You’ve made it through Familia Rōmāna. You’ve dipped into novellas, readers, podcasts and videos. You’re now at a point where you can do without that dictionary, sight-reading adapted prose with relative confidence.
You feel good about your progress, but you want more. You want to finally progress from textbook Latin and on to authentic classical-era texts. And you don’t just want to read – you want to enjoy.
You understand poetry to be the ultimate expression of literary art, and Latin poetry to be one of world literature’s crowning jewels. You dread it somewhat, but you want to get it. Not do scansion exercises, really get it: the meter, the syntax, the performance.
In short, you've found yourself staring at the intermediate gap and struggling to find the bridge.
You aren’t alone. We’ve all been there. And now there is an exciting new way to get to the other side.
Latin Poetry with No Translations and No Apologies
This summer, step into the shadow of civil war and Rome’s most unholy unravelling. While everyone else is reading Fābulae Facilēs or talking about unguentum contrā sōlem, you’ll be conjuring the dead with the most powerful witch of Antiquity.
In Echoes from the Grave: Erictho and the Voice of Latin Epic, we’ll read one of the most haunting episodes in Roman poetry: the necromantic rites of Erictho, Thessaly’s most feared witch, as told by Lucan in Dē Bellō Cīvīlī aka Pharsālia. But this will be no lecture, no commentary crawl and no English summary. We’ll be reading selections from the poem, interpreting and discussing them with the help of two prose paraphrases. All in in Latin.
Using the graded reader I co-wrote with my friend and colleague Jessica McCormack, you will:
work through and discuss the original text and its two paraphrases in Latin;
learn to understand and rephrase Latin on its own terms, without recourse to English;
get to grips with Latin’s notoriously flexible poetic syntax;
practice your pronunciation and master your understanding of the Latin prosody;
learn about the Romans' conceptions of fate, magic and the divine;
peer into the Underworld… or even beyond!
The course will take place over 10 1.5-hour sessions, on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM EST, and will last for 5 weeks (from July 1st to August 2nd). Course participants with access to Amazon’s on-demand printing shipments will receive a free copy of the book, Erictho: Tartarorum Terror.
Will you dare tackle Latin poetry on its own terms? Will you have the courage to face the ghosts of Roman past?
No translations. No apologies. Join us in the Underworld.
The course has been made possible by the small but awesome team at Latinitas Animi Causa. This summer, I will also be offering three courses based around the Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata textbook series: two intensive introductory Latin courses for those familiar with Latin grammar, and one lower-intermediate course for those wishing to consolidate their knowledge and develop their active abilities before moving on to greater things. Head over to LAC to check out the courses on offer, inclding those by other instructors.
Thank you for reading this newsletter! This is a bit of a new experience for me, and I’ll be very thankful for any thoughts and feedback. Should you have questions or suggestions about my courses, Latin poetry, learning Latin or editing a Latin book you’re writing, you can dispatch a nūntius rētiālis to me by clicking the button below:
Finally, here’s a little poll, made especially but not exclusively for those readers who aren’t able to take the course right now:
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