Classical World

Most students, to a varying degree, experience a sense of unease and frustration when they first meet Vergil. Those students who have worked primarily on prose texts are particularly vulnerable. This paper will examine the problems that a typical student might have and suggest a strategy to guide them through Vergil or any other poetic text.¹

I. The Problem

Let us first examine the problems that a typical student can encounter when translating Vergil, using as our example the first line of the Aeneid: Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris. Imagine your average student working on her first homework assignment, which is to translate the first five lines of the Aeneid. The phrase Arma virumque presents no problem for her, since it is probably two direct objects joined by –que, a common construction in prose. The main verb cano, although easy to parse, is difficult to translate. How can one "sing a man and weapons"? The noun Trojae raises more confusion—is it a genitive or dative singular? Most students will realize that it cannot be a nominative plural, but some may also consider this. Qui is confusing because subordinating conjunctions usually begin a clause in prose, but the comma after cano must be significant. Moreover, to whom does the pronoun refer? The direct object or the subject of the main clause? The adjective primus should cause no real confusion, since its form and function are clear. And finally, ab oris appears. This brings true relief, since prepositional phrases, along with verb forms, are often the touchstones of our students. Thus, in the first line, the student can feel truly confident about only the first and last phrases.

There are several remaining issues in this homework assignment, however. Where is the verb of the subordinate clause? Why is litora at the beginning of the third line? Don't clauses end with the verb?

What has just happened? The average student depends, often unconsciously, on certain assumptions based on word order and verb placement. In addition, they have often been trained to translate in a traditional way. That is, Latin is a puzzle to be solved, and the solution is usually in the verb. But Vergil upsets these assumptions. To those students used to the embedded clauses of prose, Vergil is difficult to translate in a whole new way. The problems arise not from clause identification and translation, but from word choice and juxtaposition, the very issues which make Vergil worth reading. Once upon a time, our explanation of Vergil's style was that he did "it" (name your issue) "to fit the meter" or "for emphasis." While this may be true at various times to varying degrees, it didn't help the students very much.

II. The Solution

The solution involves retraining the students and their approach to the text, by using the Reading Approach. I will begin by pointing out a subtle, but important, issue. Reading a text is not the same as translating a text. [End Page 173] The skill of translating concentrates on creating a good English version of the Latin text. This frequently means a significant change in word order, and perhaps in part of speech (changing an adjective to an adverb or vice versa). Reading, on the other hand, concentrates on the logical and grammatical flow of the Latin, but does not focus on translation as a main goal. In fact, reading is what most experienced teachers do with a familiar text, even if they are not aware of it.

In practical terms, the Reading Approach encourages the reader to process the text in a linear fashion, from left to right. This emphasis on linear reading thus assumes that word order matters and tends to undercut the "hunt for the verb" strategy.

The strategy of reading in a linear fashion has two consequences. First, the student learns to read Latin in sense units or word groups. As the skill of the student increases, she...