I have been wont to stalk bumble bees and butterflies through fields, but it is much harder (and poor trail ethos) to chase a butterfly across the tundra. I recently hiked above the treeline in the Indian Peaks Wilderness in the Rockies, and I was struck by how many beautiful marked white butterflies I saw dashing and fluttering about the tundra near 11,000 feet. They were flying about everywhere about a foot or maybe two off the ground. I was charmed. I utterly rejoiced when one finally, finally deigned to stop its fly about and rest near the trail and let me take its picture.
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Apicula et Iuppiter
Apicula et Iuppiter is based on a fable in Latin. I have expanded the story to add more details, including dialogue, while also simplifying the syntax and sheltering the vocabulary. This story uses 75 words to retell the fable. Many of these words would be familiar to students, but some, like favus, mel, and apis, are likely not. If you are interested in comparing this fable to the original, you can read the original fable here.
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Sample for Ridiculi et Horribiles Dei et Deae
Ridiculi et Horribiles Dei et Deae is a Latin novella of short stories published by Bombax Press. Unlike the samples for Bombax Press’s other novellas, the sample for Ridiculi et Horribiles Dei et Deae does not contain the first complete chapter. This is a novella of short stories, so it seemed more apt to provide the beginnings of the six individual stories within the novella than one complete story. More detailed information beyond the sample for Ridiculi et Horribiles Dei et Deae is available here. This novella is just about 4,900 words long and contains 237 words. Of those words, some are proper nouns, glossed words, or clear cognates. With…
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Romana Cena
What did Romans eat for dinner? How did Roman dinners differ depending on socioeconomic status? To follow the readings and activities for Romanum Prandium and Romanum Ientaculum, we introduced some common dinner vocabulary to teach about the Romana Cena. We aren’t teaching synchronous classes to our students, so we created videos and short readings for our students to allow for repetition of the vocabulary. We introduced the students to the list of vocabulary. Students watched a short video on Cena Coreana and read about the cena Magistri Smith. Students also watched my husband’s video (with outtakes) and read his story. I also made a video about dinner, with outtakes, and…
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Romanum Prandium
What did the Romans eat for lunch? To follow our discussion of Romanum Ientaculum, we introduced students to common lunch-related vocabulary and taught about the Romanum Prandium. We aren’t teaching synchronous classes to our students, so we created videos and short readings for our students to allow for repetition of the vocabulary. There are four of us in our upper schools, so we each had a hand in creating the reading and listening materials. We introduced the lesson with a video aimed at our novice students, which included the food labeled with post-its. If you’re looking for a harder video, there’s also a Coquamus video with some of this same…
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Romanum Ientaculum
Like every other teacher, we have also changed our expectations to match the realities of a pandemic and virtual teaching at our school. We had been preparing as a department to teach Via Periculosa with our students. We ultimately decided to scrap reading it online with the hope that we would be able to better teach it in the fall–whatever that may look like. The solution we came up with was to talk about travel, which would have been our segway into Via Periculosa, and food. Let’s start by talking about the Romanum Ientaculum, the Roman breakfast.
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Fabula Brevis: Apollo et Python
Apollo et Python is a short story that we used in our Intro to Latin course in middle school. We taught it the week before spring break after reading Diana et Actaeon and finishing our speaking assessment. This story is perfectly suited for a TPRS story, and it’s how we introduced the story. (Here is the link to the skeleton story with guiding questions for students). We glossed the words or phrases in bold in the story.
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Sample for Domini Secretum
Domini Secretum is a Latin novella published by Bombax Press. This sample for Domini Secretum contains the complete first chapter of the story, including its artwork. The novella is about 8,000 words long and contains 222 words. Of those 222 words, some are cognates, proper nouns, or glossed words. A student needs a working vocabulary knowledge of 136 unique words to read this story in its entirety. The complete dictionary, though not the index verborum, is available here. More detailed information beyond the sample for Domini Secretum is available here.
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Fabula Brēvis: Diāna et Actaeōn
Diāna et Actaeōn retells the story of Actaeon’s transformation into a deer for his crime of seeing Diana nude and bathing. Diana describes the people in her family and relates how she hates men (fufae!). Instead, animals, hunting, and the woods delight her. She also reveals a secret to the reader: her favorite place is a river in the woods where she likes to bathe. Alas, her secret place is discovered with disastrous and deadly results.
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Fabula Brevis: Bacchus et Acoetes
Bacchus et Acoetes retells how Bacchus gets revenge on pirates by turning them into dolphins. This tale may not exactly be to the level of the Princess Bride as, alas, no one gets murdered by pirates. Instead, nearly all the pirates are punished for their greed, except Acoetes. Bacchus rewards Acoetes by offering him the position of priest in his temple. This story is suitable for Latin I, and we glossed the words in bold for our students. We taught this story after we taught Venus et Vulcanus. We pretaught some of the vocabulary for this story and reviewed other words through a movie talk. Our students were rather invested…
