A surprise visit

I arrived in Latin class a few minutes late this morning. It was intentional: I wanted to make sure I was the last person there. I planned on making an entrance.

“Good morning, everyone!” as I walked into the room filled with Advanced Latin Literature students. They were not prepared for what I was about to say next, but I didn’t even need to finish my sentence. “Allow me to introduce you to–”

Although they had never met her before, the class recognized Ronnie Ancona at sight. They burst into cheers and gasps of delight and surprise. Perfect, I thought. Just the kind of entrance I was hoping to make!

Ronnie Anconca is a nationally recognized Latin and Greek scholar and author of Writing Passion: A Catullus Reader, the text that is central to our class’s work. (And her CV goes on: she is a professor of Latin and Greek at the undergraduate and graduate levels, editor and author of a plethora of articles and published books, the Vice President for Education of the American Philological Association, the Second Vice President of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, and an authority on classical pedagogy.) This morning she learned that she has a new feather to add to her cap: cult hero!

Professor Ancona has been an invisible classroom companion since our first day of class in September. Useful footnotes in her text have frequently earned a grateful, “Thanks, Ronnie!” and challenging ideas, when left unresolved until after a page turn, sometimes garnered a whispered, “Why were you hiding that one, Ronnie?” For the past five months these comments have only seemed like a playful one-way dialogue — to Professor Ancona, to the ancient poet Catullus, to the book itself — so it was a special treat this morning to surprise the class with the chance for a real conversation.

We spoke with Professor Ancona about her experience as a scholar and a classicist: what motivates her, how she approaches her work, how she ended up where she is today. We then discussed her book: the decisions she makes in presenting the work of an ancient poet and her philosophy behind the footnotes she offers to supplement the primary source. Next we had the chance to ask Professor Ancona some questions with which our class has struggled: how can we translate this body of work into English and respect the poetry of the Latin? Are Catullus’s poems meant to be interpreted autobiographically? How did these poems fit (or not fit) with ancient Roman views on sexuality?

Although Professor Ancona and I had planned to follow our Q&A with a discussion of Catullus #7 (a poem about kisses and sweethearts, which our class read in Latin last week), the depth and complexity of our conversation led us to one of Catullus’s most challenging poems instead. Catullus #16 is a poem infamous for its obscene language and its complicated presentation of power dynamics, sexual violence, homosexuality, and poetry. It is a very difficult poem for readers — whether adults or high school students — to untangle and understand. Yet this morning, when pressed face-to-face with this challenge, the class flourished. The discussion gained depth as we isolated ancient Roman views of homosexuality from our own, examined sexual violence as a means of expressing power, and considered the separation (or lack thereof) between the poet and his poetic persona.

We eventually returned to Catullus #7 as planned, now making connections to points made in our discussion and beyond. We noted the significance of the word order in one couplet of the poem, how the poet inverts the reader’s expectations in another, and how he indirectly references one of his other poems  — Catullus #5, the first poem our class read in September — in its closing lines. This final connection provided a fitting end to Professor Ancona’s visit: in this way we could conclude by referring back to our first Catullus poem of the year, but this time with our classroom companion (that is, our cult hero!) in our midst to receive our gratitude and applause.