All Roads

Sorry for the title - I was a little desperate for a wordplay. I don't feel too bad: "trium" is a form of the word "three" in Latin (the genitive plural, if you must know!). So after taking on five books by Don Nardo, I am trying to be a little more restrained this time and only looking at three books about the Colosseum by various authors. Two are from the children's section and one is from the YA department, but they all have slightly different takes on their very well-worn subject, as you will discover below. I was rather amazed at the number of books that the Allen County Public Library owns on the Colosseum; I certainly could have gone for more, even without leaving the main branch. I don't know what's more surprising to me: the depth of the ACPL's collection or why people feel that they need to write another book about the Colosseum. I'm guessing that it's not so much a compelling passion to describe the world's most famous amph...

(The Roman historian Tacitus and the author Don Nardo) Don Nardo has published more than five hundred forty books, a large portion of them historical works geared towards kids and teens. His books are ones that my students often end up using when they have to write their reports on historical or cultural topics relating to Rome. I cruelly assign 600-word reports twice a year AND I demand that students consult two book-length sources. I truly am the worst. Here is just a sampling of what Don Nardo has written on topics in Roman history: Greek and Roman Theater The Age of Augustus The Punics Wars The Collapse of the Roman Empire Life of a Roman Slave Rulers of Ancient Rome Games of Ancient Rome Roman Roads and Aqueducts Roman Amphitheaters Life of a Roman Gladiator The above list is a tiny fragment of his works just relating to Rome! It honestly is amazing how prolific this guy is. I headed to the teen section of my library and lazily asked where the Roman history section was instead of ...

The excessively long title of this post says it all. This blog will be a place to compile and review print resources for Latin students at the 8th grade and high school levels to use in writing short research reports. I generally assign topics for these reports according to the following scheme: Latin 1: mythology and general topics in Roman culture (cooking, games, medicine, warfare) Latin 2: the Punic Wars and other conflicts around the same time period (c. 300-150 BCE) Latin 3: famous figures of the first century BCE (both politicians and authors) Latin 8: assorted topics as strikes my fancy