Nova Britannia Remote General Meeting: Maius MMDCCLXXVI
May 22nd, 2023, 7:00 p.m. - 8:20 p.m.
Attendees: Numerius Octauius Astronomus
Publius Sextius Laevus
The meeting opened with a brief Latin conversation, which seemed to follow naturally from our customary greetings.
Once we had switched to English, we discussed the Latin meeting which had been scheduled for the previous day. No one had attended, aside from myself, but I'd spent the time reading the Aeneid with the guidance of a video from Luke Ranieri (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmDfdnktMcI), so did not consider the time wasted.
N. Octauius recommended another Latin YouTube channel, Alexius Cosanus (https://www.youtube.com/@AlexiusCosanus).
Octauius next shared photos and video from the Kennebunk Maine May Day Parade (https://groups.io/g/TheForumRomanum/message/99495) on May 6th, 2023. He told us of the people he had seen that day, including M. Cassius Julianus, M. Quintius Clavus and other legionaries with Legio III Cyrenaica whom he had met before, as well as Tyler, whom he met in person for the first time. Octauius said that he would like to attend again in future years if his schedule allowed and considered acquisition of some Roman clothing to wear for future occasions.
We then discussed Nova Roma's internal activities for a bit. Octauius asked about the planned vigintisexvir elections and updates to the Nova Roma wiki, and although full answers were not known to anyone in attendance at that particular meeting, these questions were later passed on to the appropriate people. I encouraged P. Sextius & Octauius to attend the upcoming meetings of the philosophy group (https://groups.io/g/NovaRomaPhilosophy/messages), and they expressed some tentative interest.
Zoom then ended the meeting. P. Sextius and I spent another forty minutes in conversation, primarily about Latin. Sextius shared the outline of his own history with study of the language and a number of Latin resources he used. Among these were the "Latin Tutorial" YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@latintutorial), created by a teacher in Maine; the searchable Forcellini lexicon (http://linguax.com/lexica/forc.php), with Latin definitions of Latin words; and Latin.packhum.org (https://latin.packhum.org/concordance?q=). After the meeting, Sextius sent a message with links these and other resources, which he has recently forwarded separately.
Sextius also mentioned that he was currently reading ‘De Speculo Caritatis’ an early work by 11th century abbot Æthelred of Rievaulx (Aelredus was his Norman-Latin name), who had lived through the changes to England following the Norman Conquest.
