Readings and Exercises in Latin Prose Composition

From Antiquity to the Renaissance

Milena Minkova, Terence Tunberg

• Publisher: Focus
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781585109982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Ancient Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Readings and Exercises in Latin Prose Composition provides a refreshing approach for the standard Latin composition course offered at the college level. This text encourages the student to think in Latin through the process of reading unedited Latin selections and then composing in Latin, as opposed to the process of translating back and forth into English. The book offers a number of highly structured composition exercises that introduce students to a deeper understanding of Latin grammar and prose as well as to greater facility in reading and understanding it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• 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, 26.
• 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, Decommerciis 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 Catillnam, 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 XCVenarratio, 14; Lactantius, Divinae institutiones, III, 21; St. Jerome, Epistulae, XXI.
• 16. Adjectival clauses: relative clauses, attributive participle. Reading: Seneca, Epistulae, 56.
• 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; deplaga 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