Nearly three millennia after the fabled founding of Rome on the Tiber River by legendary twins Romulus and Remus, twin Dunham School seniors are teaching Latin along the Mississippi.
“Castor and Pollux, Amphion and Zethus—my dad and grandparents would read me those stories,” says Richard Harrod, listing the mythological twins that sparked his and his brother George Harrod’s interest as children.
When George engaged with the Latin language and classical mythology in middle school, their modern-day relevance was revealed to him through the ample references found in Mardi Gras customs, from the Krewe of Bacchus in New Orleans, named after the Roman god of wine, to the origins of the word “Carnival,” which comes from “carne levare”—late Latin for “remove meat.”