The other day I was distracted researching ancient swearing and came across a nifty post on classical swearing which Gary Corby then blogged about.

I’m having far too much fun with this, especially the Byzantine habit of stringing together obscenely long epithets of all sorts of naughty names. I’m thinking this might be something to teach my students.

“By-the-Goose-you-curly-headed-onion-clay-potted-dirty-dog-dating-a-viper-zipalid!”

Maybe not. But at least you’d know which students were mine in the halls, right?

And now to important matters… The winner of either Daughters of Rome or Mistress of Rome is…

Dawn Simon!

Email your address, Dawn, and which book you’d like. Huzzah!