Coincidence of Roman Kings

I recently started an adult education class studying Latin. I had no plans to do so until I saw the class advertised when I was signing up for my Spanish class and it mainly took my fancy as it was a combination of history, language and culture which seemed just about right for me. I'm very pleased to have done so as it turns out to be one of the best classes I've ever attended. This is down to a combination of the quality of teaching which is excellent and also the combination of history, culture and language. I don't think I could have coped with two hours of Latin grammar and vocabulary and I have no need to become a Latin scholar, probably lacking the time too.

Our teacher is a young guy called Filippo from Pisa. An excellent teacher who puts a huge amount of effort into preparing and presenting his classes and emails his handouts and interesting links for further study. I missed the second class as I was unwell so I sent him an email to explain about my health problem and that I may not be able to attend all the classes, just depending on health progress and my recovery. Well you can imagine my surprise and delight to receive his reply offering to meet me for coffee on the following Monday to give me my own private class so that I would not fall behind.

I must admit I was slightly embarrassed to accept such generosity but felt it was too good an opportunity to miss. So there I was sitting in Costa Coffee at Holy Corner talking about the first seven Roman kings, the Rape of the Sabines and the rape of Lucretia, having already begun the study of the foundation myths of Rome in our previous class.

Some of you will recall previous mention in my blog of the Dylan song Early Roman Kings and my pal George sending a list of their names. I still haven't worked out why Dylan should have ended up writing a song called Early Roman Kings but I do know it's a fine song on the Tempest album and well worth a listen.

Filippo proceeded to write down the names of the first seven Roman kings, the early Roman kings of Dylan's song. He wondered if he could remember them all and he sure did.

Now that must be some kind of coincidence, surely. Or is it serendipity or are do they mean the same. I do wonder if George looked them up online or remember them from memory. Memory I hope. So tell us George! We should be told.