Fun at the Latin Summer School!

Would you like to learn about Medicine in Ancient Greece or UFOs in Ancient Rome? Here is your chance …

For five days in the second-last week of the summer holidays, I attended the 26th Sydney Latin Summer School, held in classrooms of the New Law Building at Sydney University. The school is divided into many different levels of experience, from 1A for total beginners, to Level 4 where you take part in advanced seminars on authors such as Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, and so on. I enrolled in course 2A. This required me to do a lot of work beforehand, by studying the grammar of 1B and 1C with my dad in the holidays, but it was definitely worth it.

My teachers were Mike Salter and John Coombs. Mike taught grammar and scansion while John went through the different texts in our booklet. The classes were very large, some having to be split into different groups, so it was necessary to have two different teachers. Our class had more than 40 people in it!

I enjoyed extending myself by reading adapted Latin poetry and learning about complex grammatical structures, as well as attending an interesting lecture from a daily selection. One day I was learning about Ancient Greek medicine or eco-feminism, the next day my friend was going to a lecture about UFOs in Ancient Rome.

Every day we would start by doing a Latin riddle. Then we would learn about the scansion of the riddle, which is like a little poem. Scansion refers to the rhythm or metre of verses in poetry, and is based on patterns of long and short syllables. Then we would do some grammar and work on translating a Latin text – say, a poem, or a history of the kings of Rome. We would have a break for recess and do more translation and grammar, and then have lunch.  After lunch there was usually a lecture and then another class. The day went from 9.00am to 4.00pm.

But by far the thing I most enjoyed about the Summer School was hanging out with friends from other schools, bonding with new acquaintances over our love of learning and socialising in general. Not to mention the writing competitions you can enter and the singing at the end of the five days! 2A usually leads the singing, and this year we sang “Gaudeamus Igitur” (whose tune was borrowed for Sydney Grammar’s school song, ‘Floreat Grammatica’) and Adele’s “Hello” in Latin.

If you wish to enrol in the 27th Latin Summer School in 2021, you can go to their website and register later in the year. I would thoroughly recommend the Latin Summer School to anyone who wants to extend themselves and get ahead of the pack on grammar! The good thing is, everyone there wants to learn it as much as you do!

Valete puellae!

Nicola Allen
Year 9 Latin