Day 11: Bellum Mercium and Toga Time

      Salvete, omnes!

      Today, we had Greek classes, which included the Lucian class, in which we read Lucian's description of the Isle 0f the Blest and many, many direct satires of historical and mythological figures. I (Jackson) very much enjoyed catching the references in this chapter, and thought this was the best of Lucian's True History so far. Additionally, we had Mercatus Traiani, in which we began researching for our mercatus board projects. And in our Greek language class, we learned accusative articles, and began reading about Xerxes. 

 After lunch, we had Otium, where many of us were productively doing work, while others were productively scheming for our later game of Bellum Mercium. After Otium, we changed into togas, and Bellum Mercium began! Bellum Mercium is a strategy game (I, Jackson, thought immediately of the Civilization series), where each of us controlled an empire on a board based on our provinces and tried to build up our nations through trade amongst ourselves. Each province assigned its people to different positions, such as the role of strategist or trader! We spoke Latin almost the whole time! The provinces were able to declare war on each other, which happened quite often, but the majority of our interactions were peaceful and benefitted all involved. There were multiple categories in which one could win, such as most points or best spoken Latin. When it came to in-game points, though, Asia Minor blew away everyone else with its rapid expansion and control of the spices. Playing improved both our spoken Latin abilities and our understanding of the complexities and costs of running an empire. 

Province Cup Rankings:
Britannia: 135
Achaea: 106
Germania: 104
Aegyptus: 104
Gallia: 99
Africa: 86
Asia: 86
Italia: 86

Bonam noctem,
Emily and Jackson