15.07.25: topic; the fruits of the earth; introduction

Prīmus & antīquissimus Victus, erant Frūgēs Terræ. │ The first and most ancient sustenance, were the Fruits of the Earth.  (Comenius: Orbis Sensualium Pictus XLV)

It’s unlikely Caesar ever talked much about vegetables – but you might want to. One of the aims of the group is to look at vocabulary and phrases associated with our own lives, for example our hobbies and interests. If you enjoy cooking or gardening, or are into a healthy lifestyle then picking up at least some of the words in this topic will be useful. There is a very wide range of vocabulary presented in the posts; it isn’t about knowing it all, but identifying what you want to talk about.

Every word has its own “story” and I find it really helps to “explore” the vocabulary from different periods, what they understood by those words, variations in spellings, and archaic and / or less well-known translations. Images from Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, I think, reinforce the vocabulary. The more you read about the words, the more you see them in pictures and in some form of context, they’re no longer a dry list of vocabulary on a page. The posts are from the following sources:

1. Comenius (1658): his aim was to encourage the pupils to talk about the world around them and to point to things, and, if we want to be able to communicate in Latin we need to do the same.
2. the Tacuinum Sānitātis, a Mediaeval medical handbook from the 14^th and 15^th centuries which beautifully presents the vocabulary in a memorable set of images in which you can see them harvesting leeks, hunting for truffles – and, it appears, getting up to no good amongst the egg-plants!
3. Still on the Tacuinum Sānitātis, we’ll find out how to improve our love-life, treat scorpion stings and avoid (some) headaches when reading Mediaeval manuscripts.
4. The medical treatise by Aulus Cornelius Celsus from the first century AD is crammed with vocabulary – and some health advice on the treatment of flatulence.
5. We’ll head back to Comenius to look at some vocabulary related to gardening

image: gathering dill [anēt(h)um]; late 14^th century