Oh they’re great! I love them. I also have 56K, though. Still, whatever you like. I’m going to spend the next hour uploading the Aeneid passage I just recorded.
Here we go, from book IV of the Aeneid, one of my favorite passages, where Aeneas is attempting to calm Dido after she finds out that he was secretly trying to slip away on to Italy after Mercury admonished him to obey the will of the gods:
tandem pauca refert: ‘ego te, quae plurima fando
enumerare uales, numquam, regina, negabo
promeritam, nec me meminisse pigebit Elissae               335
dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus.
pro re pauca loquar. neque ego hanc abscondere furto
speraui (ne finge) fugam, nec coniugis umquam
praetendi taedas aut haec in foedera ueni.
me si fata meis paterentur ducere uitam               340
auspiciis et sponte mea componere curas,
urbem Troianam primum dulcisque meorum
relliquias colerem, Priami tecta alta manerent,
et recidiua manu posuissem Pergama uictis.
sed nunc Italiam magnam Gryneus Apollo,               345
Italiam Lyciae iussere capessere sortes;
hic amor, haec patria est. si te Karthaginis arces
Phoenissam Libucaeque aspectus detinet urbis,
quae tandem Ausonia Teucros considere terra
inuidia est? et nos fas extera quaerere regna.               350
me patris Anchisae, quotiens umentibus umbris
nox operit terras, quotiens astra ignea surgunt,
admonet in somnis et turbida terret imago;
me puer Ascanius capitisque iniuria cari,
quem regno Hesperiae fraudo et fatalibus aruis.               355
nunc etiam interpres diuum Ioue missus ab ipso
(testor utrumque caput) celeris mandata per auras
detulit: ipse deum manifesto in lumine uidi
intrantem muros uocemque his auribus hausi.
desine meque tuis incendere teque querelis;Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 360
Italiam non sponte sequor.’
ex Vergilii Aeneidis libro IV, a Lucio Amadeo Ranierio lectum
Lucus,
These are really great and are going to help a lot of people. There are not many people out there willing to do something like this. You should at least get these linked to by something other than just this thread which will eventually fall down the list and not be seen by the newcomers to this site. Maybe a new thread with a sticky or a link somewhere else on this site.
Ed
Wonderful reading, Lucus, thank you for the treat. Your rendering is fluent and poetical, the best I could ask for. I promise I won’t complain if you record more. 
It’s been so long since I’ve been near a classroom. Can it be true that Latin teachers still don’t work with it as a living language ?
Perhaps some industrious Textkat or Textkitten would care to scour Google for Latin audio recordings and make a list for permanent addition to the Textkit resources ?
Lots of interesting stuff out there. I’m sure many of you know this site :
http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii/
And I’m sure this one is also well-known :
http://www.drammondt.com/english/index.php
Those Finns are wild about their Latin.
There are a number of sites with readings from Wheelock and the Bible, if prose is what you’re looking for, but I haven’t checked them out yet. I have listened to many of the currently available on-line sites with readings from Latin poetry. Some are good, some bad, but all are of interest to anyone researching the sound of the language.
I’ve recorded two passages of prose, a selection from Cicero and a passage from the Vulgate, with different pronunciations. I’ll try to post them over the weekend.
Interaxus: I’ll also record your requested ode (Vides ut alta) and the Copa Surisca. Hopefully I’ll have all this stuff on-line by Monday.
This thread has been great fun for me, I hope everyone else is getting as much enjoyment from it.
Ave, Luce!
Just a couple of observations, nothing to be worried about. Ok?
After hearing both recordings, it seems to me that “io” is not a diphthong, but a hiatus, no? According to the books I’ve read, there are only 5 diphthongs, namely: ae, oe, au, eu, ei, ui. I’m thinking the rest are hiati (?).
You’ve done a good job of trilling the r’s, but maybe you are trilling a wee too much? To my ears at least, there should be a difference between ‘r’ and ‘rr’.
Please don’t kill me. 
Vale!
Why is it that the character ‘u’ is preferred, when (unless I’m mistaken) the character ‘v’ is what the Romans actually used because it is easier to carve?
Personally, I don’t think people should make too big a deal over i/j or v/u usage–on either side of the argument. The Romans also didn’t have miniscules, but is any one of us willing to revert from that too? I think that we can use Js and Vs and miniscules without taking the “Latin-ness” out of Latin.
Both the topic of the u/v and i/j and the issue of whether Romans had miniscules comes up quite a bit around here. You may want to see, for example, these:
Thanks! I probably should have poked around a bit more before derailing this conversation with my tangental question. My apologies!
<?xml version="1.0"?>
Nice going, Ed! you beat me to it.
And as for putting these in a permanent place, I’ll have to place them somewhere on Laureola.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
I hope you didn’t mistake the tone of my post. I very much enjoy those types of conversations (because I learn a lot from them) and wasn’t even trying to prevent another, I just wanted to prepare you for the vigor with which some of the people on both sides of those issues will defend their position.
Amadeus, you are correct absolutely. However, as I mentioned, in conversation and even sometimes in verse this ‘i’ as a vowel was transformed into the consonant. Here is the end of Vergil’s second Georgic:
necdum etiam audierant inflari classica, necdum
impositos duris crepitare incudibus ensis. 540
We see in that line that “etiam” cannot possibly be trisyllabic; it must perforce be disyllabic in order to conform with the metre: “-dum” elides with “et-” and “-jam” elides with “au-.”
Although my Latin name Lucius is truly trisyllabic, most certainly in conversation and at times in verse this name could become disyllabic. As we see from Italian, ultimately, the disyllabic form won out.
Perhaps, Lucus, perhaps. I would like to research this more, because constructing a general rule based on how italians today pronounce ‘i or u + vowel’ is somewhat dubious; but, alas, there is almost no information on this on the Internet. Also, it was my understanding that Latin was a phonetical language (i.e. orthography is in accord with use), and so the rule of there being only five diphthongs when you can make more with ‘i or u + vowel’ seems contradictory, unles such complex sounds are neither diphthong or hiatus.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Diphthong_-_Italian/id/1327234
The Italian is merely supporting evidence. The truth of the matter is clear in Vergil’s very words; there can be no doubt. Moreover, there is hardly any phonetic rule broken when Latin aequally uses ‘i’ for a vowel and a consonant in the first place. Do not forget “coniicio.”
Two minor points and a conclusion:
Modern Italian may be supporting evidence for certain latin pronunciations, but, meo judicio, weak evidence. Languages are always drifting: what today was a diphthong, yesterday could’ve been a hiatus.
As for Vergil’s verse, it is only one line. Not enough to rule out artistic license.
Conclusion: I still have much to read about Latin phonetics, so I may be totally wrong, but, from what I gather, ‘i or u + vowel’ is NOT a diphthong (vowel+vowel), but a sequence of semi-consonant+vowel. Thus, the rule of 5 diphthongs is saved. The question now is, were there instances when “Luc-jo Ran-je-rjo” 
was ever broken up into hiati: “Lu-ci-o Ra-ni-e-ri-o”. In short, which was commoner: “Lu-ci-o” or “Luc-jo”?
Cura, care amice, valetudinem tuam diligenter!
Allen & Greenough note: “The vowels i and u serve as consonants when pronounced rapidly before a vowel so as to stand in the same syllable”. Their example of Indian is illustrative, In-dyan for 2 syllables, In-di-an for 3.
I didn’t mistake your tone at all. I just realized that my question could have totaly derailed this conversation. Thanks for the heads up!
Luce…that was great! I’ve heard some audio examples of Latin here and there but none with both the feeling and attention to scansion that you accomplished. You would have been an orator to be reckoned with in the Senate!
Encore!
Chris
You are incredibly kind! I still have a lot to perfect, but I greatly appreciate your enthusiasm. Any requaests? Soon I’ll be at school and recording will be more difficult, so now is the time.
Care amice, it seems the meaning of “diphthong” was not clear. Ὁ διφθόγγος is litterally a “duel sound,” two vowels in one syllable. “jo” as in “Jovis” is not a diphthong, but a consonant (j/i) plus a vowel ‘o’. The quæstion is not whether the combination is a diphthong, just as you have said immediately above, but whether this transformation from vowel to consonant ‘i’ took place.
Undoubtedly “Lu-ci-o” was commoner in the classical period, but the slide from vowel to consonant is so easy that it happens naturally; in both of the above recordings I made wherewith I read my name, it is almost impossible to distinguish whether ‘jo’ or ‘i-o’ is being said in any one of the instances noted. I did not do this deliberately: it merely happened as a result of close imitation of the ancients in all other respects of the language. That it did happen is noted in the Vergil. I make no further claim.