That brought back a memory of my own university experience.
Latin offered me a stage, too. Unfortunately, mine was an 8:00 a.m. performance every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I entered the University of Alabama in 1982 as an honors student coming out of high school. I was also the first person in my immediate family to attend college. My Aunt Janis had gone, but I arrived with very little understanding of how any of it worked. Even enrolling was a mystery.
An advisor suggested Latin.
“It’s a great introductory language.”
I had never taken a foreign language. Looking back, that might have been useful information for both of us to consider a little longer.
Meanwhile, I was playing football for Coach Bryant. We practiced live tackling, to the ground, every rep. I would walk into Latin covered in bruises and scrapes, looking like somebody had beaten me up in a bar fight.
You think I’m joking.
There were fifteen students in the class. Fourteen had studied Latin before.
Then there was me.
The professor would assign a passage, and we would take turns translating aloud. My classmates read Latin like they were reading the morning newspaper.
Then my turn would come.
“Uh … sky … uh … blue … uh … river. No, lake.”
It was humbling. An honors student in high school, and suddenly I couldn’t tell you whether we were standing beside a river or drowning in one.
So I developed a system.
I stayed up late cramming Latin into my head. Then I would sit in the middle section of the classroom and count ahead. If there were six people before me, I figured out which sentence would be mine and went to work.
And it worked!
By the time the professor reached me, I could deliver my translation at approximately the same pace as the people who actually knew what they were doing.
For a brief moment, I belonged in Milton’s world.
Until one late night and one hard practice too many.
That morning, I counted ahead, found my sentence, worked out the translation …
And fell asleep.
I woke up just as the student before me was finishing a translation with the confidence of an ancient philosopher.
My turn.
I sat up and announced, with vigor and cadence:
“Our city will not be strong because of foolish men!”
Every head turned. The professor. The students on either side of me. Everybody.
I had delivered it beautifully.
It was also the wrong sentence.
While I was asleep, the professor had changed sections.
“No, no,” he said. “Page 65, number six.”
I looked down.
“Uh … tree … uh … grass …”
Apparently, our city was in more trouble than I realized.
Here is where the funny story gets a little sad. I was so embarrassed that I never went back. And because I understood so little about college, I didn’t know there was such a thing as dropping a class.
I just quit attending.
The grade, unfortunately, kept attending on my behalf.
My first semester was a disaster. I ended up on academic probation. And in the football program, poor grades earned you additional running after workouts.
Latin was now hurting me academically, emotionally, and physically.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of my college story. Starting in my second year, I made the Dean’s List and continued making it through graduation. I eventually learned how to navigate college, though the lessons came with a few extra laps.
Reading about Milton now, I can appreciate what Latin meant in his world. It gave people access to learning, credibility, and a conversation that stretched across countries and centuries. Over time, other languages took over much of that work.
I can also look back with a little more sympathy for that bruised freshman trying to survive an unfamiliar world. I needed some guidance. I needed to learn how to ask for help. And I needed to discover that one embarrassing morning didn’t have to end my education.
But I stand by my translation:
Our city will not be strong because of foolish men.
I had some firsthand evidence.
Latin may be a dead language, but I’m still kicking.
Coach Bryant made sure I could keep moving.
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