Lawrence Foster
Frank -
Ah yes, the Latin class pony that I used to get me through Caesar's Gallic Wars. I haven't thought about that for many years now. I would love to take credit for it but it was something one of my older brother's got from a girlfrend whose older sister had created it. So when I used it in 63-64 it was probably 10 years old. It was a type written copy that occasionally the girl had added colored pencil drawings on some pages. I would bring in only 3 or 4 pages at a time to use in class. I remember one day the teacher, Sister Cecily perhaps, decided to get rid of all the Cliff's Notes ponies that were being shuffled on desks and not hidden very well. She started down the aisle by the door and by the time she got over to the window side where I was she had confiscated more than a dozen copies. She looked at my pages, did a double take, and the expression on her face seemed that she was saying in her mind, "Okay, I'll let this one go this time since it is not a Cliff's Notes." But she checked out my desk top every day for 3-4 weeks after that. I had decided to just copy the pages at night and not bring them into class. So while I did not get into any official trouble I was on her radar screen.
I am glad that you were able to get help from it Frank. I know it helped me tremendously! I remember a little rhyme from those times that went "Latin is a language / Dead as dead can be. / First it killed the Romans / Now it's killing me."
In later years I heard or read somewhere that the language died out partially because it was structred so that verbs were at the end of a sentence. People got tired of waiting to find out what was going on that they switched to languages where the action could be known earlier on in the sentence. Don't know if it is true or not but it seemed like an interesting thought when linked with the poem.
I've looked online to see where or how the term pony or ponies came to be attached to Caesar's Gallic Wars. No clear luck. But below is a link to an article published in "The Ohio Teacher" in June, 1917. The term (in the left hand column, 3rd paragraph) had been around for a long time before us!
https://books.google.com/books?id=XBowAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA434&lpg=PA434&dq=why+is+latin+translation+of+caesar++called+a+pony&source=bl&ots=g1HnmjVbyI&sig=joMuUDJhRr5f0gQgjARqedt67RE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwingO7X07XZAhUK21MKHdHdBTMQ6AEIYTAG#v=onepage&q=why%20is%20latin%20translation%20of%20caesar%20%20called%20a%20pony&f=false
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