From dlupher@ups.edu Sun Mar 21 12:33:41 1999 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id MAA33508 for ; Sun, 21 Mar 1999 12:33:40 -0800 Received: from mail.ups.edu (mail.ups.edu [192.124.98.111]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id MAA29735 for ; Sun, 21 Mar 1999 12:33:40 -0800 Received: from [192.220.223.68] (aestivus.ups.edu [192.220.223.68]) by mail.ups.edu (8.9.1/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA04472 for ; Sun, 21 Mar 1999 12:28:47 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: dlupher@mail.ups.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 12:25:56 -0800 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: dlupher@ups.edu (David Lupher) Subject: internet pollution + Aztec Latinity Thanks to David Meadows for that informative website. I second his proposal of a proscription of "the garbage which is slickly packaged on the net which purports to give an accurate view of the ancient world." I just read a student paper which included a claim that Book 6 of the "Aeneid" shows a "secular humanist approach," in contrast to Book 11 of the "Odyssey." The student's inspiration for this insight? She dutifully tacked on: "(internet source)." Meanwhile, my 14-year-old son is diligently compiling information for a paper on Dorothea Dix *strictly* from "internet sources." Why? Because that was a requirement of the assignment, of course. His teacher is convinced that no one will be mucking about in books in a year or two. (I might add that my son says that the best "internet source" he's found for Dix emanates from the Univ. of Maryland. Is this likely to be legit, Judy?) In another posting, David Meadows forwarded a query as to whether "the the classics were ever taught in the Latin or Greek languages in America as was done in Europe." DM asked that responses be sent directly to the querier, and I have done so. But I thought that the rest of you might be interested to know that in the mid 16th century the official languages of instruction to Aztec youths in the Franciscan Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco were Latin and Nahuatl. Spanish was proscribed as a language of instruction. See Ignacio Osorio Romero's fascinating book "La ensen~anza del latin a los Indios," UNAM, 1990 (and thanks to Jim O'Donnell for bringing this book to my attention when I very much needed to find such a book). Osorio Romero includes some samples of Aztec latinity by alums of the colegio. A grumpy encomendero complained to Charles V in 1541 that these youths could "speak Latin as elegantly as Cicero (hablan tan elegante el latin como Tulio)." I have accumulated some bibliography on the course of instruction and library holdings of this remarkable instution, if anyone is interested. (I hope to add my own 2 centavos, especially with regard to lessons the Aztecs youths were taught about the Roman conquest of Spain.) [I hope dm's querier intended "America" in an inclusive sense.] David Lupher Classics Program Univ. of Puget Sound .