Education: Pueri et Puellae Certantes

Latin Olympics revel in gender and case

It was hardly a typical teen-ager's dream vacation. One thousand two hundred and fifty students were jammed together in sweltering, un-airconditioned dorms in the 101° F. Florida heat. There was all the excitement of a library reading room at high noon: teen-agers hunched in corners, muttering over dog-eared textbooks or stacks of index cards. The prevailing sense of humor was as old as the Roman hills: bantering buttons with such slogans as DA MI OSCULUM LATINE LOQUOR (Kiss me, I speak Latin) and ATLAS IS TOO STONED TO CARE.

But to the membership of the...

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