IT has endured the fall of an empire, the rise of the vernacular, incomprehension from generations of schoolchildren - yet Latin lives on.

For nearly 30 years, Rachel Price has been a life support to this oldest of languages as head of classics at Hereford's Aylestone High School.

Her era ends in July. She can retire safe in the knowledge that Barbarians are no nearer the gate.

Keeping them at bay is an alliance between Aylestone and Hereford Sixth Form College. The new Head of Classics will share GCSE Latin duties with AS and A level instruction.

These two neighbours already collaborate over curricular and extra-curricular activities. But this joint post is a local first, attracting national attention.

Literacy arena

Dr Armand D'Angour, Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford, welcomed a 'marvellous initiative'.

Aylestone head Tony Wray expects around 11-16 GCSE students each year to defy those that give Latin no quarter.

In the 16th century, mastery of formal Latin was the price of entry to schools and universities. Learned Europeans gloried in the wealth of its vocabulary.

Latin had a vital part to play during the first modern age, an arena of literary artistry and a vehicle for scientific communication that, from a Renaissance heyday, only really lost its practical purpose over the last century.

Sixth Form College Principal Dr Jonathan Godfrey sees the Latin link-up complementing spin-off studies from a current classical revival like archaeology - increasingly popular as an AS subject - and English.