Exams in Rome!

Dr. D wished us great success on our exam. It was grueling.

It wasn't that it was difficult so much as that the things he tested on were sometimes obscure. The subject matter was beneath the surface, so instead of going, "I've got a method and I'm going to use it," it was, "Well, I can see a few things going on here/I'm utterly lost/I'm going to stare at the chalkboard for ten minutes puzzling through the minute facets of my professor's entangled thought process until I know just how to answer." It took nearly the whole two hours to answer 16 questions to my satisfaction. 16! About half of them stuck me in some way, which means that I spent an average of, say, 12 minutes on those questions! I could've wrote 4 essays in that time. Eaten a bucket of ice cream! Seen a short movie! Walked the greenway around to the agricultural campus and back!

Also, I've been working on the Fifth Legion's Roman gear, getting ready for Rossini fest. It's held yearly by the Knoxville Symphonic Opera, or something like that. They'll have both civilian and martial Romans there, as well as a load of street vendors and other activities.

We're getting some shields ready. We've been working on them for two months now. I wasn't able to help in the early part, the shield pressings and the application of the leather face and cloth backing, but I painted almost all of them, did the detail work on the wings (all freehand), hammered out a few of the shield bosses, and sewed on 1.7 leather shield rims. It makes the fingers quite prickly, but it was fun. Our shield page is here. Robert has researched their historical authenticity fairly well. I just think it's really cool.

And of course, as I'm studying for Restoration Literature, I run over Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Ah, he uses Latin phrases, which are of course glossed, but it's still slightly frustrating that I don't understand them.

"Si melira dies, ut vina, poemata reddit,
Scire velim, pretium chartis quotus arroget annus?"

The translation?

"If poems improve with every passing day, as wine does, I should like to know which year is best for literature." (Horace, Epistles 2.1.34-35)

Oh Horace, you're after my heart, just a language or several too soon.