Pyrrha's
Roman
Pages
title page![[the real Medusa!]](mabig1.gif)
I have now taken my video and Handbook 'out-of-print' - the technical quality is not what people expect these days, even though the content is still unique. Several of the comments below refer to items which I have transferred to this website.
ROMAN WRITING UNRAVELLED
The video begins with some artefacts from museums at Devizes, Cirencester and Bath, with pupils from Devizes School making models and writing a guidebook to a Roman site.
After a culinary interlude with recipes from Apicius, we look at rooftiles, inscriptions including the paternoster wordsquare at Cirencester, curses and altars at the Roman Baths museum at Bath, a building inscription from Wroxeter and coins.
All this leads up to a discussion of word-endings : why did Albus sign his pots 'Albi'; why is a building dedicated 'Hadriano'?
Next we look at how Roman poets used the flexibility of their language to create particular effects by means of extracts from Catullus, Horace and Virgil.
I am grateful to the artist Di Lorriman for her inspired drawings in this section, which really convey the meaning vividly.
The final part of the video is about memorial stones, with an imaginative recreation and reconstruction of a Roman mason's workshop.
We made our own full-scale replica of a Roman cavalryman's tombstone, with the help of the Devizes stonemason Jim Winchcombe, and we later presented this to the Ermine Street Guard.
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Despite its uneven technical quality ( it was made using schoolchildren, not professional actors, and with grants from Classical organisations and English Heritage) the video was received well by the Classical world :
"...Excellent - keeps people glued to their seats!"
Mr. M. A. Stokes, Rowley's House Museum , Shrewsbury.
"An imaginative reconstruction of living Latin."
Professor T.P. Wiseman, University of Exeter.
"Colleagues will be pleased to hear that the video is now on sale. A great deal of thought and hard work has gone into this production, and there is something here for all levels of a Latin or Classical Civilisation course."
Mr. W. Ball, Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Visual Aids Committee.
"...makes tombstones come alive! After watching this video, students of all ages will get more out of visiting museums and Roman sites.
The central section illustrates a very original and striking visual approach to teaching word order in poetry."
Dr. L. Hardwick, Classics Dept., The Open University.
"It was great fun making this video and I think it shows how interesting Latin really is - it's not at all like people think."
Jenny Meacham, former student.