Thursday, January 17, 2008

My days of sanity are numbered...

My apologies for the hiedous pun (and for subjecting your brains to the following image). Again my manuscript class has a nice example of Latin as it pertains to what we're studying in Latin II: Roman Numerals! Check out this late 5th century chronicle leaf:



It's a page from a "complete" history of the world as assembled by St. Jerome. The Roman numerals on the page correspond to years (reckoned by referencing Abraham) and there are references to the goings-on in the classical world around that time.

What's really cool about these numbers is that every 4 instances of a year, you can see "OLYMP" which corresponds to the years in which the Olympics were held.

3 comments:

Sara C. said...

Oops, I forgot to sign that post! /headdesk

It's been one of those days...

~ Sara C.

E Pluribus Unum said...

Sara,

This is an amazing addition to the blog; please continue to put those manuscripts up there, because I think it gives us a real appreciation for the editing work that has been done for centuries to bring these texts to a legible stage for the classroom. On the other hand, I cannot help but see how limiting this experience is to us, since everything is marked in the textbook (e.g the ablative vs. the nominative). Thank you for bringing this perspective here.

EM.

RaeS said...

Oh, that's awesome, Sara! Thank you so much for sharing it! I hope you continue to post these for us as the semester progresses.