Lampas - Volume 57, Issue 2, 2024

Until now, a broad overview of Latin didactics in Flanders as a whole was missing. For the first time, we submitted the Flemish practices of teaching Latin to a large-scale survey, in which over 200 teachers took part. The focal point of our survey was the position of grammar in present-day instruction. In order to quantify this instructional aspect and be able to make detailed comparisons between groups of teachers, we developed a scale measuring ‘grammar-orientedness’. For the sake of thorough interpretation and contextualisation, we supplemented the quantitative data with qualitative data from teacher comments and interviews, and also related the results to the current educational guidelines for classical languages. Our main finding is that on the whole, Flanders has left the grammar-translation method behind and has embraced the so-called reading method prescribed by the educational guidelines, which puts texts centre stage and integrates the teaching of grammar, reading and cultural-historical content. Nonetheless, more grammar-oriented as well as more extremely reading-oriented practices also exist, and there remains plenty of institutional, interindividual and intra-individual variation.

This article focuses on interdisciplinarity in Dutch gymnasia. Even though interdisciplinary education knows many advantages and is a shared ambition among many teachers, it is not a prominent feature of school curricula in the Netherlands. Which problems do gymnasium teachers experience when developing interdisciplinary education at their schools? What are features of ‘best practices’? And what do teachers need in order to improve interdisciplinary education? To answer these questions two methods were used, namely a questionnaire and a focus group. The results show that teachers are mainly in need of development time, good conditions (roster, rooms), shared interest among colleagues, a clear vision from school management, and ways to embed interdisciplinarity in the curriculum. Analysis of best practices and prior research indicate that this embedment can be achieved if teachers gain better knowledge of each other’s school subjects. In this way, existing subject specific curricula can be used as a starting point for interdisciplinary education, rather than developing something ‘completely new’ on top of existing curricula. This approach is in line with an important aspect of successful implementation of (educational) innovations: the ‘new’ interdisciplinary education is connected in a meaningful and acceptable way to the ‘familiar’ subject specific curricula.

This article examines the role that references to classical literature play in the HBO-series Succession (2018-2023). Over the course of four seasons, the characters of the series refer to various figures and works from Greek and Latin literature, such as Oedipus, Coriolanus, Nero and Sporus, Plato’s Republic, Pharaoh Rameses II, and Cicero. While aiming to provide a fairly complete overview of these references, I show how these references often foreshadow the plot of the series. Then, I show that many of these references, although often presented as ‘original’, are often derived from, and refer to, later works in the chain of reception. Finally, I demonstrate how these references are often employed by (seemingly) erudite characters who want to stress differences in class and intelligence and emphasize moral superiority. After having shown how other characters respond to this literary game, I conclude that since the references are derivative and characters do not always seem to have read the Classics themselves, this practice of referencing should be considered grotesque and clownish, and thus contributes to the satirical character of the show.

This article furnishes an analysis of some relevant passages in Livy, Vergil and Ovid, in which the historiographical sources concerning the republican hero Marcus Furius Camillus are used, either explicitly or implicitly. The fashioning of Camillus in Livy’s Ab Urbe condita as a saviour of the nation contains projections from Livy’s own time and suggests an identification with the emperor Augustus. Both Vergil and Ovid appear to have drawn on Livy’s treatment of Camillus, but, while in Vergil Camillus seems to mirror the princeps, Ovid apparently juxtaposes both statesmen.