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The Latin club scene is hotter than it's been in decades, but the attraction isn't J.Lo.
It's Cicero.
After a nearly half-century lull, studying Latin is cool again. Enrollment is up in high schools, including in Indiana. U.S. college enrollment in Latin is the highest it has been since the Modern Language Association started keeping track in 1958.
The 2,500-year-old language is becoming a pop culture phenom.
The first Harry Potter tome has been translated into "Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis (the sorcerer's stone)." Irish singer Enya performs Latin tracks on four of her CDs. In the 2001 season finale of "The West Wing," a grieving President Bartlet had some choice words in Latin for God.
It's a trend that's been brewing for the past couple of years.
"Every Latin teacher in the world went nuts when the movie 'Gladiator' came out (in 2000)," said Steve Perkins, a teacher at Washington Township's North Central High School.
Latin appears to be thriving in Indiana, as well as in Hollywood.
Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers started its Latin program last year. Last spring in Elwood, outraged parents rebuffed administrators' attempt to purge the program in favor of a modern language.
While Latin courses have been dropped at a few high schools, enrollment has grown at both the high school and junior high levels in Indiana. At the Indiana Junior Classical League, a network of Latin clubs across the state, membership rose 81/2 percent, to 1,552 last school year.
Hoosier high school students enroll at a slightly higher rate than the national average, according to the Indiana Department of Education and the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Language. Nationally, about 3 percent of all foreign language students take Latin; in Indiana, it's about 4 percent.
Five years after creating an undergraduate degree in Latin, Purdue University has to regularly add classes, even in summer.
Not bad for a dead language.
Latin waned to a whisper after the fall of the Roman Empire, although it survived as an education staple. But by the mid-20th century, enrollment in Latin courses began to slide. The 1960s and '70s nearly choked Latin.
"Everything had to be relevant, and there was a cafeteria approach to curriculum: Take what you want to take," said national expert Professor Richard A. LaFleur of the University of Georgia.
The Roman Catholic Church's decision to let local language dominate Mass also pushed Latin to the sidelines, he and others said.
So what's behind the renewed interest in Latin? The growing emphasis on test scores lures some students.
"It'll definitely pay off," said fourth-year student Kyle Cassidy, a senior at Elwood. "A big part of Latin is learning the etymology of words. If you know the Latin roots, you can break down a word and figure it out."
Two or more years translate into SAT scores that are 140 to 160 points higher than non-Latin students, LaFleur said.
Taking one year helped North Central senior Courtney O'Brien. Her overall score on the preliminary SAT jumped by 100 points on her second try.
"That's why I took Latin," the 17-year-old said.
Career plans lead some students to pursue Latin, the mother of all Romance languages -- Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese -- and the root of half the English vocabulary.
"I always ask my students why they're taking Latin," said Elwood teacher Diana Garner. "Many of them are interested in the medical field or law. When it comes to science, easily 80 percent of the terms are Latin- based."
To some experts, Latin's slow but steady revival over the past decade is a bit baffling, even though foreign language enrollment is up in general.
"After 9/11, we became aware that we needed to understand other cultures. But I don't think the Romans are going to attack us, so why Latin is up is a good question," said Louis Janus, coordinator of international programs at the University of Minnesota.
Experts say livelier textbooks and teaching methods helped spur the rebound by focusing on the way Romans lived.
Perkins' students at North Central experience what educators call authentic learning.
They call it fun.
Each year, his third-year students stage a mock Roman trial. This year's trial was Thursday morning. Roman leader Cicero -- in this case, junior Shaun Kelley -- was charged with illegally executing foreign anarchists.
Kelley, 17, and his classmates dressed the part. Each boy wore a toga pulled from the linen closet, either a bedsheet or tablecloth. The girls donned homemade Roman dresses and dangling earrings and put ribbons in their hair.
The 19 students who served as prosecutor, defendant, witnesses and judge ad-libbed their way to a mistrial, as advanced Latin students failed to reach a verdict.
Some students relish wrestling with an ancient, almost enigmatic tongue. North Central junior Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe, 16, has started the Latin version of Harry Potter and contends it's not a forbidding read.
"You feel very cool when you're reading it," she said. "You can always flip to English if you're not sure what a word means."
Cassidy, 17, the Elwood senior, values reading original works, with no other translator to separate him from ancient minds.
"I've read Julius Caesar's 'The Gallic War' and poems and speeches."
Latin is more than mere words, teachers say.
"I'm not just opening their eyes to nouns and verbs," Elwood's Garner said. "I'm opening their eyes to another time period, an ancient time when many of our ways and laws began to evolve."
Call Star reporter Marcella Fleming at 1-317-444-6089.