CAI Website

Salve!

Greetings to all our members and visitors! Welcome to our website.

These are extraordinary times, hoping that you and your loved ones are safe and well. As you will know, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, our annual CAI Summer School 2020 had to be cancelled.
Please watch this space for updates on the latest news regarding planned future events.

The Latin and Ancient Greek Reading Groups continue in January on Zoom. Further details may be found here.

The Classical Association of Ireland Latin Summer School 2021 provides an exciting opportunity to learn Latin through a two-week immersion.
The Latin Summer School is designed for secondary school students between the ages of 15 and 18. If you are not studying Latin or Classics, but you are interested in ancient languages, this is the place for you! Whether you are studying Classical Studies or the new Junior Certificate Classics or not, the Summer School offers an exciting opportunity to explore the culture of the Romans through their language. Perhaps you want to improve your language learning skills or understanding, communicating and writing in English? Or you are exploring your academic future? If you are you thinking about studying Classical Civilisation, Archaeology, Classical Languages, Ancient or Medieval History, Philosophy, Religion, History of Art, Romance languages in college, the CAI Summer school is a great place to start! Further details may be found here.

The continuation of the UCD Classical Museum Seminar Series has been announce, further details may be accessed here.

The latest volume of our journal Classics Ireland is now available, further details may be found on here.

All the latest news from the IIHSA in Athens, including information about the online conference which will take place at the end of September, is available here.

Eavan Boland - Obituary

The distinguished poet, Eavan Boland, who died on 27th April 2020, was Honorary President of the Classical Association of Ireland for the year 2000. Her Presidential Address took place in the then-Industry Centre UCD Belfield on the evening of Thursday 30th November. She addressed a very enthusiastic audience on the theme of The Living Language. Her concern was with the question of why a language lives and how it dies - if, indeed, it ever does die; and with the issue of translation. Her address began with one poem, Padraig Colum's A Poor Scholar of the Forties; its centre was formed by another poem, her own The Latin Lesson; and it ended with a translation (done by herself at the age of twenty-one) of Horace's ode, O Fons Bandusiae.

The whole address was infused with the poet's love of language - and particularly of the Latin language of which she said: "I don't believe I could ever have been a poet in the way I became one without Latin. I would have been so much poorer as a person without Latin. And yet today we see this beautiful, complicated and central language slipping away, not just from our schools and universities, but from the esteem in which a great language deserves to be held".

Going on to list the "three most magical books of my whole lifetime" she named "my first volume of Yeats's poetry, my first books of Sylvia Plath's poetry and my Arnold's Latin Grammar", and continued, "And among them all, it was probably Arnold's grammar that was most truly the magic carpet for me".

Not only has Ireland lost an outstanding poet with the death of Eavan Boland, but the Classics, and particularly the Latin language, has lost a wonderful champion, who will be sorely missed.
                       atque in perpetuum, soror, ave atque vale

The full text of Eavan Boland's Presidential Address to the Classical Association of Ireland can be found in Classics Ireland Volume 25 (2018).


The CAI Summer School took place in Sligo from 16th-18th August 2019, hosted by our Sligo Branch; further details can be found on the event page here.

The CAI Tour of Cyprus took place from 3rd -13th May, 2019. The tour was based in two centres, 5 nights in Paphos and 5 nights in Limassol.  In antiquity Cyprus consisted of numerous independent kingdoms, centred in cities which were successively adapted to Phoenician, Greek and eventually Roman systems of governance and architectural influence. The same cultural mix continued well into the medieval and later periods.

Many thanks to Dr. Selga Medenieks for the Newsletter; Dr. Shane Wallace for the Classical Association Facebook Page; Shane and Dr. Eoghan Moloney for the Classics Events-in-Ireland Calendar.

Your continued support of the Association is valued and appreciated. As always, we invite your feedback and suggestions.  

Isabella Bolger
Editor