June 20th.
A detail I forgot, from the Latinosphere, the small world we Latinists live in: the day after our arrival, before going to Pilanesberg, I met the Classicists in Potchefstroom. We had lunch together, and in the afternoon we all attended a lecture via Skype, from San Antonio, Texas. The lecture was given by Bill Short – Brevis – a friend from Rome. He was one of the “simii Reginaldianii,” the Reginaldus-monkeys, who sat in the front row of all of Reginaldus’s classes and got very, very good at Latin. I hadn’t seen him since leaving Rome in 2000. His lecture, about the way the Romans conceived of the word “truth” – the dominant metaphor of it is as something one proceeds towards, like a pilgrim to a shrine, and on which journey one can get lost – showed signs of the Reginaldian method – I’m sure many of his quotes for the usage of the word were directly from Lewis and Short. By knowing the way the Romans used their words, you can understand the metaphors underlying their thought, which offer interesting ways of understanding life and experience itself.
Another Latinosphere moment: there is a visiting lecturer here from Brazil. He knew one of Catherine’s friends who was studying at the University of Kentucky, also from Brazil. He was returning to Brazil shortly, and she asked him to salute her friend.
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