by cb » Mon Jul 02, 2012 6:16 pm
hi, yep that's what he said:
"The matter stood thus: in place of a given examination paper a dissertation of 10,000 wds length can be offered by a candidate. The statutes for the examination papers prohibit any use of a non-English language by the cunning rubric 'You must write good English' (it needs no logician to conclude that you therefore must write in English). The nomothetae for the dissertation statutes, however, appear to have neglected making such a proviso, presumably because since the option was introduced (a few decades ago) no one had been so perverse as to write in Latin. I desired, for quite obvious reasons, to write mine in Latin, and by the support of those who saw the light was able to have it passed; the statutes have now been changed, however. The topic of the dissertation is/was a form of a Latin word for 'and', namely atque, and a discussion of its curious status in Latin poets who fled leaving it in an unelided state like bats the light."
it's a shame he doesn't post here any more - his knowledge of the classics made so many of his posts really valuable to read, little glimpses of a level of classics somewhere way above where i can see, which helps drive you on. cheers, chad
