2016 April 09

Learn Latin Gospel Verses. A pari-passu bilingual collection of famous and representative verses from the four canonical gospels. This text provides an easy way to introduce students to some simple yet profound and significant Latin material. It can also be used as an easy way to review and get back into Latin if there has been a hiatus. This work includes over 560 short passages, many of more than one verse. "Learn the gospels with Latin and learn Latin with the gospels."

2016 March 30

Jesuit Pedagogy, 1540–1616: A Reader. Edited by Cristiano Casalini and Claude Pavur, S.J. A substantial collection of writings from early Jesuit educators, with full introduction, timeline, notes, and index. Translated from the critical edition of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century originals in Latin, Spanish, and Italian, almost all of this material is now available for the first time in English. The table of contents can be seen here. Note especially "How to Teach Children Latin and Greek" and other items relating to the humanistic literary education of the Renaissance.

2016 February 21

Selected Stories from The Deeds of the Romans: In Latin and English. A bilingual pari-passu reader for ereaders, containing a selection of twenty-one easy Latin stories from the medieval classic known as the Gesta Romanorum or The Deeds of the Romans. These intriguing little narratives were used in the fourteenth century as allegories to communicate spiritual points. They are full of the imagery that we associate with the high Middle Ages, despite the title. There are princes and princesses, jousting and magic, castles and ransoms, love and violence, and sometimes faith. Recommended for adult learners and aspiring medievalists who are just beginning their Latin studies. This is one of the easiest "on-ramps" available.

2016 February 18

Smart Latin: Maxims for Mastery. Learn Latin in short sayings (ethical and religious), proceeding from two-word to three-word to four-word expressions and higher. The second part of this book is an anthology of Latin translations of selections from famous writings (including the Serenity Prayer, the Hippocratic Oath, citations from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope). The pari-passu bilingual ereader format allows you to switch instantaneously between languages with a simple press or swipe on your device. Faster and more numerous repetitions allow you to attain greater mastery in a shorter time.

2015 September 06

A Vision of Philosophy for College Education [offsite link]: Cicero's exalted vision of philosophy, bilingually presented. Is philosophy something that is primarily concerned with cogent argument? Or is it rather something constituted by a way of life and connected with spiritual exercises? In the short text excerpted and translated in this one-pager, Cicero sketches quite another approach. Tremendum!

2015 August 23

Easy on the Odes: A Latin Phrase-book for the Odes of Horace: There is a 20% reduction on the easy-reading hard copy, which includes a clean text of the Odes for classroom use and for easy, uncluttered review. (See sample at this link.) Format: 8.5x11 paperback.

2015 August 09

Hamlet's "To Be Soliloquy" audio in Latin, read with the classical pronunciation.

2015 July 26

The Nicene Creed: Text and Audio. The liturgical form of the Creed is read with the ecclesiastical pronunciation. This is one of the simplest and most widely known Latin texts. The mp3 link on the page opens the audio in a new tab in some browsers. The file can also be downloaded for your use.

2015 June 27

Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy in Latin has been corrected and refined.

2015 May 10

Towards a Universal Digital Register of Latin Writings: The Repertorium Omnium Litterarum Latinarum. A proposal for a new kind of web database covering all Latin writings of note.

2015 April 28

Sundial Latin: Thoughts Light and Dark is now available in ebook format. Over 900 sundial inscriptions in Latin, newly translated. Most of the sayings are written in very easy Latin that beginners will be able to appreciate, and most of them are guaranteed to make you think.

2015 April 20

All three parts of The Art of Everyday Latin have been revised, corrected, and in part rewritten. These books give you an excellent basis for the repetitive practice that allows you to feel more comfortable with Latin using everyday vocabulary and short manageable sentences. Can be used with any textbook.

2015 February 18

The Life of Ignatius of Loyola: Pedro de Ribadeneira's Latin Version in Acceleration Reader Format.  This is the complete Latin text of the biography in Acceleration Reader format for Latin learners. The typographical arrangement supports the process of learning to read "in chunks" and understanding those units sequentially. This edition uses the same numbering scheme as the English translation published by the Institute of Jesuit Sources in 2014. Only a Nook version is available now, but it does not require Nook hardware. See Nook for the Web, available through Barnes & Noble. Note: the English translation is not included here.

2014 December 01

The Life of Ignatius of Loyola by Pedro de Ribadeneira.  This is the first complete English translation of a famous Renaissance Latin biography of Ignatius of Loyola.

2014 November 01

Key Latin Vocabularies.  This is the best all-purpose Latin vocabulary book available; it is a useful standard for all levels of Latin. The Ahn-Henn lists have been revised, reformatted, corrected, enhanced, and expanded. This is not a photographic copy of faded pages or broken type. Includes over 600 short proverbs. Total word-count: 44,000-plus. A pdf sample is available here.

2014 October 07

The Olympianization of Greece: The Making of the Greek Miracle.  Not a Latin book, but a scholarly study of the Greek symbols, values, and cultural complexes that had such a deep impact on Roman and Western society and sensibility. This essay proposes an original answer to the question "Why the Greeks?" For college students and older. A pdf sample is available here. An explanatory diagram is available here.

    NOTE: Some early difficulties with the book display are now fixed.

2014 September 28

The Art of Everyday Latin: Part III.  From the blurb: "Learn the art of making Latin come alive. To put it another way: Latin rises here like an unstoppable anti-zombie, destroying the mindless conformity of all who have forgotten their past. You will discover that Latin is not only for the likes of Cicero and Virgil and Aquinas and Petrarch and Erasmus and Descartes and Newton and thousands and thousands of others like them. It is for you too. And why not? If you speak English (or a Romance tongue) and/or live in a Western-derived culture, then the Western classical heritage is certainly part of who you are. You can't go home without it."  So get real — learn Latin — become who you are!

2014 September 23

The Art of Everyday Latin: Part II.  A most effective way to "deep-process" the Latin language. Working from English to Latin with simple concrete communications helps students absorb and master the patterns and vocabulary.

2014 September 19

The Art of Everyday Latin: Part I.  The "perpetual exercises" of Adler's A Practical Grammar, Part I, with answers. A great abundance of simple exercises, here modernized, reformulated, and rearranged in bilingual fashion so that the student can flip to the Latin equivalents at a single stroke on an ereader. Simple, sense-based communications are given in English with repetitive vocabulary for the student to express in Latin. This work offers an inexpensive but excellent enhancement for any introductory class in Latin, no matter what the primary text.

2014 September 14

A web edition of J. P. Postgate's article, "Are the Classics to Go?"

2014 September 13

John Harmar's Praxis Grammatica of 1623 revised and corrected.  This pedagogical work can supplement any Latin course. It contains some confessional and much ethically-oriented material for the edification of the young, as was typical of works of its day. The last half includes many amusing anecdotes from antiquity.

2014 September 01

The Ebook Advantage. Why use ebooks or ebook readers? Here are twelve thoughts about that.

2014 August 13

Horae Latinae: Robert Ogilvie's Studies in Synonyms and Syntax.  An outstanding help for all professional translators, teachers, and advanced students who wish to understand Latin well. Many will find this work a much more digestible, far more approachable text than Bradley's Arnold's Latin Prose Composition. This work contains nearly five hundred major concepts and it offers thousands of examples. Highly recommended!

2014 July 23

Learn Latin with Seneca: An Acceleration Reader with Pari Passu Translation.  The first seventeen of the famous Epistulae Morales in a format that helps students learn to understand phrases sequentially.

2014 June 28

Hamlet's Soliloquy (III.i) in Latin ("To be or not to be..."). An exercise in translation into Latin. A pdf bicolumnar bilingual version is available here.

2014 May 26

Notable Romans : De Viris Illustribus : Part II.  This second volume completes the translation of the famous easy Latin reader by Charles L'Homond, De Viris Illustribus a Romulo ad Augustum. Students can use this material to help them learn how to understand Latin sequentially in short phrases as they absorb some of the most famous stories of Roman history. The simple Latin prose introduces important vocabulary and many common structures. Not all the material here is suitable for young children.

2014 April 23

Notable Romans : De Viris Illustribus : Part I.  Forty classic historical portraits from Charles L'Homond's simple Latin reader, given in Acceleration Reader format, with a pari passu translation. These stories go from Romulus and Remus to Scipio Africanus. Not all material is suitable for young children.

2014 March 30

Graphic for the Pledge of Allegiance in Latin.

2014 March 25

The Ratio Studiorum and Classical Culture: Wherefore the Greeks? Wherefore the Romans? : A paper delivered at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in 1999.

2014 March 24

Giovanni Costa's Latin Translation of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man.   A brilliant classical humanist's Latin rendition of a high point in the European literary tradition. Pari-passu format. A sample is available at this link.

2014 March 19

Particularly Great Latin: Noteworthy Latin Expressions From and For All Ages.   Over 6400 Latin mottos, sayings, quotations, proverbs, terms from the breadth of the Latin tradition. A venerable collection from 1866, thoroughly revised and expanded. Enjoyable and instructive, useful for examples, sight-reading, vocabulary expansion, translation practice, etc. A sample is available at this link.

2014 January 06

Ablative Phrasebook: Mastering Latin's Most Interesting Case  for Kindle ereaders and other devices. Over 600 exemplary phrases in English and Latin, illustrating ablative usage. Included is a preliminary explanation of the ideas of case and declension, a synopsis of the ablative forms across the declensions, and a brief consideration of the ablative absolute. A sample is available at this link.

2013 November 23

The Pledge of Allegiance in Latin.

2013 November 20

Caesar Phrasebook  for Kindle ereaders and other devices. A new, indexed edition of a vintage collection of over 1600 Latin phrases from Books I to IV of Caesar's De Bello Gallico with suggested English equivalents. This book is useful for much more than Caesar's prose. It introduces students to a range of meanings for many essential Latin words and it can also be used for auxiliary exercises in any Latin prose composition courses.

2013 November 09

Latin Prepositions: A Handbook for Teachers and Students  for Kindle ereaders and other devices. A reference textbook that promotes phrase-based learning and an emphasis on the essential particle-words. It can also help introduce students to the Lewis and Short Latin dictionary: the major prepositional entries are reproduced here in reader-friendly format with almost all the abbreviations "unpacked."  Includes over 6000 Latin phrases.

2013 October 20

Easy on the Odes: A Phrase-Book for the Odes of Horace  has been reviewed at the Bryn Mawr Classical Review by Prof. Peter Kuhlmann of the Seminar für Klassische Philologie, University of Göttingen.

2013 October 13

Learn Latin with Aesop: An Easy Latin Reader with Translations for Kindle ereaders and other devices. A bilingual reader with 52 of Aesop's fables in Latin. A companion volume for Learn Latin with Celebrities.

2013 September 26

Learn Latin with Celebrities: An Easy Latin Reader with Translations for Kindle ereaders and other devices. A bilingual reader with 75 Latin anecdotes from the global Greco-Roman heritage.

2013 September 05

Cicero Phrasebook for Kindle ereaders. A listing of over 1300 Ciceronian phrases with English translations.

2013 July 26

Cicero's Pro Archia with pari passu translation and in Accleration Reader format is available for Nook ereaders at this link and for Kindle ereaders at this one.

2013 June 06

Grímur Thorkelin's Latin translation of Beowulf is available for Nook ereaders at this link.

2013 June 05

Zachary Pearce's Latin translation of Longinus's On the Sublime is now available for Nook ereaders at this link.

2013 June 04

The Acceleration Reader for Plutarch's Life of Cicero in Latin is available for Nook ereaders at this link. A sample is available here.

2013 June 03

The Acceleration Reader for Cicero's De Officiis, On Duties, now covers all three books, the entire work (about 34,000 Latin words). It is available for Nook ereaders at this link. This edition is an excellent way to begin to master Cicero's philosophical prose. In the Nook ereader it can be held to parallel any preferred translation (to create an ad hoc bilingual format) or it can be used alone to help students accelerate their comprehension speeds. "Divide and conquer" never worked so well!

Grammar and Vocabulary Helps

These materials present the essentials of beginning and intermediate Latin morphology. In addition, you can find a summary of the vocabulary for Wheelock's Latin (6th Edition), other vocabulary studies, and some Flash movies for elementary Latin acquisition.

LatinPraxis is a series of exercises correlated with the same text, using thousands and thousands of short phrases and sentences to help students achieve mastery of vocabulary and forms as well as an immediacy of understanding.

For the theory of this phrase-based approach to second-language-acquisition, read "Upgrading Latin Pedagogy."

Verbal Brilliance in Latin is a set of ready-to-go handouts in pdf format. This series of explanation-pages and exercises can be used in conjunction with any text, or they can stand alone as a beginning workshop in the study of Latin. Read the preface for an insight into the pedagogical problems that this approach is designed to address.

You are welcome to use, to improve upon, and to share whatever you may find helpful for teaching or learning Latin.  The pdf versions may be especially useful in the creation of handouts: they are formatted to fit the contents on 8.5 x 11 typing paper.

Elementary Latin Readers

Here you will find excellent simplified Latin reading material for beginning and intermediate students. It is especially valuable because it carries much of the long-shared Western- and world- cultural-historical koine, such as Bible stories, Aesop's fables and famous anecdotes from antiquity. There is also one of the most famous books of fourteenth-century England, the Gesta Romanorum.

Acceleration Readers

These readers use pedagogical typography and collections of parallel syntactical examples to increase comprehension speed for authentic classical texts. Recommended: Read the Introductory Note for a brief overview of the essential skills needed for a mastery of Latin prose. Current authors: Caesar, Cicero, Pliny the Younger, Livy, Quintilian, Sallust, Seneca.

  Audio-files in mp3 format present some of Seneca's letters in classical pronunciation.

Paedagogica

Here are presentations of ideas that bear upon the pedagogy behind much of the material offered at this site. You can find some Latin translations and compositions of material like

• Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

• the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

• the Apology of Socrates

• the Analects of Confucius

• Plutarch's Life of Cicero.

• Shakespeare's Sonnets

There is some material relating to the history of Latin pedagogy, including a rare Latin textbook from 1623 (John Harmar's Praxis, with translation), and a very full timeline of Roman history from John Sandys. Because of its relevance to classical humanism, a theoretical essay on cultural history has been included. Also available are several pages on the GRASP method and free language-learning software for Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0., the Reading Acceleration Machine.

Related Sites

A selection of sites relating to Latin Pedagogy.