Cultural Lesson: Islamic Burial Practices

I did this lesson on Islamic burial practices with my Latin IV class last year as we were reading my publication Nasreddin Chogia: Fabellae. One of the fables alludes to Islamic burial practices. Here is my Latin adaptation of the fable:

Chōgia ōlim hieme in silvā ligna caedēns, “Algeō!,” inquit, “Ergō, mortuus sum!”

Ergō, Chōgia cum dēcubuisset tamquam mortuus, “Efferendus sum!,” inquit.

Chōgia cum domum rediisset, tum, “Mortuus sum,” inquit uxōrī, “in silvā. Iubē amīcōs mē efferre.”

Deinde Chōgia cum in silvam rediisset, dēcubuit.

Cum uxor Chōgiae in tabernam vēnisset, “Nasreddīn Chōgia,” inquit, “in silvā mortuus est.”

Amīcī Chōgiae, “Quī scīs?,” inquiunt.

Uxor, “Quia,” inquit, “Chōgia domum rediit et haec mihi dīxit.”

(A translation for readers who do not read Latin:)

Once upon a time, Hoca, while chopping firewood in the woods in the wintertime, said, "I am cold! Therefore, I am dead!"

So Hoca, when he had lay down as if he were dead, said, "I must be carried out (i.e. for burial)!"

So Hoca, when he had returned home, then he said to his wife, "I died in the woods. Tell my friends to carry me out (i.e. for burial)."

Then Hoca, when he had returned to the woods, lay down.

When Hoca's wife had arrived at the coffeehouse, she said, "Nasreddin Hoca has died in the woods."

Hoca's friends said, "How do you know?"

The wife said, "Because Hoca came back home and told me this."

After reading this fable with my students, I wanted students to understand Islamic burial practices and why Nasreddin Hoca feels such a strong sense of urgency to be buried when he believes that he is dead. For this lesson, students located QR codes posted around our building at school. These QR codes linked to a sentence in Latin and a clue to the location of the next clue. All of the sentences described steps involved in a traditional Islamic burial. Students not only located the QR codes and copied down the Latin sentences, but also put the sentences in chronological order.

The sentences for each step. I glossed new terms in Latin or in English in parentheses:

1. Muslimus periit. (A Muslim has died.)

2. Cadaver (corpus mortui) inter 24 horas sepeliendum (in terra ponendum) est. [The corpse (the body of a deceased person) must be buried (placed in the ground) within 24 hours.

3. Cadaver necessariis (e.g. sororibus, fratribus, filiis, matri, patri, etc.) lavandum est. [The corpse must be washed by relatives (e.g. sisters, brothers, children, mother, father, etc.).]

4. Cadaver involvendum est. (The corpse must be wrapped up.)

5. Cadaver in arca ponitur. (The corpse is placed in a coffin.)

6. Cadaver ad meschitam effertur. (The corpse is brought to a mosque.)

7. Cadaver in sepulcretum effertur. (The corpse is brought to a cemetery.)

8. Eis qui adsunt orandum est. (Those in attendance must pray.)

9. Cadaver in sepulcro sepeliendum (in terra ponendum) est. [The corpse must be buried (placed in the ground)].

10. Cadaver in Meccam advertendum est. (The corpse must be turned towards Mecca.)

After putting the steps in order, students then wrote in Latin summarizing the fable in their own words in Latin and explaining why Hoca felt such a strong sense of urgency to be buried.

The worksheet:

Is It Attested? Online Resources for Greek and Latin

Most writers of Latin and Ancient Greek today strive to appropriately use and imitate vocabulary and expressions found in classical texts. Surprisingly, what is often presented (and taken for granted) in textbooks is contrary to what classical authors actually use. Some examples: 

• The simplification of the differences between the use of the perfect vs. the imperfect. In my observations, this has led to a disproportionate use of the imperfect. For example, classical authors use the perfect of possum more frequently than the imperfect. 
• Many textbooks teach that the perfect stem of certain 3rd and 4th declension verbs like audio and eo ends in either -i- or -iv-. Did you know that the audiv- stem is more common than audi-? Or that the reverse is true for eo!

But how can I search the corpora of Greek and Latin literature to find out what authors actually used? The two resources below allow you to search the works classical authors.

For Latin: The Packard Humanities Institute's Classical Latin Texts (called PHI Latin Texts or simply PHI)
Pros:

• Search by word, phrase, or proximity
• Easy to access, no account required
• Fast search results

 Cons:

• Christian authors and post-classical authors are excluded 😢
• Cannot search by lemma (i.e. see all the usages of all the forms of a word at once)

For Greek and Latin: Perseus Digital Library Scaife Viewer
Pros:

• Search by word, phrase, proximity, and lemma (for Greek only)
• Ancient, medieval, and modern authors are included, even scholia! 😁

Cons:

• Requires a (free) account
• Search results are slower than on PHI
• Inconsistent appearance of search results (i.e. some results appear as one line of text, others as massive chunks of text that require lots of scrolling)

In addition to these, there is (for Greek) the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), but I have limited experience with it. The TLG also requires an account and you have to pay to access all of its features. 

If you know of any others, please share them with me!

Roman Toilet Humor Activity

As of tomorrow (April 16), I will be one full month into digital learning...and still over a month to go! 

As our students and we worry about COVID-19 symptoms, let's turn to a lighthearted activity on bodily functions instead! Back when we were in school, I had a "fun Friday" of learning about ancient Roman toilet humor. Why? We had read in my adapted translation into Latin from Greek of Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes the scene in which Apollo, angry at Mercury/Hermes for stealing his cattle, picks up the latter (who is barely a day old) and Mercury/Hermes sneezes and farts (which, I learned from my students, is aptly called a "snart") in his brother's face. Plus I just love working on silly and irreverent topics with students (you can shove your serious AP themes, College Board!). 💩

For this activity, students matched pictures around the classroom with various (some adapted) quotes from the ancient Romans about various bodily functions. The quotes are divided into three categories: the (in)famous Ostia bathhouse philosopher fresco quotes, ancient Roman graffiti and inscriptions, and quotes from ancient Roman literature (Martial and Petronius). 

The first category consists of quotes painted on the walls of a bathhouse in Ostia, Rome's port city. The quotes appear next to paintings of famous Greek philosophers and consist of words of wisdom for dealing with bodily functions. To put it in 2020 terms, imagine posting quotes from Einstein, Isaac Newton, or Maya Angelou that give advice on defecation and flatulence! These are three I included:

• Solon patted his belly to have a nice dump.
• Thales recommended that people should strain when they are having a hard time crapping.
• Clever Chilon taught us how to fart silently. 

The next category comes from ancient Roman graffiti and inscriptions. One interesting cultural insight to share with students is that relieving oneself on tombstones and graves was a common practice in the ancient Mediterranean world. Why? Burial was usually forbidden within settlements, so tombs were erected outside of towns alongside roads. When one travels from town to town with few or no rest stops, nature inevitably calls and graves provide a place to do one's business discretely. 

The last category consists of adapted quotes from the ancient Roman authors Martial and Petronius, both known for writing about the obscene side of ancient Roman culture. These are the quotes I included:

• I see nothing else that makes me believe that you are a friend than the fact that you usually fart in front of me.
• [This man] heads for the [toilet] seats and farts ten times and twenty times.
• Eat lettuce and soft mallows because you have the look of constipation.
• A kisser will kiss someone with a fever and someone while they're crying. And they will even give a kiss to someone while they are crapping.
• Therefore if any of you wanted to relieve themselves, it is nothing to be ashamed of. I believe that there is no greater form of torture than holding it in...nor do I forbid anyone in the dining room from doing what could make them feel better and what doctors tell us not to hold in.

Below are the materials for this activity. The first two pages are a two-sided worksheet for students (the quotes on the front and a glossary on the back). Next are the pictures I posted around the room. Enjoy! Stay safe and healthy!

Dream Interpretation Activity

In Latin III this year we have been reading Andrew Olimpi's novella Perseus et Rex Malus. One of the characters, Danae, has a strange dream that results in her...(spoiler alert) getting pregnant.

More on that later. 

About a year or so ago, I read J.C. McKeown's delightful A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World's Greatest Empire, a book, which - as the name suggests - offers amusing facts about the ancient Romans and interesting insights into Roman culture that the literary and material sources provide. I would recommend the book to teachers and anyone with an interest in ancient Rome. I enjoyed it so much that I can't wait to read the other books in McKeown's series on ancient Greece and ancient Greek and Roman medicine. Of course I would also recommend Anthony Kaldellis' A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World's Most Orthodox Empire so that you may get a comprehensive overview of Greek and Roman civilization. 😉


Just by coincidence, I was going through my bookmarks in McKeown's book a few weeks ago and stumbled upon his chapter titled "Religion and Superstition." There I had marked a set of amusing ancient Roman interpretations of different types of dreams from the second-century AD writer Artemidorus' Oneirocritica (or Interpretation of Dreams). Here are my "school appropriate" favorites (translated by McKeown):

• Dreaming that one is blind is favorable for runners, since a runner who takes the lead in a race is like a blind man in that he does not see his fellow runners...Such dreams are auspicious for poets also, since they need total calm when they are going to compose, and loss of sight would ensure that they are not distracted by shapes of colors (1.26).
•  Dreaming about turnips, rutabagas, and pumpkins presages disappointed hopes, since they are massive but lack nutritional value. They signify surgery and woundings with iron implements for sick people and travelers, respectively, since these vegetables are cut into slices (1.67).
• Dreaming that one is eating books foretells advantage to teachers, lecturers, and anyone who earns his livelihood from books, but everyone else it means sudden death (2.45). (I'm sure this is a favorite among Latin teachers!) 
• Dreaming that one is dead or is being crucified foretells marriage for a bachelor (2.49, 53).
• Dreaming that one is eating many onions is favorable for a sick man, for it means he will recover and mourn for someone else, whereas dreaming that one is eating just a few onions signifies death, since the dying shed just a few tears, whereas those who mourn shed many (4.55).
• A man dreamed that he had a mouth with big, beautiful teeth in his rectum, and that through it he spoke, ate, and performed all the normal functions of a mouth. He was subsequently exiled from his homeland for making incautious statements. I have not included the reasons, for the outcome was easily predictable (5.68).  

There is one more that I love, but you'll need to check out McKeown's book for that one!

Back to my Latin III classes...since we had just read about a strange dream in the novella, I decided to create an activity around ancient Roman interpretations of dreams, as published by Artemidorus, and have students get their own dream interpreted. 

Based on my choose your own adventure activity from this past spring, I created a similar activity in Google Forms. 

First, students access the form electronically through a link or QR code. 

Second, students select a dream that they "had." The options are food, eating books, a bodily condition, or death. I tried to include as many pictures as possible throughout the form to aid comprehension.

The first page of the form

Next, students answer various questions based on their original and subsequent responses until they get an ancient Roman interpretation for their strange dream. 

How did I use this activity in my classroom?

I used this activity as a warm-up last week, the crazy, absence-filled week before our (week-long) Thanksgiving break. 

Students completed the activity on their phones and submitted their results both electronically and on paper. 

I provided some helpful vocabulary and the QR code for activity on my daily warm-up worksheet.

My warm-up worksheet

When everyone had submitted their results, everyone in the class quickly shared their results. I also elaborated on the interpretations and why they made sense. That onion one is especially profound! 

In my second period class, most students were told that they were going to get married soon, so apparently that class said that they dreamed about death! Should I be concerned?

If you'd like to try out my form to see all the options and embedded questions, click here.

Scisne? Survey

This past week, I created a survey for my Latin I classes to complete to reinforce the verbs scio (I know) and nescio (I don't know). Within the past year, I have also been invested in creating activities for additional opportunities for input other than the usual (e.g. reading stories, listening exercises, TPR, et al.), especially activities that draw upon my students' lives and experiences, encourage convivial interaction between students, and allow for students for learn more about one another. 

So what does the survey look like?

Day 1: I created a Google Form with each question asking "Scisne...?" (Do you know how...?) with different skills. All students had to do was pull out their phones or use the student computer in my room and answer scio or nescio for each question. The skills ranged from building a fire to driving to cooking to dancing to playing an instrument to using different forms of technology to using different forms of social media. 

Day 2: I created a Google Slideshow with the results of the survey from all three of my Latin I classes. We then discussed the results.

One bonus form of input from this: exposure to and repetition of large numbers! When I was studying Latin, I barely learned numbers 1-10, let alone anything above 10, so I'm so proud that my students were able to understand the numbers! Latin numbers also behave a little differently compared English numbers. For example, for 18, 19, 28, 29, 38, 39, etc., Latin prefers to count down, so eighteen is duodeviginti (two-down-from-twenty), nineteen is undeviginti (two-down-from-twenty), and so on. This is challenging for most students (I still struggle with this because I've had to teach myself the numbers - I even keep a print-out of the pages on numbers from Allen & Greenough on my desk at all times!), but most of my students were able to follow along and understand with my guidance.

The data from the survey contained some surprising and not-so-surprising results. For example, most of my students know how to use Snapchat and Instagram, but not Facebook (that's for us old people 👴). Half of my students know how to play an instrument.

This activity also provided ample opportunities for circling and community building. For example, I asked if students knew how to speak another language (they had to decide if that included Latin or not 😉), so I asked around to find out which languages my students can speak. The results were exciting - Amharic, Gujarati, Arabic, Spanish, French! I also circled for other questions, like "What instrument do you know how to play?" and "What do you know how to cook?" 

If you'd like to see the slideshow, I have embedded it below:

Quis nuntium misit ad me? Choose Your Own Adventure

This past week, I created an activity for my Latin I classes with the following scenario: someone has sent you a strange text message, so how will you react?! What unfolds next depends on how students choose to respond (from a set of possible responses) to the mysterious message, for they will receive different follow-up questions. In the end, the students find out who sent the message - with a surprise twist!

The mysterious message: "I found a body." 😱

The format: a text message (question) & the possible responses

Here are some examples of the question and the answers to choose from:

"ego invēni corpus." (I found a body)

• You should send, "Who are you?"
• You should send, "Who are you?" 😡
• You should send, "Who are you?" 😘
• You should ignore the message.

The 'sender' will respond based on the answer.


"vide sub mensa. quid invēnisti?" (See under the table. What did you find?)

• You should send, "I found money."
• You should send, "I found dust."
• You should send, "I found a stylus."
• You should send, "I found a key."

"sume rem! quid est?" (Pick up the object. What is it? [The adventure at this point had led to finding an object in a cabinet.])

• You should send, "The object is a stylus."
• You should send, "The object is money."
• You should send, "The object is blood."
• You should send, "The object is a book."

The response to the question above will determine the final sequence of events. 

Why?

• I love active use of the target language, especially for fun and quirky purposes!
• To expose students to target vocabulary, such as debere "should," mittere "to send," and invenire "to find."
• To expose students to "real-life" applications of the language with questions like "Ubi es?" ("Where are you?"), "Quid invenisti?" ("What did you find?").
• To offer choice to students as they practice reading Latin.

What students do:

• Access the Google Form with the questions.
• Write each question that they encounter and the answer that they choose for every question.

The packet for students to fill in the questions and answers:



How did students react? They loved it and they shared their choices with their friends! It was a fun change of pace.

What would I change for next time?

• Use this activity after students have already acquired the vocabulary, rather than to introduce and reinforce vocabulary. Students said that it would have even more fun if they did not have to refer to the lexical guide I made.
• Use this activity with Latin II to review Latin I vocabulary.

Post-Winter Break Vocabulary Recall

The holidays have come and gone, including my winter break, which consisted mostly of...

and

and

Back to reality, I always like to do some review before moving on to new material. One no-prep activity that I have loved doing (second time, as of today) is asking students to generate a list of as many words as they can remember in Latin. This is a great activity for after winter break because it gets students back into thinking in Latin and, best of all, it reminds them that they know more Latin than they think they do. This reassurance is essential for level one learners, which is why I love to do it with my Latin I classes the most. It's also great to use at the beginning of the school year with level two for many of the same reasons (which I did last year). 

Here's how I structure the activity:

• I randomly divide the class into groups of 3. (I use this website to create the groups. If you know of an even better one - let me know!) I will adjust the groups to make them more mixed by ability and gender and to prevent behavioral issues.
• Each group gets a whiteboard, a marker, and a rag.
• Each group must come up with as many Latin words as they can remember and write their list on their whiteboard.
• To add some competition, the group that remembers the highest number of words gets a prize (candy or stickers). As the day progresses, I challenge the groups to outdo not only one another but also the record set by my previous classes.
• As for timing, I will check in on the class, but most groups will need to be stopped - so this is a great activity to fill an entire class period. 
• When there are about 15 minutes left in class, I will stop the activity. Then each group will count up the number of words they remembered. The group that remembered the highest number of words will share their list aloud while I type and project it in a Google Sheets file.
• I will then share this Google Sheets file with my students as a reference.

Here are the word counts (combined from every group's list, minus duplicates of course) for my three Latin I classes today: 169, 247, and 221. 

Here is the Google Sheets file with the vocabulary lists. I have added the English meaning and additional forms for student reference.

The goal in our Latin program is for students to acquire around 100 words per semester, so I am so proud that my students have exceeded this goal! This is language acquisition in action! 😁