Mark T. Riley
California State University, Sacramento
Department of Foreign Languages
School of Arts & Letters

Contact Information Classes Papers and Publications
Research Projects Professional Associations

 

Latin Classes

• Why Study Latin?
• Latin 1A - Fall semester - versio Latina
• Latin 1B - Spring semester
• Latin 2 - Fall semester
• Latin 120A - Spring semester
• Latin 120B - Spring semester

Papers and Publications

[Some of my papers are available in PDF format and thus can be viewed with and printed by Adobe Acrobat Reader regardless of the computer platform you use. Click on the titles in blue to download to your computer. The files can then be opened by Adobe Acrabat Reader. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can download and install it for free by following this URL:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html ]

Scholarship

• Poets of Two Hearts - a paper given at UCLA in March 2007.
• Review of M. Minkova and T. Tunberg, Reading and Exercises in Latin Prose Composition (Focus Press 2004), in Forum, Classical Journal 100.1 (Fall 2004).
• John Barclay: Argenis, Edited and translated by Mark Riley & Dorothy Pritchard Huber

  John Barclay's Argenis, the greatest and most popular of all Renaissance Latin novels, is an ingenious, deftly plotted tour de force, combining tragedy, romance, intrigue, and exotic adventure with lively, veiled descriptions of the social and political world of 17th century Europe. Prefaced by an extensive introduction and supplemented by numerous magnificent illustrations, this definitive modern edition presents Barclay's final Latin version, plus a modernised version of Kingsmill Long's widely read English translation of 1625.

  Co-published by MRTS and Van Gorcum & Comp. 2003 / 2 volumes, 424 & 552 pages / 86698-316-3 / MR273 / $60
  (For a list of errata in this edition, see this document.)

• "Quomodo Habitaverunt Romani" illustrated lecture in Latin, August 2003, Conventiculum Lexintonianum, Lexington KY.
• The following papers were written for publication in Temporini and Haase, eds., Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt II 36.7 (DeGruyer, Berlin). This series seems defunct. Therefore I am making these papers available in .pdf format:
  "The Greek Terminology for the Arithmetic Operations" - This paper lists and gives examples (in Greek with English translation) of all the terms for "add," "subtract," "multiply," and "divide," plus a few other terms. As usual in Ancient Greek, specialized technical terminology does not prevail; that is, no one word serves for each of the operations. This paper could not have been completed without the invaluable help of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), whose database supplied most of the examples.
  "A Survey of Vettius Valens" - Vettius Valens' Anthologiae is the longest extant astrological work from antiquity. It is unique in several respects: the author was a practicing astrologer; the work includes more than 100 authentic horoscopes of Valens' clients or associates, including his own, which is used as an example many times throughout the work; the work also includes tables and the description of algorithms used by astrologers and mathematicians. My paper was finished in 1996 and does not take account of scholarship since that time.
  
• "Ptolemy's Use of His Predecessor's Data," Transactions of the American Philological Association 125 (1995) 221-250.
• "Manilius" in The Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, ed. Donald Zeyl (Greenwood 1997).
• "Changing Enrollment Patterns" Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) Bulletin, Spring 1997.
• Articles on Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Kepler, Lavoisier, Malthus, Darwin, Mendel, Mendeleev, Schrödinger in Great Thinkers of the Western World, ed. Ian McGreal (HarperCollins 1992).
• "Science and Tradition in the Tetrabiblos," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 132.1 (1988) 67-84.
• "Theoretical and Practical Astrology: Ptolemy and His Colleagues" Transactions of the American Philological Association, 117 (1987) 235-256.
• "The Epicurean Criticism of Socrates", Phoenix 34 (1980) 55-68.
• "The Purpose and Unity of Plutarch's De Genio Socratis," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 18 (1977) 257-73.
• "Critical Thinking and Cultural Relativism," Critical Thinking News, 4 (1985), 3-7.
• Glossary for Homer's Odyssey: A New Translation, Albert Cook, 1968.

Computer Related:

• "Nisus: A Word Processor for Text Analysis" BMUG Newsletter VII.1, 179-80 (Winter/Spring 1991; Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, Berkeley CA 94709) .
• "Nisus" in Wordprocessing for Classicists ed. Robert Rowland, The American Philological Association (Scholars Press 1991).
• "Software for Learning Foreign Languages" BMUG Newsletter VII.1, 139-41 (Fall 1993; Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, Berkeley CA 94709).
• "Spanish Assistant for the Macintosh" BMUG Newsletter VII.1, 141-45 (Spring 1995; Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, Berkeley CA 94709).
• "Tips on Foreign Language Fonts," Macnexus, 2 (1986) 9

Other:

• "Ieopardus: Certamen optimum Discipulis omnis Aetatis" Longman Latin Newsletter, Fall 1994.
• "Study Guide for Praxeis Apostolon [=Acts of the Apostles] 13:1-18:17" revised April 2006; keyed to the second edition of Balme and Lawall, Athenaze, 2004.
• "Notes to I John" Athenaze Newsletter, Spring 1994.
• An excellent political joke in Latin, with the characters George Bush, Hilary Clinton, Tony Blair, and (most important) Saint Peter.
• More Latin jokes. Here is a .pdf file of Facetiae (1689), a collection made by Johannes Ludovicus Praschius - Johann Ludwig Prasch, a author in both Latin and German who was an educator and a senator in his native Ratisbona/Regensburg. His biography (in Latin) can be seen here. A Latin novella by Prasch can be found below, on this web page.
• How to Get an A, from James and Glavinovich, two guys who really know the score in higher education.
• Various book reviews.
• Summer Reading for Latin students: Ferdinandus Taurus, a Latin translation of Munro Leaf's story about a bull who would rather smell the flowers than fight in the arena. Part Two includes a vacabulary list. Here is part one. Here is part two with the vocabulary.
• Latin names for animals, (ANIMALIVM NOMINA.pdf), a list provided by Prof. Stephen Berard, an enthusiastic proponent of spoken Latin and the author of several original Latin essays. He teaches at Wenatchee College in Washington state.

Current Research Projects/Interests

• History of Ancient Science (see publications list for specific areas).
• Latin Pedagogy, including the use of spoken Latin in the classroom and in daily life.
• Neo-Latin and Renaissance literature, including John Barclay's Argenis, a Latin adventure novel first published in 1621. This is the Latin text from Riley and Huber, John Barclay: Argenis (2004).
• An interesting letter of the geographer, Gerard Mercator, from 1579.
• A short novel, Psyche Cretica ("Psyche from Crete"), by Johann Ludwig Prasch (1685). This novel is based on the well-known story, Cupid and Psyche, part of the novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, by the 2nd century Latin author Apuleius. Prasch rewrote the story as a Christian allegory.
• Claudius Morisotus/Claude Morisot, a 17th century physician and Latin writer from Dijon, completed Ovid's Fasti, a catalog of Roman festival through the year. Ovid wrote "January" through "June", before he was rudely interrrupted by his own exile. Morisotus wrote "July" through "December", a tour de force. Here is the text of July, August, and September. Here is October, November, and December.

Professional Associations

• California Classical Association
• The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

Send problems/comments/suggestions to: mtriley@csus.edu