From gbt@acm.org Mon Jan 1 09:12:40 2001 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id JAA60424 for ; Mon, 1 Jan 2001 09:12:39 -0800 Received: from korovev.stm.it (korovev.stm.it [195.62.33.1]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id JAA24226 for ; Mon, 1 Jan 2001 09:12:38 -0800 Received: from lizard (radius-pool1-003.dial-access.stm.it [195.62.40.11]) by korovev.stm.it (8.9.2/8.9.2) with SMTP id SAA12762 for ; Mon, 1 Jan 2001 18:12:26 +0100 (ITA) From: "Gianfranco Boggio-Togna" To: "Classics" Subject: Esame di Maturita` Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 18:10:17 +0100 Message-ID: <01c07415$b8cdbc80$LocalHost@lizard> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.0.1812 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.0.1812 Alfred Kriman quoted Emilio Segre': > I do not remember that Fermi ever referred to his Latin studies, but > many years later, at Los Alamos, I complained one day that the night > before I had dreamed of a final liceo examination in Greek, to which > he remarked that he had suffered similar nightmares. This strikes a chord: nearly forty years later, I still occasionally have nightmares and I am sure this is true of anyone who ever went through the old-style (pre-68) Esame di Maturita`. It is hardly surprising, when one considers what it involved. Four written tests: an essay on a literary or historical subject; a translation from Latin; a translation *into* Latin; a translation from Greek. Then the viva voce in front of a commission (generally headed by a University professor) of teachers one had never seen, on each of the subjects of the curriculum: Italian literature, Latin literature and grammar, Greek literature and grammar, Philosophy, History, History of Art, Mathematics, Physics, Natural Science. On the other hand, it cannot be said that we lacked training in taking exams : by the time I entered the Liceo I had already passed five different sets of examinations. -- Gianfranco Boggio-Togna Milano (Italy) .