About Course

Salve!

Salve, tu, discipule vel discipula, veni media anno
ad Gelidum Ludum, et disce Latinam linguam. Egisti bene.

You have done well to have come this far. The study of Latin, I hope, has started you to think about how languages work. Now we need to expand upon the basic lessons which will continue, for the most part, as before. However, even though the study of any language entails much repetitive work, this semester I have added more simple stories for you to practice on. Each of these is either a myth in Ovid or another story from Roman times.

The focus will still be on the language itself. You will learn how fussy Latin can be with verb tenses, and you will learn the passive voice which is used much more in Latin than in English. Most chapters have etymology assignments which will help you score better on the SAT test.

In the stories you will read in Latin my most favorite story of all of the myths, that of Baucis and Philemon. In it you will learn how the gods of the myths should be treated. You will also read about Pyramus and Thisbe which is part of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. There are also stories about Daphne, Atalanta, Theseus, the Minotaur, and Midas.

We will also continue in a small way the story of Rome as the Romans gradually gained control of the Mediterranean basin. It took almost five hundred years from the traditional founding of Rome in 753 BC for Rome to control all of Italy. Then fighting against the forces of Carthage led in particular by Hannibal, the Romans found themselves in control of Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Greece by 146 BC.

From these conquests came almost complete control of the Mediterranean world for the Romans, and in the first century BC, the destruction of the Republic under the influence of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar. Eventually we must consider the establishment of the Principate, later called the Empire, under Julius Caesar's nephew and heir, Octavian, known as Augustus.

For me the story is fascinating. Even though later emperors at times may have been despotic, what is now called Europe was under the consistent and relatively benign rule of the city on the Tiber from 146 BC to 410 AD, 564 years, and the barbarians who supposedly destroyed the Roman Empire did so because they wanted to be part of it. But that story is for Second Year Latin.

We will get half way in the book, Latin Via Ovid, half way in a college text, and more than half way in reading real Latin. As before, Ovid will be our guide to Latin, and he will also make connections for us to modern art and literature. We will also learn all four conjugations, all five declensions, the passive voice, and ablative absolutes, along with lots of Verba. Your English medical and botanical vocabulary will increase, as well as your knowledge of Latin prefixes, roots, and suffixes that are used in English.

Welcome back!

Course Description

Why Latin Via Ovid? Why even use a text for an Internet course? A text gives structure to the course. Frankly, it makes teaching the course easier. There is a dictionary in the back, and you as the student and I as the teacher have a common reference we can refer to.

After looking over many available texts for this course, I felt Latin Via Ovid has several advantages for an Internet Latin course for high school students. First, it is organized in each chapter to allow the student to study one idea at a time and then apply what he or she has learned to translate the story in the chapter. Second, it focuses on Ovid, one of the great writers of the western world. The stories we will translate all come from his Metamorphoses and are interesting and varied. Third, the text has lots of extra material to increase your practice with Latin. We will use it all and add to it so that you learn about the Romans as you learn their language. Last, you will find Ovid everywhere on the Internet, and we will take advantage of that.