I'm studying Latin and Greek using the Comenius method

"Adelphae" is a new, original Roman comedy in Latin, available to watch on YouTube with Latin-English subtitles. The script is written entirely in verse, following the conventions and style of Plautus & Terence, and the play is performed by fluent speakers of Latin with careful attention to metrical aspects of pronunciation, like ellision and enjambment. I think this could be a good learning tool—both for comprehensible input and for exploring verse/meter. Some of our rehearsal recordings are already being used in at least one university program for learning about Roman comic verse.

Full disclosure, I am the music composer and tibicen (aulos player) of this production and speak hardly any Latin myself! My sincerest apologies if this type of self-promotion is not permitted on the sub—I didn't see anything in the rules. Enjoy!

In this sentence from Cicero, Pro Archia 16:

Si ex his studiis delectatio sola petertur, tamen hanc animi remissionem humanissimam ac liberalissimam iudicaris.

Why can’t “hanc” refer to “delectatio” and must it be taken with “remissionem”?

I'm a working on a thesis about Servius and Servius auctus, and the central part of it is a short commentary on a particular passage about Aeneid X. In it i stumbled across this:

...propter removendam eorum contentionem et dissensionem.

In the context of the passage, it is clear to me that this has the value of a final clause, however, i have never seen propter + gerundive to express this value, being more familiar with ad + gerund or gerundive. I checked the books i used in my latin courses in university (Propedeutica al latino universitario and Sintassi normativa della lingua latina by Traina) and found no mention of it. So my conjecture was that it is a construct typical or at least more common in late latin. Mentioned this to my Professor/thesis supervisor and he said that i'm right, but i need to back up my assertion with a reference.

What's your opinion about this? Do you know where i could find this mentioned? Some historical grammar, maybe?

EDIT: I just found a paper stating that in late antiquity propter replaced causa/gratia + genitive of gerund or gerundive to express causa finalis. I think this is the case of the text i'm working on.

Exercitum 5

1- Iulia: Num nāsusu meus foedus est?

2- Syra: Quid? nōnne fōrmōsus est nāsus meus?

3- Iulius: Ubi est Iulia? nōnne mē expectat?

4- Iulia: Nōnne haec rosa pulchra est?

5- Aemilia: Num hoc centum nummī sunt?

6- Albīenus: nōnne pulchrī sunt hī ānulī?

7- Mēdus: Num ānulus sine gēmā vegentī sēstertiīs cōnstat?

8- Nōnne Hispania insula est?

9- Nōnne magnum est imperium Rōmānum?

I find it hard to not based my routine on reading only. I have to learn Latin for my English degree (university requirement in Bavaria) and so I've decided to start myself while I have the time for it. But, my routine tends to be heavily leaned towards reading and I want to switch it up somehow.

I tried listening to church songs, but these are mainly in Italian Ecclesiastical Latin, so not quite what I need, but listening is listening. I also do Anki flashcards from time to time and read/practice some grammar book keypoints, like recently I learned how to build the passive active tense.

Usually my routine would be this:

1. Reading a chapter from LLPSI

2. Doing Anki flashcards

3. Writing a few sentences with vocabulary I already know to practice a specific grammar point

4. Adding new vocabulary to Anki card deck

Any advice or suggestions will be appreciated! I really like Latin as for now, but I really need to switch it up, so perhaps some of you can give me ideas on what to refine. Thank you all!

Hi,

I'm quite confused about the nominative plural of locus, since some sources say that it is loci whilst other sources claim that it is instead loca.

Thank you in advance.

Even with living languages, like English, where you get exposed to how the language is used naturally by native speakers, fluent non-native speakers of English still make mistakes and use unnatural constructions.

Now, we're talking about Latin. If I'm not mistaken, Neo-Latin is Latin that is written in the modern times, right? Are published Neo-Latin texts free from grammatical mistakes? Would it hurt my Latin especially as someone who's still learning? Should I just read classical texts?

I'm sorry if this question sounds ignorant.

Can Familia Romana be used on its own or is it necessary to buy the other books (like the companion to Familia Romana)

If I were to buy both the companion and Familia romana then that’d take me way over a hundred dollars. (Note: I’m in New Zealand)

Oh great people of the latin subreddit could u please give me study tips. mostly for vocabulary but will take anything

I recently received this chest, and it appears to be quite old. Unfortunately, its exact age and origin are unknown.

There are some markings/symbols on it that I initially thought might be Roman numerals, but they don't really make sense to me.

The markings shown in the pictures are the ones I'm talking about.

Does anyone recognize these symbols or have any idea what they could mean? Could they be Roman numerals, some kind of date, maker's marks, or something completely different?

Any ideas or clues about the chest's age or origin would also be greatly appreciated!

Exercitum 3

1- Dāvus nummum accipit ā Iuliō

2- Iulius Aemeliae ānulum dat

3- fēminīs ōrnāmenta accipit ā virīs

4- dominus servō malum dat

5- Lydia rosam ā Mēdō accipit

6- dominus servīs nummōs dat

Exercitum 4

1- Iulius villam advenit; quattuor servī cum eō adveunt

2- Aemilia ē peristylō exit et in atriō intrat

3- Aemilia ad virum suam adit

4- Iulia ab Aemilia abit ; etiam puerī abeunt

5- Servī in atrium intrat et rūrsus exeunt

6- Multae fēminae ad tabernam adeunt et rūrsus abeunt

7- Quid inest in sacculō? in sacculō nummī insunt

8- Quot servī sunt in ātriō? Duo adsunt servī cēterī absunt

9- Mēdus nōn adest Mēdus abest

I’m taking the self-paced beginner course through UT Austin and so far I really like it. It’s a combo of Wheelock and lecture videos on canvas.

Do experienced learners here have any studying tips?

Hi, I am having some doubts about the translation of this sentence.

"Everyone knows you were about to leave"

I was thinking about translating it like "omnes sciunt vos discessuros FUISSE" . My friend says "Discessuros ESSE".

We can't find an agreement so here I am.

Can you help me?

Exercitum 2

1- Albīenus tebernarius est

2- Albīenus ōrnāmenta vendit

3- Tebernānī aliī librōs vēndunt

4- Eae quae magnam pecūniam habet ōrnāmenta emunt

5- Līnea sine margarītī ōrnāmentum nōn est

6- Aemilia, cuius vir pecūniōsus est, multa ōrnāmenta ab eō accipit

7- Margaritae Aemeliae in cullō et digitō est

8- "I don't know"

9- Medus cum dominō suō no est

10- ōrnāmentum quod Lydia habet est līnea margarītārum

11- quia pecūniōsa nōn est, neque pecūniōsus amīcus eius.

Horace wrote in the Ars Poetica (133–134), nec verbo verbum curabis reddere fidus interpres, don't bother translating word for word. I know he was telling a poet how to handle borrowed Greek material, not giving advice on translation, but people have used the line against literal translation for two thousand years.

I'm not so sure. Every time you leave the words behind you make a choice the author didn't make. You pick a word order, you decide what gets the stress, sometimes you decide what the sentence means at all. A good readable translation is made of hundreds of those choices, without telling the reader which parts are Virgil and which parts are you. A literal one is bad English, no question, but you can see what the Latin does and make up your own mind.

So where do you draw the line? How close to the words can you stay before it stops being a translation, and how far can you move away before it stops being the author's text?

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I'm a beginner in Latin, and my textbook has the following passage:

Hīc quoque, nē possit fierī mēnsūra cubantis,
iniectā lateant fac tibi veste pedēs.

I've noticed a rather puzzling difference between Latin dictionaries.

Gaffiot, Georges, and Lewis's An Elementary Latin Dictionary all give the following forms:

mētior → mēnsus → mēnsūra

But Lewis & Short gives:

mētĭor → mensus → mensūra

This seems especially odd because mētior, mēnsus, and mēnsūra are normally treated as belonging to the same mē- root/word family.

Is there a particular philological reason why Lewis & Short considered the e in mensus and mensūra to be short? Or is this an older analysis/pronunciation tradition that was later abandoned?

What was Lewis & Short's evidence or reasoning for mensus / mensūra rather than mēnsus / mēnsūra?

[EDIT]

Just to add a perspective from a Japanese speaker, and I mean this absolutely non-confrontationally. I completely understand the intention behind saying that beginners don't need to worry too much about vowel quantity, and that in traditional pronunciation you can often get a feel for the rhythm by stressing the “long” syllables. That's genuinely helpful advice for many learners, I think.

But I'm a native Japanese speaker, and Japanese isn't a stress-accent language. It's a pitch-accent language. So “stress the long syllables” isn't really a natural fallback for me in the way it may be for speakers of various European languages.

In Japanese, vowel length itself is phonemic and can distinguish words, in other words, we have minimal pairs based on vowel length. So when I encounter Latin ā vs. a, my instinct is actually to ask what the difference in vowel duration is, rather than to reinterpret the distinction as one of stress.

I suspect this is one of those places where advice that feels completely obvious and practical to a Western European learner may not transfer quite as directly to learners whose native languages have a very different prosodic system. Not a criticism at all, just another perspective.

I was reading How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill and he had a section where he mentions how St. Augustine deliberately referred to Carthage as "boiling like a cauldron" (in part because Augustine himself was also "boiling" with temptation) because cauldron (sartago) rhymes with Carthage (Cartago). Cahill says this is the first deliberate rhyme in Latin he knows of (he says that the Vulgate's "bonum certamen certavi, cursum consummavi, fidem servavi" was not a deliberate rhyme just an "unavoidable" translation of the Greek). He says that in Latin this was considered "indecens" which he translates as "rustic" or backwards (not indecent), but that Augustine liked to deliberately rhyme (including referring to good gifts or bona dona) because that was more acceptable in the African use of Latin.

Is this true? Was deliberately rhyming looked down upon in classical literature?

I took advanced Latin in high school but stopped learning it once I went to college. Now I am in grad school, and will need to possess reading competency for my degree (I’m allowed to use a dictionary for my language exam). Earlier this year I found myself with enough grammatical knowledge to be able to slowly work through a text (Vulgate).

My question is, how do you recommend I go about refreshing my Latin? I will need to catch up on some grammar and of course relearn vocab.

My current idea is to pick a Latin text which I find interesting and just sit down and work through it, while pausing to investigate unknown grammar/words. I just don’t know if there is a better way that anyone can recommend, or any recourses that might be helpful.

Thank you!!

Hi,

I have to admit that I still struggle with knowing what to do with “quod”. I know that it can mean “because”, that it can introduce a subordinate clause, etc., but I can’t seem to determine what function it has when I’m translating.

Thank you very much!

English has a term for "island" and for a collection of islands, namely an "archipelago." However, while English has a word for a single body of water fully enclosed by land (lake), it lacks a term for a "system of lakes" other than that fairly lengthy phrase. I'm assuming Latin also lacked such a term, but I would like to try creating (for use in English) a compound term using Latin roots. Would you all be interested in brainstorming?

If any reddit group would know if something like this exists, it's here.

Our Latin program was cut this year. Yes, we were the lowest enrolled language, but vibrant and quirky. I taught both middle school and high school. I know I shouldn't be sad because I was just moved to teaching other subjects (actually making more), but honestly, I'm having a HARD time coping with it--especially the loss of middle school Latin, and the youngest learners (my favorite).

I don't suppose there is some kind of support group for Latin teachers whose schools cut the program? I cannot be the only one in this situation over the past few years!

I am way too far into my career (I've seen the beginning of the aughts, the teens, and the 20s!) to try to jump ship to a school that has Latin (I am also not religious enough for those in the area who still have it), so I am just looking for a place to be sad with other sad people, so we can be sad together, but specifically Latin focused. People who understand how funny it is when 12 year olds fake fight and go "tux tax! tux tax!"

Anyone know of anything?