These are texts that are a little off the beaten path but make for good reading! They are often, but not always, from later Latin. We’re always on the lookout for texts with high entertainment value that aren’t yet widely read in Latin classrooms. Please drop a suggestion if you have any in mind.
Suggestion: Use Logeion as a dictionary for later works as it returns results from medieval dictionaries as well.
Facetiae, Poggio Bracciolini
This is not a book you can just hand to your students if you are teaching in the classroom. A lot of these stories cannot be read in high school. The ones I’ve selected and recorded on Youtube should be ok. There are certainly many others you could read in the classroom, but there are many others you cannot.
Here is a link to the full text of Poggio’s Facetiae on Wikisource. You can also find pdfs on Archive.org or Google books.
Volume I and Volume II of an English translation of the Facetiae.
Latin text of the stories in the above video.
The two stories in the video above are about a crappy dream (literally) and an apostolic secretary who breaks wind at a Cardinal (he asks for it!).
Latin text of two more stories from Poggio’s Facetiae.
These two are about a guy who is educated by who doesn’t have a lot of common sense and a clever fox who teaches a farmer a lesson.
Announcement: Victor is teaching a class in Latin this July using this tiered reader at Latinitas Animi Causa. When you register for the course, a copy of Ericthó is included! Read more here. Register here.
Manuale Scholarium
Latin text; English translation with notes.
This is a longer dialogue that is broken into chapters. The name of the author is unknown, but the text is from 14th century Germany. The conversations are ribald at times, and they were intended as an instruction manual for new students (called beani) at the medieval university. Suggested reading: chapters 1 and 2.
De Scholari et Dyabolo, Caesarius of Hesterbach
This is one of the stories found in the 13th century work Dialogus Miraculorum, which was intended as a didactic text for the moral instruction of novice monks at the Hesterbach Cistercian monastery. Tbh, it you replace the Devil with ChatGPT in this story, it’s kind spot-on.
Latin text with macrons; full text of the Dialogus Miraculorum.
Epistolae Laconicae, various authors
This is a collection of pithy letters that are short, sweet, and to the point. They are great if you only have time to read a little Latin today or if you are looking for something you can teach in one class period. Some of my favorites are by Angelus Politianus, a 15th century Classical scholar and author of the Florentine Renaissance. Full Latin text. Here is an example:
Angelus Politianus Jacobo Modesto suo S.D. [salutem dicit]
DOLES quod non rescribam : dolere desine, jam rescribo. Vale.
“Angelus Politianus greets his friend Jacobus Modestus. You are annoyed that I don’t write back: well, stop being annoyed; I’m writing back now. Bye!”
Proverbs, proverbs everywhere!
If you follow our social media, you may have noticed we share a lot of proverbs. We get most of these proverbs either from Erasmus’s Adagia or Publilius Syrus’s Sententiae. I also just found a book about medieval Latin proverbs, so I’ll be sharing a lot of those as well. I think proverbs are a good thing to split up between groups in the classroom, i.e. give each group of students a set of proverbs then have them explain, in Latin or English, the proverbs to the rest of the class.
Lupus Alatus 