Latin poetry excerpt --
 see this page for delightful and colorful illustrations

          == http://www.pyrrha.demon.co.uk/oinscr1.html ====
illustrations on this page

Virgil : Eclogue IV, 18 - 20 (Flowers everywhere!)
Horace : Satires II 6, 80 - 81 (Town Mouse and Country Mouse)
Horace Odes I.v, 1 - 3 ( Pyrrha )
Catullus 64, 112 - 115 (Theseus leaving the labyrinth)
Virgil Aeneid II, 203 - 211 (Sea serpents)

                    Latin poetry

Latin is a far more flexible language than English because it does not rely
on the order of words to convey its meaning.

Poets can therefore create specific effects by placing their words where they
will be most effective in terms of sound patterms and creating suspense or
even visual images.

The poet Horace wrote :
tantum series iuncturaque pollet
'The positioning and combination [of words] has so much power.'

I hope you enjoy the pictorial interpretation of some of my favourite pieces
in the pages which follow.

flowers everywhere!

These lines written by Virgil describe flowers growing together in profusion,
and you can see in the third line that the words referring to the colocasia
and the acanthus - mixtaque and ridenti - are not placed next to them.

My artist has linked the nouns to their adjectives by drawing the
flower-stems across. . . . .

 === excerpt http://www.pyrrha.demon.co.uk/oinscr1.html ====

If you would like some hints on how to interpret Latin inscriptions without
relying on museum translations, why not explore further ? . . .

. . . but who is Pyrrha?

I am a Classics teacher at Malvern Girls' College in England, and I have to
admit that my name is not Pyrrha!

The Roman poet Horace wrote an Ode about Pyrrha - who may have been his
ex-girlfriend. On this Website I look at this poem and some others in a way I
hope you will enjoy whether you know any Latin or not.

Pyrrha, according to the Roman poet Ovid, was the only woman left alive after
the god Jupiter decided to destroy mankind in a Flood. She and her husband
Deucalion repopulated the world by throwing stones over their shoulders!

The stones Pyrrha threw became women; those Deucalion threw became men. . . .
. . . .