A taste of Cicero

Here's another bit of unadapted Latin. The notes are aimed directly at intermediate students of Latin. It is meant to get you reading the real stuff for the first time. The pages shown are Cicero's de senectute chapters 6 through 9. They're short like Bible chapters.

To set the scene, Laelius and Scipio are talking to Cato the Elder about old age. Most of the dialog is Cato telling the younger men about old age, but it is set as a dialogue. For American readers, de senectute was the first classical text printed in translation in the American colonies. The printer was none other than Ben Franklin. Or at least that's what Wikipedia says.

Cicero has a bad rap for being hard, but de senectute doesn't feel all that hard to me. Maybe it is that it is meant to be a bit more conversational in nature than his oratory. Give your hand a try.

de senectute 6 and 9

Gesta Romanorum

If you've ever wondered about a good place to wander into unadapted Latin, here it is. The Gesta Romanorum are a collection of moral tales from the 12th Century. I've dressed this one up a little bit. If you've studied Latin to the point that you know what a subjunctive is, you should be able to handle this.

For those of you who don't know what a subjunctive is, this is what is waiting for you. It's huge fun. This is a document I prepared for my students in kind of a one-off situation.

Gesta Romanorum 129 – De amicitiae verae probatione

Moving into advanced Latin

One of the frustrations anyone who studies Latin is the lack of cheap editions of the good stuff. Especially if you want notes. Cicero's First Catilinarian Oration, a traditional first encounter with unadapted Latin, costs $35 (as of this writing). This book is good—I've used it in past classes—but $35? That seems high.

It is downright cheap by comparison to what I have just had to do. My advanced students are reading Thomas More's Utopia. There are no student editions available. None. Well, there is one, but it's not really for students and costs $69. I can't pick that book in good conscience, so I made my own.

For your Free enjoyment, here is Utopia. 

Vtopiae versio bilinguis et latine et anglice edita