by Aldus Marius on Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:32 am
Ave, magister (Greetings, O Wise One)...
...and welcome to the Forum Board and the SVR; I do hope you enjoy your experience here!
This Forum is very lively...but at a lower gear than some Boards that might see a few hundred posts a day. Most of us here are college students, so the Forum slows almost to a standstill during the period leading up to and including Final Exams. And then the students travel for the summer; this is easier to do in Europe, where we have more members than anywhere else, including the founders of the Societas. Many of the rest are retired old farts (like me) who have time a-plenty but can only sit at a computer for so long. Throw in the odd reenactor who does gigs on the weekends, the folks who only have computer access through their jobs, and the professors developing lesson-plans for all those students, and...well, I'm surprised we hear from anybody between May and September.
But we do. And while some of their writings are funny or fantastical or meant just to be sociable, a very large proportion of the material is of such high quality and readability that it ends up being enshrined on our Web site. I am currently working through a backlog of articles and essays that were donated to the site but not yet published. And the excellence and scholarship of so much of this work just amazes me. What's up on the site already will give you an indication. There's more on the way. And it all comes from amateurs, such as ourselves, who are or are becoming Romans-in-Spirit, and who do all this homework because it helps them connect with the Heritage--in short, because it pleases them to do so.
Our Collegium Religionem members are the most welcoming group I have ever interacted with on matters of Roman religion, and I'm not even a practitoner. Even those who do not formally worship any Roman deities may have questions about Them, or about the things that went on around Them back when, and on how one can adapt a formerly state-level, public religion to one's own private life. Such discussions are the soul of the CollRel, and indeed of the Societas as a whole.
Beautiful avatar, btw...and this is a Roman smilie. >({|:-)
And the Latin...? Stick around; it'll rub off on you!
In amicitia et fide (In Friendship and Fidelity),
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.