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HEY GAL posted:or german i guess, which is a place where people write angry books about the genitive case This one?
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Oct 2, 2015 21:24
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Wheelock's supremacy, yo. Seriously, probably the best textbook I ever used and it's dirt cheap, too.
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Oct 2, 2015 23:26
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FishFood posted:Wheelock's supremacy, yo. Seriously, probably the best textbook I ever used and it's dirt cheap, too. Sounds like a 16th century tactical treatise.
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Oct 3, 2015 00:55
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FishFood posted:Wheelock's supremacy, yo. Seriously, probably the best textbook I ever used and it's dirt cheap, too. If you're learning Latin for a college language requirement or are an actual child, I think the Oxford and Cambridge Latin courses are fine and might even be preferable. If you're teaching yourself in order to read classical sources, Wheelock's is the best choice, since its main source passages are adapted from classical authors rather than made-up stories about Roman families and Roman boys dealing with bullies and stuff. Or was the best, I learned from it many editions ago.
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Oct 3, 2015 01:01
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I like the idea of a book that teaches you a language written in the language it's trying to teach you--that sounds like an interesting approach. But the Wheelock's sounds like it has passages from actual Latin sources, which strikes my fancy, and has so many years of good use behind it, I think I'll probably go in that direction. New for $12 is hard to beat, too, as far as price goes. Now whether I'll have the discipline to really teach myself, I don't know...but any kind of intellectual exercise like that will probably bear some fruit, even if I never end up reading Catullus or Ovid in the original Latin.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:23
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A Strange Aeon posted:I like the idea of a book that teaches you a language written in the language it's trying to teach you--that sounds like an interesting approach. Well, that's every native language schoolbook, isn't it?
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Oct 3, 2015 03:30
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Nintendo Kid posted:Well, that's every native language schoolbook, isn't it? You're probably right, I just don't know anything about learning languages really! It sounded like a novel approach to me since I don't remember exactly how I learned English as a kid.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:39
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A Strange Aeon posted:You're probably right, I just don't know anything about learning languages really! It sounded like a novel approach to me since I don't remember exactly how I learned English as a kid. Your brain works differently as a kid. As an adult pure exposure doesn't work, trust me I've tried. It is excellent for practice after you have a solid foundation but it not helpful to start that way.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:41
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Can someone please tell me I've been lied to my whole life and that there are non-Roman contemporary sources for Cannae? I'd just love to know what some Greek guy in Asia thought about it.
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Oct 3, 2015 04:18
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The period after Alexander and before Caesar is sadly kind of a black hole of sources. It bums me out because the Hellenistic period is obviously the raddest period. Buddhist Greek kings in Afghanistan 
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Oct 3, 2015 04:42
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I really, really wish we had good records from the Central Asian Greek kingdoms. Or like, any records. Baktria and the Indian kings and all that poo poo. That's the most interesting Greek area/time period to me, maybe because know next to nothing about it. It had to have been just incredible. That was the first time you had such a massive shift in civilization and real extensive east-west contact.
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Oct 3, 2015 04:46
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I wrote a short paper on the Greco-Bactrians for an undergrad class and the lack of information is crazy. What little we know of their succession and politics comes almost entirely from coins, but what coins they are! Greek on one side, Sanskrit on the other, incredible detail, coins commemorating past kings and not just the current ruler...
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Oct 3, 2015 05:11
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FishFood posted:I wrote a short paper on the Greco-Bactrians for an undergrad class and the lack of information is crazy. What little we know of their succession and politics comes almost entirely from coins, but what coins they are! Greek on one side, Sanskrit on the other, incredible detail, coins commemorating past kings and not just the current ruler... Got any good books on them to recommend? I'll take anything on far eastern Greeks. E: Hell I'll take mediocre-bad ones.
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Oct 3, 2015 05:28
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Yeah, phoneposting right now but when I get home I'll post them for you.
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Oct 3, 2015 05:32
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Cheers for that!
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Oct 3, 2015 05:34
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Yes and all those kings on those coins look like time-travelling European explorers from the 19th century.
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Oct 3, 2015 06:00
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Grand Fromage posted:Your brain works differently as a kid. As an adult pure exposure doesn't work, trust me I've tried. It is excellent for practice after you have a solid foundation but it not helpful to start that way. As far as I remember, learning multiple languages at a young age and onwards helps retain that plasticity that's useful for picking up languages by immersion. I know a guy who does something fringe like historical/archeological architecture and he speaks (poorly) about 15 languages or so, after loving about in North Africa and the Middle East for 20-30 years.
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Oct 3, 2015 08:51
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Ok, it looks like my bibliography got nuked along with my old computer, but I found the three big sources. The first is WW Tarn's The Greeks in Bactria & India, which is, uh, outdated to say the least. He goes into some crazy flights of fancy based on the scraps of evidence that existed in the 30s (fun fact, there isn't a whole lot more now!) but reading him is pretty important for all the later scholarship. AK Narain's The Indo-Greeks is basically a response to Tarn and he spends a lot of time debunking him. I don't remember reading his entire book. My main source was Thundering Zeus by Frank L Holt. It's basically the definitive modern work on the subject. Holt goes through all the sources and archaeology to give a pretty good picture of the kingdom. It's pretty incredible what can be found from the limited material we have. I know I'm missing a couple of other books (I had one detailed numismatic book, but I'm pretty sure I found it in Holt's bibliography) but those should get you started. As for ancient sources, Strabo talks about it a little bit and it's mentioned off handedly in a number of other writer's works, including Plutarch. Pompeius Trogus is the best source on the kingdom, but his history survives only as a glorified Cliff's Notes by another historian known only as Justin. Look for his epitome, that's the best written history of the whole drat thing.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:33
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Thanks for that. Personally I don't mind reading history written back in the colonial era. I tend to just have fun with it like it were a Robert Graves book.
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Oct 3, 2015 20:20
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So they found a lost chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh. http://www.livescience.com/52372-new-tablet-gilgamesh-epic.html
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Oct 4, 2015 21:40
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Fish of hemp posted:So they found a lost chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh. http://www.livescience.com/52372-new-tablet-gilgamesh-epic.html That is so amazing. The Epic of Gilgamesh (heavily edited and turned into a children's book) was one of the first books I read. Certainly the earliest I have a memory of.
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Oct 4, 2015 21:53
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Fish of hemp posted:So they found a lost chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh. http://www.livescience.com/52372-new-tablet-gilgamesh-epic.html It really frustrates me to think of all the things that have been just sitting unknown either in some smuggler's cache or (worse still) in the hands of a private collector, at least this one has been recovered, but how much other stuff is just hanging around collecting dust somewhere being seen by nobody (or one rich rear end in a top hat)?
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Oct 4, 2015 22:12
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Some private collector out there is reading lives of the famous whores.
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Oct 4, 2015 23:21
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But enough about your mom's biography.
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Oct 4, 2015 23:24
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A huge number of the Amarna letters got pulverized before anyone got a chance to see them. The people who found them originally transported them to market all on top of one another in wicker baskets on donkeys. Since they were made of clay, it's estimated that at best half survived the trip.
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Oct 4, 2015 23:53
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Is this thread open to discussing ancient alternate history?
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Oct 5, 2015 02:27
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Only if it's scholarly speculation on Atlantis.
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Oct 5, 2015 02:34
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what if king arthur had a gun?
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Oct 5, 2015 02:42
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The Roman Empire fell because of sword control. 
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Oct 5, 2015 03:05
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Jamwad Hilder posted:what if king arthur had a gun? I read that one. He electrocutes all of Merlin's knights because their plate armor conducts electricity.
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Oct 5, 2015 03:09
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Arglebargle III posted:The Roman Empire fell because of sword control. A PHILOSOPHER IS LECTURING HIS CLASS. HE STARTS IT BY SAYING: LETS GET ONE THING STRAIGHT, AND THAT IS THAT THE GODS DO NOT EXIST. A STUDENT, WHO IS A FORMER LEGIONNAIRE, RAISES HIS HAND AND-
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Oct 5, 2015 03:19
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Agean90 posted:A PHILOSOPHER IS LECTURING HIS CLASS. HE STARTS IT BY SAYING: LETS GET ONE THING STRAIGHT, AND THAT IS THAT THE GODS DO NOT EXIST. A STUDENT, WHO IS A FORMER LEGIONNAIRE, RAISES HIS HAND AND- THAT STUDENT'S NAME WAS CINCINNATUS.
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Oct 5, 2015 03:37
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Jaramin posted:A huge number of the Amarna letters got pulverized before anyone got a chance to see them. The people who found them originally transported them to market all on top of one another in wicker baskets on donkeys. Since they were made of clay, it's estimated that at best half survived the trip. That's heartbreaking 
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Oct 5, 2015 04:14
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sullat posted:I read that one. He electrocutes all of Merlin's knights because their plate armor conducts electricity. ... In other news. I think someone did a detailed breakdown of all the things wrong with this cracked article in this thread (or elsewhere on the boards) but the very first item - a direct correlation between quality of medical science and the amount of respect medical professionals get - seems like the sort of "common sense" notion that sounds perfectly logical until you actually look at the data. What is the actual relationship between the two, if any?
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Oct 5, 2015 11:48
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Xander77 posted:I'm pretty sure he just lassoes them non-lethally. The cartoon adaptation is canon! (The cannon is not canon) He's talking about the big battle near the end of the book: knights vs a minefield, electrified barbed wire and Gatling guns.
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Oct 5, 2015 12:03
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A Strange Aeon posted:I like the idea of a book that teaches you a language written in the language it's trying to teach you--that sounds like an interesting approach. But the Wheelock's sounds like it has passages from actual Latin sources, which strikes my fancy, and has so many years of good use behind it, I think I'll probably go in that direction. New for $12 is hard to beat, too, as far as price goes. Now whether I'll have the discipline to really teach myself, I don't know...but any kind of intellectual exercise like that will probably bear some fruit, even if I never end up reading Catullus or Ovid in the original Latin. There's a companion book for it you can get called 'Scribblers, sculptors and scribes' with extra stuff to read, matched chapter to chapter with Wheelock. Only thing for some people to be aware of, if they have previous exposure to Latin, is that there are two ways to write noun cases in Latin. British people write them in the order nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative; Americans put the accusative just before the ablative instead. Having done a bit of Latin as a teenager at (a British) school, that took a bit of getting used to when memorising stuff using Wheelock. Wheelock is quite heavy on formal grammar, too, which I personally prefer.
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Oct 5, 2015 16:39
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Arglebargle III posted:The Roman Empire fell because of sword control. This is actually sometimes advanced as a partial explanation. The theory goes that since civilians weren't allowed to carry swords and poo poo they weren't able to do much against invaders if there weren't regular Roman forces to bail them out.
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Oct 5, 2015 21:20
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that sounds like an excuse to raise panic about modern politics by shouting THE PAST IS HAPPENING AGAIN to be honest.
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Oct 5, 2015 23:03
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The water is even making go regarded again. Well at least in Flint, Michigan.
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Oct 5, 2015 23:12
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Agean90 posted:that sounds like an excuse to raise panic about modern politics by shouting THE PAST IS HAPPENING AGAIN to be honest. See, you'd think that, but this was in actual academic work unrelated to that sort of thing. And I simplified it a whole lot.
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Oct 6, 2015 01:36
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