Ben Johnson

Maine Latin Teacher, YouTuber @latintutorial, 2025 Penobscot County Teacher of the Year, 2026 Maine Teacher of the Year Finalist. Check out

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

If you head over to https://t.co/yBH1ygrOV3 right now, you'll notice a brand new look that's been my big focus over the last few years. It's still in a beta preview because who knows what bugs exist until a lot of people hit my code and servers. 1/15

[Armand D'Angour @ArmandDAngour]

The poems of the “epic cycle” were later and inferior, and the idea that they formed a true cycle with the great Homeric epics is unsustainable.

["Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @BretDevereaux]

Man, I *want* to stir the pot by saying 'the Aeneid' but even I can't do that.

The Aeneid is, in fact, a great work of literature which can stand on its own, not a dim imitation of Homer, but one could hardly scrap Homer for Vergil; you'd lose both.

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@kxjohnson I don't think that the approach by the Brad Pitt movie Troy was correct either, where they tried to fix the film in the true historical past without the gods entirely. I'm excited to see what a skilled director who makes choices does!

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@kxjohnson We'll be watching it this weekend, for sure. I'm not sure Richard Brody (whom I don't know) is right. The poem is about Odysseus (the first word is "man", ἄνδρα), and any classicist knows how stupid it has looked to depict divinities in film.

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@sentantiq Reading about the umbrella pine over Vesuvius for AP Latin led to non-stop pine tree references for the rest of the year.

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@miserabiliter Betteridge’s law of headlines seems to apply here to the title of this: "Obvia Signis Signa: A Signature in the Proem to Lucan’s Bellum Civile?" NO

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@veriloquia @DAMendelsohnNYC Aeneas *is* the anti-Odysseus, especially in his personality.

[Louise 🔸 @LeRoyDesCimes]

The Epic of Gilgamesh is remarkable in that it's a 4,000-year-old text but it gets new content faster than ASOIAF

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

Kind of sheds new light on the Aeneid too.

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

Working on a new activity for https://t.co/BbzRkrJOyw. 🤔

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

The Maine DOE visited my school yesterday for the final round of the Maine Teacher of the Year. I couldn't have asked for a better day. https://t.co/PQH8KBEh6R

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@piniferalittera I think big rivers having seven mouths is a trope. Hardie suggests that the Romans didn’t even know of the Ganges delta during V’s time, and suggests the amnes are tributaries.

[Classical Studies Memes @CSMFHT]

It's even funnier because it should be *them* not *they* lol

[Armand D'Angour @ArmandDAngour]

43 BC: Marcus Tullius Cicero est omnis divisus in partes tres, quarum una caput est, alia truncus, tertia manus…

{Rather macabre. Sorry).

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@BretDevereaux Pliny and Trajan use “aquae ductus” in their Book 10 exchange (which every AP Latin student will soon read).

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@EllenLeePhD @lenofi Since I learned from Wheelock’s, my videos almost perfectly line up with that sequence.

[Armand D'Angour @ArmandDAngour]

Yes.

I learned Fortran and studied Latin in 1973-4.

One of them is now
effectively a dead language, the other provides constant inspiration!

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@MagisterConway @DCComm In my own limited database (just a few works), I have multitudo about 1.5x as frequent as turba.

[Classics/TPE at Castle Court Prep @CastleCourtClas]

Yr7 Latinists have just had a complete ‘Geek-Out’ over tenses (thanks to @latintutorial - cheers, Ben!). So many links made to other languages they know…. #CastleCourtCurious 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇫🇷 🇪🇸 🇩🇰 🇮🇳 🇮🇹 🇩🇪

[Ben Johnson @latintutorial]

@sentantiq My students often think this too