Bath, Memor and Epistemology

Magister at the "King's Bath," the best
preserved of the pools of the Roman complex

Sorry for the delay between posts! I am still trying to get caught up on my adventures in Britain while also making the most of my time here in Rome! After Stonehenge, Mirko and I made our way to Bath.  We arrived somewhat late after a slight mishap with the rental car (I took off the passenger’s side, i.e. left, door handle... nevermind...) leaving just enough time for dinner and a brief evening stroll.

The next morning we got up early and headed for the museum of the Roman Baths. This was very exciting for me because it was a place of which I had long been aware and because it figures very prominently in Unit III of the Cambridge Latin series, so I knew there would be plenty of good stuff for sharing with my students.  One of the objects I was most looking forward to seeing was the altar of Lucius Marcius Memor, the haruspex. 

A bronze model liver, presumably for 

the training of a haruspex. 

From Piacenza, Italy.

Disclaimer:  As far as I know there is 

no actual connection between haruspicy 

and the magic eight ball.

As my Latin students know well, a haruspex had the incredibly enviable job of reading the omens and predicting the future from the extracted livers of sacrificial animals.  Based on the shape, color and texture of the liver, a haruspex could supposedly tell you all sorts of things, but mostly the focus was on whether or not whatever you were planning-a battle, a discussion in the senate, a new construction-was a good idea or not. I’m not positive, but I believe the profession was only finally eliminated with the invention of the magic 8 ball--a much less bloody method that likely provides roughly the same level of accuracy.

Stone altar from Bath dedicated to the goddess Sulis
by the Roman haruspex Lucius Marcius Memor.

Anyway, I was particularly excited about this altar not only because it represents an important testimony of the spread of very specific Roman religious practices to Britain, but also because the character of Lucius Marcius Memor, who dedicated it, figures significantly in the storyline of the Cambridge Latin books.  As a practice, the Cambridge books attempt to take real people, places and things from the ancient Roman world and weave them into a believable, if entirely fabricated, continuous story in order to breathe a little more life into the learning of Latin.  

However, this can lead to confusion among the students as to where the line between fact and fiction lies. This, of course, is where the teacher intervenes.  In fact, this discussion was one of my favorite ongoing dialogues with the students this year and perhaps the most lively of these conversations centered on this person of Memor.  

The students' first introduction to Memor
in Stage 22 of Book III of the Cambridge
Latin Series.  He's the fat guy in bed shaking
off a hangover and late for work.

The reality is, this one intriguing inscription represents the entire sum of all we know about the person that was Lucius Marcius Memor. However, in the books, Memor is depicted as the drunken, obese and lazy haruspex/overseer of the baths who has to be dragged out of bed to go to work and who is all too easily talked into plotting the death of our friend Cogidubnus.  When told about this very large discrepancy between what we actually know about Memor (almost nothing) and how he is depicted in the Cambridge series, one of my students (we’ll call him Connoribus) very charmingly took up the defense of Memor’s, well, memory.  “What if the real Memor was fit, sober and hard working? That’s really not fair that the books portray him this way!”  I laugh every time I think about it because, ultimately, in the case of Lucius Marcius Memor, what does it matter?  He and all of his relatives are dead and we are never likely to know any more about him than we know now. So if Cambridge Latin wants to demonize him for the sake of making learning the Latin language a bit more lively and entertaining, what’s the harm?  

However, whether he knew it or not, Connoribus was striking at the heart of an important issue in schooling that needs to be constantly at the center of teaching and learning--epistemology.  How do we know what we know?  In an age where the first thing that comes up on a google search usually passes for “the answer,” we as teachers need to be constantly mindful that we know where the materials we teach ultimately come from (“ad fontes!” cried Luther and company) and that when we are using a tool, be it a creative story invented to make reading Latin more fun or a piece of technology, that we are constantly aware of the line between the lesson and the tool or the knowledge we want the students to acquire and the package that we give it to them in. That is a big part of why these trips are so valuable to me. Now I can tell Connoribus that I’ve actually seen the altar and, after looking closely at the inscription and the way it was carved, well, maybe he was a fat, lazy, drunk! :)