This study concerns how the Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE) database of imperial coins can support Year 12 students to learn about Roman imperial image on coins for their Classical Civilisation Imperial Image paper. In observations of lessons, the author noted that pupils struggled to remember and identify coins which were prescribed sources for their examinations and appeared disengaged in other teaching methods. The author taught pupils how to use the OCRE database. When using the database, all pupils seemed more interested and engaged in the study of coins. Indeed, pupils’ classwork and written essays showed that, after using the database, their use of coin-related terminology and metalanguage increased, they wrote more detailed descriptions of coins, and considered how coins contributed to Augustus’ imperial image. The author recommends that teachers allow an extended period for students to become familiar with the software before formal activities. He suggests engaging activities for students such as finding and presenting coins to the class, curating displays of coins, or finding coins depicting various animals in the quickest time. Teachers could vary the time on each activity depending on the lesson time available.

This reflective essay responds to current redundancies in the sector of Classics teaching. tristia ex Dorcestria recounts the author’s near-miss experience of redundancy and considers the place of Classical subjects in the twenty-first-century curriculum. Written from the intersectional perspective of a Classics teacher, researcher and poet, the piece discusses the composition of the award-winning poem Manifesto, recipient of the Classical Association’s 2025 Write–Speak–Design Prize, and explores how creative practice became a means of transforming professional loss into pedagogical insight. Drawing on the metaphor of Ovidian exile, the essay situates one teacher’s story within a broader context of national uncertainty about the value and future of Classics. The essay demonstrates that creative practice can function both as personal catharsis and as a mode of critical reflection, enabling educators to reimagine their role and reconnect with the emotional and ethical dimensions of ancient study. The accompanying poem models how teachers might use creative responses to engage students with questions of power, justice, and identity, and to affirm the continuing relevance of the ancient world in addressing modern crises, not least those relating to war and violence, marginalisation, and democracy.

The discovery of Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae brought a new perspective to the grammatical analysis of the eighth and ninth centuries, as it heavily relied on the commentaries on Donatus’s Ars Minor and Ars Maior, and many scholars of the time were not entirely aware of Priscian’s contribution to the scholarly discussion within the didactical framework. Entwining Priscian’s interest in metalanguage and definitions into their studies, scholars brought the methods of dialectics into the study of grammar. As such, we refer to a few relevant figures within the medieval framework who played a relevant role. Between the eighth and ninth centuries, scholars such as Alcuin of York started to determine a theory of definitions rooted in dialectics by observing and commenting on the use of definitions in Donatus and Priscian. This is also the case of the glosses and lexica written in the Middle Ages that shed light both on the need for definitions and on the relationship between Latin metalinguistic definitions and Germanic languages. Among the works concerned with metalanguage, the glosses from St. Gall hold a special place. The teaching methods used in the Abbey of St. Gall survive in the translations and commentaries of the monk, scholar, and teacher Notker Labeo, whose didactic purpose is evident in his work.

This article traces the history of teaching Vulgar and Late Latin (LVLT) at Finnish universities from the mid-19th century to the present, focusing on the University of Helsinki. Drawing on archival sources, we examine changes in teaching programmes, degree requirements and thesis output. We show how LVLT was gradually integrated into Latin studies through philological renewal, Romance philology and epigraphic research, peaking in a ‘boom’ from the 1960s to the 1990s. Key figures such as Veikko Väänänen and Iiro Kajanto were central to embedding LVLT in teaching and research. However, recent structural reforms and cuts to staff and courses have contributed to a decline in LVLT instruction.