About Aeterna Institute
Aeterna Institute is a non-profit sanctuary for the classical liberal arts, dedicated to preserving the wisdom of the ages through the study of the Great Books, the Socratic dialectic, Classical Latin, and Ancient Greek. Founded in 2025 and based in Austin, Texas, we cultivate the eternal values of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty through the direct method of the ancient academies.
Our curriculum is not a survey course. It is the classical curriculum itself: the Seven Liberal Arts, read in the original languages, disputed in the Socratic manner, and integrated into a single vision of the flourishing human soul — eudaimonia.
Our Curriculum — The Seven Liberal Arts
The classical curriculum of the Trivium and Quadrivium has trained the Western mind for two millennia. At Aeterna we teach it whole.
A rigorous program in Classical Latin — grammar, syntax, and the direct reading of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Augustine, and Aquinas in the original. We follow the direct method of Academia Vivarium Novum.
Ancient Greek — Attic, Homeric, and Koine
Ancient Greek in all three major registers. Homeric Greek for the epic tradition; Attic Greek for philosophy and tragedy; Koine for the Septuagint and the Gospels. Direct reading of Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and the Evangelists.
The Trivium — Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric
The first three of the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar (the art of the word), Logic (the art of reasoning), and Rhetoric (the art of persuasion). The classical discipline of the free mind, taught in the manner of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine.
The Quadrivium — Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy
The four mathematical sciences, read from Euclid, Pythagoras, Nicomachus, Boethius, Ptolemy, and Kepler. We prove theorems in the ancient manner and hear the harmony of the spheres.
Direct engagement with the Western canon. No textbooks, no summaries, no secondary literature — only the text, the teacher, and the students. We read Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche.
Every seminar is conducted in the Socratic manner. The teacher questions; the student responds; truth emerges in the collision of thesis and antithesis. The one pedagogical method that has survived twenty-five centuries without improvement.
Our Fellows
The Collegium of Aeterna Institute is composed of scholars trained at Ralston College, the University of Delaware, the University of Pennsylvania, Academia Vivarium Novum, Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies, Columbia, Yale, NYU, Fei Tian College, and the Wolfram Institute.
AI researcher and classicist. MA in Humanities from Ralston College; BS in Data Science from Fei Tian College; studies at Academia Vivarium Novum, the Wolfram Summer School, National Taiwan Normal University, and Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies. Advanced Latin and Ancient Greek; fluent Spanish, intermediate Mandarin, proficient Italian. Affiliate Researcher at the Wolfram Institute. Author of Latinium.ai, Etymon.ai, ColorLab.ai, and the LLM Abliterator. Previously at The Epoch Times (Data Scientist) and Fei Tian College (Adjunct Professor of ethics and philosophy in computer science). Four peer-reviewed publications on ResearchGate and arXiv.
Makai Allbert — Co-founder & Chair of Grammar
Interdisciplinary scholar and writer at The Epoch Times. MA in Humanities from Ralston College with a residency in Greece; BS in Biomedical Science from Fei Tian College; Mandarin studies at National Taiwan Normal University. Advanced Ancient and Modern Greek; advanced Mandarin; fluent Spanish. Formerly at NASA and the University of Maryland. Co-founder of Espacio Común in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, and of Students for Falun Gong, where he advocates for human rights.
Applied psychologist, research scientist, and consultant. PhD in Psychology & Brain Sciences from the University of Delaware; M.S.Ed in Counseling Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Research affiliations with Columbia University, Yale, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania. Currently an MD student at Penn State College of Medicine. Focus on clinical research, neuroscience, psychotherapy, and moral philosophy.