Res Gestae CONTINUED

University to inspect a bronze bust of Nero and the funereal artifacts from the burial chambers at Ur. 

• A poetry reading of the Iliad by Mark Miner. Eta Sigma Phi members sponsored the reading and provided the refreshments available at the end of the entertainment. 

• A trip to Nashville to see the replica of the Parthenon — Athena is gilded!!!

• A  dinner and theatre evening for The Birds by Aristophanes. 

• The 75th Annual Eta Sigma Phi Convention 

• A used-book sale

Eta Gamma (Loyola University, New Orleans): The 2002-2003 school session has been an exciting one for the Eta Gamma chapter. We kicked the year off by cosponsoring a lecture entitled "Spearing Boars with a Stylus: Younger Pliny Writes High-Status Holidays," given by Professor Eleanor Winsor Leach of Indiana University. Throughout the year, members have been volunteering at AIA-sponsored lectures on campus as well.

Our local community was hit hard by tropical storms and hurricanes this past fall, and in November Prytanis Erica Saccucci led the chapter in a campus-wide clothing drive to help meet the needs of the families who lost their homes and possessions in the wake of destruction that is life in Southern Louisiana. 

The spring semester has been a busy one for us. In February we held one of our now-famous "Movie Nights," and held a screening of Ben Hur. Our second movie night of the year will be held in late April, and that will be a showing of Woody Allen’s "classic" comedy Mighty Aphrodite. 

On March 3 Eta Gamma participated in sponsoring the Lysistrata Project on campus, which was a world-wide reading of the play in order to protest the war in Iraq. Two of our officers, Chrysophylax Katie Jones and Hyparchos Kelly Duncan, had lead rolls in the production, and the revival of Aristophanes’ work proved very popular on campus. On March 14 officers and members alike 

were proud to welcome our new initiates: Marie Leonce Many, Joshua Shane Canzona, Coby Caroline Nathanson, Crystal Renee Guidry, Lauren Michelle Fisher Juleff, Kirby Jo Bullington, Jorden Kathryn Ridenhour, Katherine Renee Smitherman, Rebecca Sheptock, Tom Russell, Salome Mallgren, Tori Luwisch, Lauren F. Jones, Clare Gulchard, Jason George, Ann Galloway, George Edward Merritt III, Caroline Ann Kincaid, Philip Zale, Kassie Moore, Carolina Champagne, Anna Pasvantis, Tommy Stevenson, and Dr. Yang Wang, PhD (honorary member). After the ceremony, we invited new members and their families to stay and sample traditional Greek cuisine with us.

The weekend of March 29 is the President’s Open House on campus, and members will be working hard to promote the Classical Studies program to alumni and prospective students. That weekend is also Eta Sigma Phi National Convention, and Katie Jones, Kelly Duncan, Colin Williams, and faculty advisor Dr. Connie Rodriguez will be traveling to Norman, Oklahoma, to represent the Eta Gamma chapter. We are proud and honored that a paper submitted by Miss Jones was chosen to be presented at the Convention. 

Finally, we’ll be rounding out the year on May 3 with our annual "Pre-Final- Exams Eta Sigma Phi Cook-Out." This is a wonderful way for members to gather together and celebrate another successful year of scholarship in the field of Classical Studies. 

Eta Delta (Hillsdale College): This past academic year has been one of the strongest for Eta Sigma Phi at Hillsdale College under our unofficial motto of "Bowling, Food, and Classics." Under the auspices of faculty advisor Professor Joseph Garnjobst, Eta Sigma Phi once again challenged every honorary on campus to the great bowl-off Honorama, which last year raised over $1000 for charity. This event has reached epic proportions — literally. Honorama served as the inspiration for the Latin epic that Prof. Garnjobst’s Spring 2002 Aeneid class began composing, reviving a venerable, invaluable tradition of poetry composition that has sadly fallen by the wayside in modern classical education. Plans are in the works for the upper-level Greek students to begin composing a tragedy based on  Aeschylus’ Seven 

 Against Thebes in response to this year’s tragic defeat at the hands of the business and accounting department despite heroic efforts on our part. Charity still won (even if we didn’t) as pledges and donations topped $1200 this year. Eta Sigma Phi’s fetish for haute cuisine was glutted royally with the fall cookout and spring Floralia events featuring a wide array of delectables made by our own gourmet-chef classics Professors Holmes, Jones, and Garnjobst. This interest in things culinary has even expanded into a new Honors course, Food in the Ancient World, the only seminar to offer a lab in cooking. Of course we also participated in the biannual (exploitation of) parents weekend, selling chocolate truffles and our award-winning classics apparel.

As for things overtly classical (as if eating and competing weren’t classical enough), Latin reading group continues, with the professor-led Plautus group giving way to a Vulgate reading group guided by our current president and avid Philhellene Ethan "Gus" Torretta. This semester (Spring 2003) we undertook the new (to us) and exciting project of paper-making under the watchful eye of the Dea Classica, the Muse of Classics (and professor of English), Melinda vonSydow. A small but dedicated band met each week throughout February to make sheets of paper from scrap paper, leaves, and any other cellulose- containing material available. The paper will be sewn into books, in which we plan to copy favorite lines from Latin and Greek literature like the scriptores of old. Looking forward to the philologists of the future, Eta Sigma Phi launched the Dictionary Project (in cooperation with an organization of the same name) in the Hillsdale Public Schools, providing the third-graders with their very own  (English) dictionaries. We hope to make this an annual charity event. Also new this year is the free tutoring workshop begun for the purpose of accommodating the largest incoming class of beginning Greek and Latin students. With the addition of another classics faculty member for the upcoming fall term, we look forward to another propitious year of bowling, food, and classics.