For the Love of Classics

A Guide for the Perplexed

I did not set out to become a teacher of Latin and Greek. In fact, for the most part, I still see myself as a scholar of religion and a biblical scholar, and an amateur theologian, and roughly half of my research and reading interests are spent there in my free time. Yet what I have done for my main day job for a couple of years now is teach Latin (and next year, Greek makes a glorious return). Last month, I spent about a week speaking Latin with other classicists at the Villa Palazzola on Lake Albano and then a secondary week perusing classical sites in Italy for future academic trips, including Ostia, Pompeii, the Museo Archaeologico Nazionale di Napoli, and the Imperial Fora. And so it’s worth checking in with myself, a bit, about that career, not simply as a diversion from what I set out to do long ago, but as a vocation in its own right.