“That’s disgusting,” shrieks Kim Wilson, one of Mr Olbrys’s teenage students in a high school outside Boston. Her classmates want to hear more.

Olbrys is the newest member of the faculty, but his subject is the oldest: Latin, which has been restored to the curriculum for the first time in a decade. The class, which also covers Greek and Roman culture, was immediately filled.

Latin is enjoying a renaissance after a retreat that started in 1962 with the decline of Latin Mass. Enrolment in Latin classes fell by 80 per cent between between 1962 and 1976.

Today’s students are turning to Latin not only to sharpen their vocabulary skills for the all-important university admission tests,but because they think it’s cool.

Mr Olbrys’s class, in Pearl Jam T-shirts and tinted hair, debate the relative qualities of Homer and Virgil and draw broader lessons about life from the myth of Hercules and the lion. They use Latin to greet each other in the corridors.

“It’s a beautiful language,” said Adam Shea, a 17-year-old senior. “That’s why we have to speak it. If we don’t, it could be forgotten.”

By 1991, the last year for which figures are available, the number of American students taking Latin had increased to 163,923 after dropping to barely 150,000 in 1976.

The Junior Classical League, a national association of Latin students, has 54,000 members and has grown to become the biggest academic extra-curricular organisation in the country.

“It’s amazing that so many kids across the country can be as excited about Latin as they are about athletics,” said the league president Bret Federigan, a high-school student from Washington DC.

Inside the classroom, Latin has been reinvented. Computer software has replaced decaying 1930s textbooks and a legion of young teachers - Mr Olbrys is 23 - is taking over. Lessons in culture, history and even architecture have been added.

Penny Cipolone’s Latin classes at a high school in New Jersey stage Roman weddings and death rituals, and have formed a volleyball league. She has four times as many Latin students this year as when she started teaching in the 1970s.

“We’re faced with a lot of negative stereotypes,” said Glenn Knudsvig, a University of Michigan professor and president of the American Classical League, a national confederation of Latin teachers. “We’ve been called irrelevant and out-of-date and only for the smart kids. Suddenly we’re finding that it’s anything but that.”

Knudsvig grudgingly attributes much of the resurgence in enrolment to anxiety about vocabulary scores on standardised admission tests for colleges and universities. Latin, from which 60 per cent of English words derive, can help boost students’ verbal skills.

“We don’t like to talk about it, because it sounds so crass, but. . . the word is out that there is this enormous side benefit,” Knudsvig said. But he added: “It’s not the parents pushing. In fact, a lot of the kids say their parents want them to take a modern language. The kids think (Latin) is where interesting things are happening.”

In Boston, Mr Olbrys fields questions from his class about vomitoria and homosexuality in ancient Rome. He tells the story of Odysseus, whose wife Penelope was said to have been faithful to him during his 20-year absence. “Sure,” Adam Shea mutters.

“Any cultured person is going to know these stories,” Mr Olbrys says.

He is concerned about the future as well as the past. The revival of Latin faces increasing resistance from advocates for more diversity in education, who consider Latin the language of a culture dominated by white males. And some school districts are only committing themselves to Latin one year at a time - budget constraints make it an optional subject quick to be sacrificed to the core curriculum.

“As far as I’m concerned, Latin is the core,” gripes Mr Olbrys.

But he says: “We should have Latin next year, too. Keep your fingers crossed. ”