at the back, and, under the stadium, of one of the largest and most complete temples of Mithra yet known. The foundations of the Porta Capena were discovered in 1909 during the work on the boulevard connecting the baths with the Palatine.

In the Forum the perennial excavations in the Basilica Aemilia brought definite results in 1912, when remains of the west wall were found, separated by some three feet of earth from a thin layer of ashes below, showing that the building was not restored, as hitherto supposed, after the fire of the fifth century A.D., but lay buried until the collapse of the wall some three hundred years later. In the excavations of 1908 on the Summa Sacra Via traces of ancient horrea were found among the numerous remains of the great Frangipani fortress, which was probably built about 1000 A.D. To the right of the Clivus Palatinus a shrine of the Lares Publici was discovered, and near the Arch of Titus a house of the late Republic or early Empire. Two walls under the Arch of Titus are thought by Commendatore Boni to belong to the earlier temple of Iuppiter Stator. In 1909 a dozen new tombs of the early Sepulcretum were examined, one of them the best preserved of those yet found in the Forum. Pais has proposed the theory that the Forum and the Regia were not the center of Rome's political life till well into the fourth century B.C., basing his conclusion partly on the proximity of the early necropolis and on his belief that the temple of Castor, when dedicated in 484 B.C., must have been outside the pomerium. Regarding the disputed question of the exact location of the Fornix Fabianus, Piganiol has conjectured that it was attached to the south side of the Regia, spanning the narrow street between that structure and the Atrium Vestae.

E.

In the Forum of Nerva, it has been shown positively that the base of the westernmost of the two standing columns familiarly known to the Romans as Le Colonnacce is 16 feet, 4 inches below the present level.

The Palatine has continued to be a center of active interest. Pigorini has refuted the conclusions of Vaglieri and Cozza regarding the so-called 'necropolis' of the 1907 excavations. What they take to be tombs he calls primitive dwellings, declaring that the necropolis of the early inhabitants of the Palatine still remains to be found. In 1910 Boni reexamined the so-called Lupercal, finding a number of terra-cotta heads of Attis, which may have fallen from the temple of the Magna Mater above. In October, 1911, excavations were begun on the Domus Flavia, with the object of learning the whole plan of

the imperial dwelling. In the atrium was found an octagonal basin or impluvium 60 feet across by two and one-half feet deep, originally lined with marble. It had been broken through by previous excavators, In the triclinium a granite pavement with a border of Numidian marble, the whole covering 1000 square meters, was cleared, the finest yet found in the palace. In the next year a pavement of opus Alexandrinum was uncovered, proving that this technique was used before the time of Alexander Severus, Foundations of Nero's Golden House were also among the finds reported for 1912, and in connection with them arrangements which are interpreted by Commendatore Boni as twelve ancient lifts. One of the most recent discoveries on the Palatine is that of a luxurious private house containing a bath with a marble waterfall. The evidence is slight for its suggested identification with the house of Julia, daughter of Augustus. The question of the location of the Apollo temple is still a mooted one. Pinza's theory (Bullettino 38 [1910], 3-41), identifying it with the long-stepped podium commonly assigned to Iuppiter Victor, has divided the field with the old belief which places it at the northeast corner of the hill, as yet unexcavated.

Foreigners have been permitted to excavate in Italy since 1906, and it was under French auspices that Bigot conducted his useful work in 1908 and 1909 in determining the dimensions and the course of the walls of the Circus Maximus. He gives the total length as 600 meters and the width, exclusive of certain great additions on the slopes of the enclosing hills, as 141 meters. He found neither side straight, and the irregularities on the side toward the Aventine very marked. The streets running the length of each side were, he believes, ultimately spanned with arches, in order that the higher tiers of seats might be carried further up the slopes of both Palatine and Aventine. All this suggests an irregularity of appearance very different from the conventional plans given in the handbooks.

The topographical find that has perhaps been most talked about during the past five years is that of the Lucus Furrinae and the sanctuary of the Syrian gods, on the Janiculan site partly covered by the Villa Wurts (formerly Sciarra). The historical interest in the location of the grove lies in the fact that C. Gracchus was there murdered in 121 B.C. Inscriptions found as early as July, 1906, mentioning Furrina, Adadus, and Iuppiter Maleciabrudes, suggested the true nature of the site to Gauckler, whose inferences were scouted by no less an authority than Ch. Hülsen. The excavations, however, which were conducted by M. Gauckler in 1908 and 1909 completely vindicated his published opinions. The sanctuary consists of an open quadrangular court or

See R. V. D. Magoffin in THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 2.244-246.

See Gauckler's recently published work, Le Sanctuaire Syrien du Janicule (Paris, 1912).