2013-2014 Latin Courses

This course provides an intensive introduction to Latin grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, with a view to reading the language as soon as possible. Close reading of Vergil’s Aeneid in English will accompany intensive language study in the fall. By midsemester, students will be translating authentic excerpts of Latin poetry and prose. During the spring semester, while continuing to develop and refine their knowledge of Latin grammar and vocabulary, students will read selections of the Aeneid in Latin.

What happened to Roman intellectual and political life under Rome’s first emperor? What can the literature, history, and politics in the age of Augustus teach the citizens of a modern Republic? This course will examine the extraordinary flowering of literary culture following the collapse of the Roman Republic. We will assess the emergence of a distinctively Roman humanitas that still exerts an influence on the modern world. Students will develop and refine their Latin reading comprehension skills by reading extended selections of Livy in the fall and Ovid in the spring. Selected works of Vergil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, and Livy will be read in English.