#35

Lots of schools in my area still offered it because the education system was stuck at some point in the 60s. Still a fully selective system, with no comps, except for one catholic school where you needed a letter from your priest to have a good chance of entry.

#36

Also did a BA in Ancient History to be decorative rather than useful.

#37

Never! Eat the rich!

#38

Hey stop insulting my (weird) relatives Rory.

#39

Other: spent four utterly fucking miserable years in a private school for a bunch of reasons that are too long and boring to get into. One of the worst decisions my parents ever made in my childhood (which they agree with now), even though they didn’t when I was asking to leave! Did Latin for two years of that, I was fucking shite.

#40

Kind of, but more than that. The people who wrote the books in the 60s were clearly having a lot of fun with them. They took a load of real but obscure historical people like Caecilius, Cogidubnus, Salvius Liberalis etc, and then wrote all these stories with constant death by volcano, crocodile, poison etc and some Carry On style double entendre.

I went to Fishbourne Palace a while back, and the tour guide kept having to make herself clear that no, King Cogidubnus was not poisoned by a dodgy priest paid off by a dodgy politician with mafia connections, and they made it up for the book, and they weren’t even 100% sure if it was Cogidubnus’ palace or what the correct spelling of his name was.

#41

King Cogidubnus!

1 Like
#42

Clearly murdered with some poisoned holy water, no matter what the tour guide at his real palace says.

#43

some top -bam, -bas, -bat, -bamus, -batis, -bants ITT

4 Likes
#44

bamos?

#45

SALVE MAGISTRA!

#46

They will never catch him now!

#47

There’s a roman werewolf story where the werewolf strips his clothes off under the moon and then pisses in a circle round himself to turn into a wolf. They’ve taken that bit out of the story these days.

#48

I’m in the weird position of actually wishing I’d paid more attention to latin when I was in school. Didn’t think I’d need it for ‘real life’ (if that’s what I am in)
Pestis! Furcifer!

#49

This has absolutely done me

#51

Did Latin GCSE. A fucking *
Liked those Ecce Romani books. Can remember absolutely nothing

#52

My Latin A-level was part of the reason I got rejected from my first and second choices of uni (had my grades underpredicted) but it was good fun. Totally useless, obviously, but way easier to learn than French. Really fancied my A-level teacher - we made him a card in Latin after our last lesson and he sneered at how shit our grammar was. :heart:

We had to translate a short Catullus excerpt in one of my lessons in year 13 teaching young women that they should shag/marry old men, so at the end of the lesson (last of the day) I thought it would be hilarious to announce to the (small) class that I was “going to the nursing home to bag myself a grandad” [direct quote]. Thought it would make the others laugh. Nope, horrified silence all round and a disgusted look from the teacher I fancied.

#53

It got a laugh from me, if that’s any consolation

3 Likes
#54

Never studied it but can understand bits of it because I can speak Spanish.

#55

my school teacher tried to skim over the dirty bits in Catullus. Seeing as Catullus is about ⅓ sex, ⅓ insults, the other ⅓ pining, she made the poems sound really weird