Bacchus et Acoetes retells how Bacchus gets revenge on pirates by turning them into dolphins. This tale may not exactly be to the level of the Princess Bride as, alas, no one gets murdered by pirates. Instead, nearly all the pirates are punished for their greed, except Acoetes. Bacchus rewards Acoetes by offering him the position of priest in his temple. This story is suitable for Latin I, and we glossed the words in bold for our students. We taught this story after we taught Venus et Vulcanus. We pretaught some of the vocabulary for this story and reviewed other words through a movie talk. Our students were rather invested…
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Fabula: Sella Magica Vulcani
Sella Magica Vulcani is a story about Vulcan getting a little bit of revenge on Juno. After Jupiter threw Vulcan off Mount Olympus, in Iuno et Vulcanus, Infans Turpis, Vulcanus is left to grow up alone. Vulcan discovers his skills as a metal worker and makes a lovely necklace for Thetis, who is essentially his adoptive mother. Juno gets jealous and demands a necklace, which is moderately entertaining as she’s had no hand in raising Vulcan. This story is the delightful result of that jealousy.
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Fabula: Achilles Gerens Stolam
Achilles Gerens Stolam is a story about Ulysses tricking Achilles. Achilles had been hiding on Skyros dressed as a woman to avoid an oracle stating he would die at Troy. Much as Ulysses had been tricked by Palamedes, Ulysses tricks Achilles into revealing the truth about his identity and committing to war with the Trojans.
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Saturnus et Rhea
Saturnus et Rhea is based on the myth of Saturnus eating all of his children. I wrote this story for use in our Introduction to Latin course. In the story, we’re introducing relative pronouns, particularly the forms qui and quae. We had many preteaching activities for the story to aid in vocabulary and reading comprehension. (My favorite was Quid debeo agere?! in which I met various Olympians in different places and students had to tell me what I should do on their white boards; I may have flushed Neptune down a toilet).
