Michael Milam: Italy

On my trip to Italy I experienced so many new things, met many new people, saw the beautiful city of Rome as well as the Naples area, and read many Latin texts.

       Culture and Food

     Experiencing Italian culture was somewhat of a shock for me. Things in Italy are different in some ways: tap water has a very different mineral taste and is almost undrinkable to most Americans. Most people do drive smart cars (mostly Fiats) and almost all others drive small motorbikes. The Italian food was superb in Rome. We ate on campus mostly and were served food made by the Italian kitchen crew. For breakfast every morning we were given some kind of fruit, Italian brands of cereal, Italian fruit yogurt, and pastries such as croissants with jelly or nutella spreads. The lunch, eaten later in the day than in America, consisted of pasta every day. There was also usually some kind of meat, such as pork, beef, fish, or chicken. They also served fruit and water. For dinner we ate pasta and a kind of meat. Vegetables of many kinds were also served. The staff crafted all kinds of masterful pasta, from penne to spaghetti to bowtie. Some days there was tomato sauce, some days the sauce was creamy. I did not really know there were so many different kinds of pasta! Going into the trip, I was not the biggest fan of Italian food and pasta, but after eating some of the best every day for three weeks, I grew to appreciate it, and I really like pasta now. When we ate in the city or in Naples, the food was similar, but slightly different. We were served a kind of potato based pasta several times, and I ordered Neapolitan pizza twice, and Roman pizza once. All of the food was delicious. Another key food in Rome was gelato. The sheer number of flavors was stunning. I got to eat gelato around ten times and my favorites were stracciatella (vaniglia with chocolate chips) and fragola (strawberry). The language barrier was troublesome in some instances, but for the most part we were on campus, or with adult supervision, so it was not as detrimental as it could have been.

My first pizza on the Isle of Capri - Truly delicious

My first cup of gelato (stracciatella) which I ordered in a small medieval town in Tuscany

Tour of Italy Part I

            Seeing Roma Capitale, and the Amalfi Coast was stunning. Being able to see the places I have studied in Latin for three years was fulfilling and fascinating. On my first trip into Rome I got to visit the Aventine Hill, the hill of Remus. We saw several churches, including the church housing the first visual representation of Christ on the cross. We also got to see the Circus Maximus (now nothing more than a field), and we had a great view of the Roman skyline. We visited Etruria and went to some of the ancient Etruscian burial mounds in Tuscany. We also got to see a museum in a small medieval town filled with Etruscan artifacts. We also went to a beach in Tuscany that was really hot and crowded with Italians. One day we wandered the Forum and the Palatine Hill. I got to see the temple of Iuppiter Stator, the place where Cicero gave his famous speech against Catiline, a speech I had to memorize and recite this year in Latin class. Another day we took a trip to Ostia Antica to see the ruins of Rome’s ancient port city. There were all sorts of floor mosaics in the bath area, and the ruins were beautiful. There was a famous statue of cupid kissing a young girl. I got to see a couple of museums as well. I saw the Palazzo Massimo, a large museum filled with statues and busts among other things. I got to see a bust possibly of Seneca the Younger. My favorite museum, however, was the Capitoline Museum that had many famous works. I got to see a bust of Cicero, one of the most famous, as well as Galileo’s notebooks and busts of many emperors. Before we left for Naples we took a trip to Constantine’s Arch and the Coliseum which was astounding. The Coliseum was beautiful and one of the highlights of my tour. We then got to see the Catholic church of San Clemente sitting right atop an ancient Roman cult building. Seeing Catholicism literally right on top of Roman paganism was striking, as I was able to see so much history, almost like geologic strata. 

A picture of me standing on the Palatine looking out over the Coliseum

Picture of me and Ian at the Forum Romanum

Tour of Italy Part II

            My favorite part of my trip was Naples. I got to witness modern Italy as well as medieval Italy both of which are intriguing. We drove first down to Mt. Vesuvius and we got to climb to the top of it! I was able to look into the caldera. We then got to stop at an ancient Roman villa at Oplontis. We stayed the night in Sorrento, one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. It was a quaint Mediterranean coastal town and we were let loose into the town for a bit after dinner. On the next day we took a trip to Capri, one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. We took a boat ride around the island and then got to roam Capri for a while at lunch time. I had my first pizza and got an orange and lemon slushy that was really tasty. The next day we took a trip to Pompeii. It was very similar to Ostia, except that Vesuvius was looming eerily in the backdrop. I got to see a fresco depicting the induction rites of the Bona Dea cult, a Roman cult for women. On another occasion we took a trip to Cumae and got to see the place where the Sibyl would have given Aeneas her prophecies. We then stopped by a cemetery honoring the British who died in World War II which was really touching. Finally we went up to Monte Cassino, a monastery perched high on a mountain. The church was beautiful and it had a good view of the surrounding area. On our last day in Naples we went to Arpino, the birthplace of my favorite orator and author, Cicero, as well as Marius, one of the men responsible for the beginning of the century of revolution. In the last few days we took several more trips into Rome. One of the last days I got to go to a Latin Mass at the Basilica San Pietro in Vaticano. I, being Presbyterian, had never witnessed a Latin Mass, and I got to attend at the center of the Catholic world. Several cardinals were present and it was held at the foot of St. Peter’s Seat. I climbed to the cupola and got a beautiful view of the piazza outside the basilica. On the last day we walked by the Spanish Steps and went to the Trevi Fountain as well as the Pantheon. The last night I got a crepe with nutella and had a beautiful dinner outdoors at the foot of the church of St. Ignatius near the Pantheon.

View of Capri from the boat dock

Piazza San Pietro as seen from the top of the Basilica

The Latin Curriculum

             One of the best parts of the trip was reading the Latin. The curriculum was very difficult. I was in one of the more advanced groups and we read many Latin texts. I got to read a passage from Suetonius describing the death of Caesar. Another Suetonius passage depicted several murders committed by Octavian. I got to read a Livy passage about the death of Cicero by proscription. One of my favorite passages was the Tacitus passage about the establishment of the Roman principate. The way Tacitus wrote, he suggested that some form of princeps had existed from the beginning of Rome to the establishment of the empire. The longest passage we read was Pliny’s first letter to Tacitus regarding the eruption of Vesuvius, as well as part of his second letter. He describes how his great uncle, Pliny the Elder leaves for Oplontis at first to study the eruption, but then to save the civilians. Pliny describes how the elder Pliny resigns himself to his fate and stoically endures the fear for the sake of the others. He gets trapped on the other side of the bay and is killed as a result of the eruption. In his second letter Pliny talks about what he himself did when his uncle left. He talks about his decision to leave his village, and how the village people all decided to follow his mother and him. Both of the final passages were poems by Virgil. In honor of our visit to Cumae, we read part of Book VI of the Aeneid when Aeneas goes the the Sibyl and looks at the wall paintings depicting the Minotaur and the story of Daedalus. Finally we read a section out of Virgil’s Georgics which was extremely difficult. The vocab Virgil uses is very different, as he is describing the life of a farmer. He talked about the seasons, and the what farmers do at night and in the cold as well as heat. A large part of the poem was about how the gods established certain signals by which to predict the weather, and he writes extensively about how the wildlife act in relation to storms. We read a very good bit of Latin, and I feel like a much better translator because of the program. My grammar also was helped by the extensive study of the subjunctive and my vocab by the study of word meanings  through the “trilateral roots” of Latin words.

Part of Virgil's Georgics 

Original bust of Cicero - one of my favorite authors - in the Capitoline Museum

The People

            I met many interesting people from all over the US during the program. I made several new friends, and I got to know Ian a lot better. The teachers in the program helped make it so enjoyable for me. Dr. Sweet, the head lecturer, was brilliant and loved to go on tangents about the most interesting things. Bill Farris, one of the tutors, made the Latin enjoyable even when we were growing weary of translating. I got to have a long talk with tutors Bill and Adam one night about the writings of Cicero and Caesar which I enjoyed greatly. We were able to discuss Latin together in a relaxed setting. The teachers did a great job of convincing me even more of the importance of learning Ancient Greek, and I really hope I can take the class senior year. I will greatly miss all of the friends I made while in Rome as well as the teachers.

Dr. Sweet teaching us a passage of the Aeneid at Cumae

Some of my friends from the program posing on the last night of the trip

            I would like to thank Mr. Paolicchi for helping set up all of the plane tickets and coordinating with the program. I would also like to thank Mr. Gaither for all the work he has done with the language grants. I give many thanks to Ms. Ellery, my Latin III teacher, for preparing me very well for the difficult Latin curriculum and teaching me much about Ancient Rome. Finally, I would like to thank the Wilson family for allowing me to go on such a life-changing trip. I feel I have an enhanced world-view, as I have seen first-hand a different part of the world  and have seen how a different culture lives. I learned Latin to such an extent that I feel truly ready for Latin AP this year. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to go across the world to study something I love so dearly. This has been an experience I will never forget and one that has shaped me as a Latin student and as a person.