About this e-text

Why this text exists

This text is intended as a course of study for beginning-intermediate Latin learners who are encountering a full Latin text for the first time. I created it for my Latin students who have completed our introductory Latin sequence that covers J. C. McKeown's Classical Latin textbook through Chapter 18 (pronouns). Thus, it should be useful for students who have have made it through the active and passive voices of verbs and who have learned all noun declensions but who have not yet dealt with participles, indirect statements, or any subjunctives. It's also useful for students who have had some work with more advanced grammar but want to work on refining their skills. 

What you can expect to find in this text

The first chapter includes a good deal of review, so that students with different backgrounds can remember their basic Latin. All chapters include a few translation exercises and a chunk of the text of the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Each subsequent chapter introduces a new grammar concept which is used at least once in that chapter's Passio reading. 

Since the Passio is an actual Latin text, it frequently includes grammar structures that students may not have encountered yet in the actual grammar coverage of this course. As a result, I highly recommend that the Passio texts at the end of each chapter be read in tandem with the open access commentary available from Pixelia Publishing. I have opted not to include additional grammar help because the Pixelia commentary is so comprehensive. I do, however, include a vocabulary list, generated by the Haverford Bridge tool, for each reading.

Credits/acknowledgements

The text for the Passio comes from thelatinlibrary.com, which, in turn, came from The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. H. Musurillo. Oxford 1972. p.106-130.

The vocabulary lists for each Passio reading were generated using The Bridge: https://bridge.haverford.edu. The complete vocab list can be found here.

I include a link to the very useful, open access commentary of Thomas Hendrickson and his class, The Passion of Perpetua, in each chapter's reading.

Early support for this text came from a summer course development grant from the Catholic Studies program at John Carroll University in 2020.

The image of the mosaic header from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna comes from Nick Thompson's Flickr.

About the author