Table of Contents Preface 1. The structure of the simple sentence. Active and passive voice: deponent verbs; impersonal verbs; copula and predicate nominative. Subject, direct object, indirect object, modifier. Agreement of the verb and the subject. Agreement of adjectives, pronouns and participles. Adverbs.
Reading: Livy, Ab urbe condita, III 2. Word-order: General tendencies. The position of the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, other complements; adjectives; appositions; modifiers; adverbs; pronouns. Some special uses.
Readings: Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, III, 14; II, 58 3. Expressions of place.
Reading: Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, VI, 16 4. Expressions of time.
Reading: Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni, III, 1 5. Use of tenses in the main clause (with occasional reference to their use in the subordinate clause).
Readings: Liber Isaiae, 35; Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae, 31; 47 6. Expressions of instrument, manner, accompaniment, price, degree of difference.
Reading: Erasmus of Rotterdam, Laus stultitiae, praefatio 7. Expressions of quality, quantity, abundance, lack, cause, origin, comparison, material, topic, aim, restriction, address.
Reading: Caesar, De bello Gallico, VI, 13-28 8. Statement of fact, negative statement of fact, statement of possibility, and counterfactual statement.
Reading: Cicero, De amicitia, 19-23 9. Question, doubt or deliberation, command, prohibition, exhortation, wish, concession, exclamation.
Reading: Plautus, Curculio, 599-678 10. Impersonal verbs.
Reading: Thomas More, Utopia, II, De commerciis mutuis; II, De peregrinatione Utopiensium 11. Substantival infinitive. Gerund. Gerundive.
Readings: Elred, De amicitia, 1; Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, 22; 23; 24 12. Coordination in clauses and sentences: copulative, disjunctive, adversative, causal, consecutive connections.
Readings: Petronius, Satiricon, 111-112; Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, 18-21 13. The use of tenses, moods and pronouns in subordinate clauses.
Readings: Cicero, De senectute, VII, 22-24; IX, 27-28; IX, 29; IX, 32. 14. Substantival clauses: accusative and infinitive, indirect questions, objective ut-clauses.
Readings: Cicero, De oratore, II, 1-5; Cicero, In Catilinam, I, 1 15. Substantival clauses: explicative quod, explicative ut, verbs of fearing, verbs of preventing and refusing, non dubito quin.
Readings: St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII, 8, 6; St. Ambrose, De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae, V, 53; St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, in psalmum XCV enarratio, 14; Lactantius, Divinae institutiones, III, 21; St. Jerome, Epistolae, XXI 16. Adjectival clauses: relative clauses, attributive participle.
Reading: Seneca, Epistulae 17. Adverbial clauses: temporal clauses.
Reading: Tacitus, Annales, XV, 38-44 18. Adverbial clauses: final (purpose) clauses and causal clauses.
Reading: Abelard, Historia calamitatum, Quomodo in amorem Heloisae lapsus vulnus inde tam mentis quam corporis traxerit 19. Adverbial clauses: consecutive (result) clauses, concessive clauses.
Reading: Erasmus of Rotterdam, Epistula ad Nicolaum Varium Marvillanum 20. Adverbial clauses: conditional sentences.
Reading: Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, V, 66-69 21. Adverbial clauses: comparative, adversative, restrictive clauses.
Reading: Abelard, Historia calamitatum, Dehortatio supradictae puellae a nuptiis; de plaga illa corporis 22. Oratio obliqua or indirect speech: main clauses and subordinate clauses in indirect speech; pronouns and adverbs in indirect speech.
Reading: Cicero, In Verrem, II, 4; Caesar, De bello Gallico, VII, 20; Livy, Ab urbe condita, XXI, 30; Seneca, Epistulae, 53 23. Conditional sentences in indirect speech.
Readings: Cornelius Nepos, Vita Attici, 1-5 24. Order of clauses.
Reading: Cicero, Pro Archia poeta, 1-10 25. Variation.
Reading: Erasmus of Rotterdam, De copia, "Tuae litterae me magnopere delectarunt" Appendix: The Conventions of Latin Writing in the Post-Medieval World
|
Preface General approach:This book is an anthology of Latin texts with exercises in Latin Prose Composition. The exercises are not translations from English, but are closely joined with the process of reading and understanding Latin. We believe that learners who must think in Latin while they compose will acquire the ability to compose Latin more rapidly and effectively than those who are asked to convert thoughts communicated in another language into Latin words and phrases. Translators of English (for example) into Latin are forced to think first in English and then search for Latin equivalents. In this book the composition process is always from Latin to Latin. Those who compose in Latin, especially with Latin texts as a starting point, will return to the reading of any Latin text with greater ease and more profound comprehension. Our book is perhaps especially appropriate for advanced undergraduates or graduate students, but there is no reason why it should not be useful for students of any age who are ready to embark on their first formal course in writing Latin prose. How to use this book: In the beginning of each chapter, we provide substantial excerpts from works of Latin literature. The readings are drawn from many genres and periods extending from the early Roman republic to the Renaissance, a time span of nearly 1,700 years. We believe that students who learn Latin should realize from the start that they have access to any part of this immense tradition, and learn something about its primary monuments and authors in many periods. Latin has the great advantage that it changed far, far less in such a vast space of time than any European vernacular in a much shorter period (compare, for example, the English of Chaucer and Dickens, whose lives were separated by about 500 years). Readers of this text, therefore, are always confronted with the boundless cultural richness of the Latin tradition, and have a range of subjects for composition not restricted to the somewhat limited social and political world of Cicero and his contemporaries. But our anthology is not a historical manual on the evolution of Latin prose style, nor is it ordered in a strictly chronological way. The grammatical norms upon which the exercises are based — our manual being an introduction to prose writing — always reflect the classical usage of Caesar and Cicero, with a few other constructions typical of Livy, nor do we ask the reader to attempt to imitate other styles. We provide no grammatical commentary on the readings. Students should approach the readings in the same way as they would undertake the reading of a Latin author in a standard modern edition, such as those in the Teubner or Oxford series, and be prepared to have recourse to a good lexicon where necessary. Notes on the vocabulary of the readings are very sparse, and restricted to those words which do not appear in the large dictionary by Lewis and Short. From these readings comes the subject matter for the exercises in each chapter. The exercises consist of Latin words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs which must be re-worked into other forms. The reader must complete incomplete thoughts, correct incorrect phrases, answer questions, the responses to which require certain constructions, change the point-of-view of entire passages, etc. Just as the subject matter of each exercise is nearly always related to the reading passages in the chapter, so also each exercise is concerned in some way with the constructions and grammatical principles featured in the same chapter. Our strategy is to provide a very wide variety of exercises, some of which are quite closely adapted to the type of material treated in each chapter. Hence the typology of exercises varies somewhat from chapter to chapter. The reader will get plenty of practice, if s/he does all the exercises. At the end of each chapter there is a brief series of exercises in free composition. These exercises are quite unconnected with the readings in each chapter, nor do they necessarily relate to the grammatical principles highlighted in the chapter. The purpose of these exercises is to offer the learner a brief change of pace, an opportunity for greater freedom of expression, a chance to deploy not only imagination, but whatever resources of language s/he may have acquired up to that point. Each exercise in free composition consists of an assignment to write one or two short paragraphs. Each paragraph is to be constructed around either a series of Latin phrases pertaining to typical thought processes and actions, or a Latin proverb. In each case we provide the beginning of the paragraph, consisting of a sentence or two. The learner must complete the paragraph. The phrases and proverbs, which must be incorporated into each paragraph, have been adapted from ‘De copia’ and ‘Adagia’, collections of classical Latin sayings by the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. We wanted the whole of each chapter to be devoted to copious readings and exercises based upon them. Because abstract grammatical rules have been well treated in other books, we saw no need to repeat them here. Therefore, in the beginning of each chapter, readers of our book are referred to the relevant sections of several descriptive grammatical manuals, in which the necessary principles for each of our chapters are treated thoroughly. Here are the descriptive texts that may be used together with this book: Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar, Newburyport MA, 2001 (based on 1903 revision of 1888 edition) (a very complete and useful reference work). ‘Bradley’s Arnold’ Latin Prose Composition, London, 2001 (facsimile of 1984 edition) (grammatical principles are lucidly explained in many of the chapters). M. Minkova, Introduction to Latin Prose Composition, London 2001(the theoretical principles of Latin expression are presented here in a progression and order similar to the one used in this book of exercises). Milena Minkova wrote chapters I, III, IV, IX, XII, XIV, XV, XVII, XVIII, XXI, XXIV, XXV, and Terence Tunberg chapters II, V, VI, VIII, X, XI, XIII, XVI, XIX, XX, XXIII, together with the appendix. Both authors together composed chapters VII and XXII. But each always benefited greatly from the other’s support, ideas, and advice in the composition of every part of the book. We would like to thank all the students who have used this book with us and have contributed to a more emended version of the text by offering their remarks and suggestions. Special thanks are due to Joseph Tipton, who carefully proofread the whole work.
|
Readings and Exercises in Latin Prose Composition
