It was September 1962. I was 13½ years old, and newly enrolled as a freshman at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio. The school was a Catholic school and taught by the Marist Fathers, who lived in a community on the top floor of the high school building.

Probably the strangest (to me) course in my first year was Latin 1, in which we studied Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars in the original Latin.

Most of the kids from wealthier families picked up a copy of Cassell’s Latin-English dictionary, but I chose instead to get the Collins Latin Gem Dictionary, which could fit in my shirt pocket. (Eventually, I also got the White’s Latin Dictionary, which looked to have been originally published in the 1800s.)

My Collins Latin Gem Dictionary is still in good condition and still eminently usable. The nice thing about Latin is that books in and about the Latin language never go out of date.

Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.