Expectations for Latin 223 and 224

Students who have taken two or three years of Latin in a rigorous program should consider Latin 223 (Introduction to Latin Prose) or Latin 224 (Introduction to Latin Poetry). Students who place into Latin 223 and receive a “C” or better in the course will also be given 1 course credit for Latin 124.

Latin 223 (Introduction to Latin Prose, taught each year in the Fall term) provides a review of elementary Latin grammar and finishes up with advanced topics in grammar. Students work directly with prose works by authors such as Cicero, Caesar, and Pliny the Younger. Latin 224 (Introduction to Latin Poetry, taught each year in the Spring term) continues the review and mastery of grammar and introduces strategies for dealing with Latin poetry — it’s meter, sometimes archaic language, word order, and stylistic conventions.

To begin your study with Latin 223, you should be comfortable with the materials you need to know for Latin 124 as well as the following:

FORMS (MORPHOLOGY)

• How to conjugate Latin verbs in all tenses active and passive of the subjunctive.

• Conjugation and meaning of deponent and semi-deponent verbs

• Conjugation of the irregular verbs ferō, nolō, malō, and fiō.

• How to decline the following pronouns/adjectives

  • Demonstratives: hic, haec, hoc;  ille, illa, illud; iste, ista, istud

  • Relative pronoun: qui, quae, quod

  • Interrogative pronoun: quis, quid

• How to decline 4th and 5th declension nouns

• Numbers in Latin

• How to create and decline participles

• Formation of active and passive infinitives in the present, perfect, and future.

• Formation of comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs

GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX

• Independent (main) and dependent (subordinate) clauses

• Uses of the subjunctive

  • In independent clauses

    • Hortatory and jussive subjunctive

    • Potential subjunctive

    • Optative subjunctive

  • In dependent clauses

    • Purpose Clauses

    • Result Clauses

    • Fear Clauses

    • Indirect Commands

    • Relative clauses of purpose

    • Relative clauses of characteristic

    • Subordinate clauses inside indirect statement

  • The importance of sequence of tenses

• Conditional clauses with indicative and subjunctive verbs

• More advanced case uses:

  • Genitive of description

  • Dative of advantage and disadvantage, purpose, double dative, dative with intransitive verbs, dative of agent with passive periphrastics

  • Accusative of duration of time

  • Ablative of time when, description, and origin

• Expressions of time and place

• Ablative absolute construction

• Passive periphrastics and use of gerundives

• Indirect statement

• Constructions of comparison

• Constructions with gerunds.

STYLE

• Basics of Latin poetic meter

• Basic rhetorical terms

Few students will have completely mastered all of these concepts, but students beginning their Latin study with Latin 223 should be familiar with most of them.