Learning Latin the Ancient Way
Latin Textbooks from the Ancient World
Published on 18. February 2016
Book
Hardback
200 pages
978-1-107-09360-7 (ISBN)
Description
What did Greek speakers in the Roman empire do when they wanted to learn Latin? They used Latin-learning materials containing authentic, enjoyable vignettes about daily life in the ancient world - shopping, banking, going to the baths, having fights, being scolded, making excuses - very much like the dialogues in some of today's foreign-language textbooks. These stories provide priceless insight into daily life in the Roman empire, as well as into how Latin was learned at that period, and they were all written by Romans in Latin that was designed to be easy for beginners to understand. Learners also used special beginners' versions of great Latin authors including Virgil and Cicero, and dictionaries, grammars, texts in Greek transliteration, etc. All these materials are now available for the first time to today's students, in a book designed to complement modern textbooks and enrich the Latin-learning experience.
Reviews / Votes
'Fascinating ... these ancient phrasebooks have some wonderful peculiarities.' Times Higher Education '... this is a very useful book, and the author deserves special thanks. Much interesting information on the sources and recent research is concisely presented in a field often obscure even to experts. Moreover, the attractiveness of the presentation and analysis of the texts will hopefully encourage students to undertake further research in the field.' Peter Kuhlmann, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
4 Halftones, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
534 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-107-09360-7 (9781107093607)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2016
Cambridge University Press
€20.49
Available for download
Book
02/2016
Cambridge University Press
€40.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Eleanor Dickey has taught in Canada and the United States, and is currently Professor of Classics at the University of Reading. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Academia Europaea and has published widely on the Latin and Greek languages and how they were studied in antiquity, including Greek Forms of Address (1996), Latin Forms of Address (2002), Ancient Greek Scholarship (2007) and The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (2012-15). She has extensive experience of teaching both Latin and Greek at all levels, in French as well as in English, and has brought this experience to bear on her adaptations of the ancient Latin-learning materials for modern students.
Content
1. Introduction; 2. Texts; 3. Grammatical works; 4. Glossaries; 5. Prose composition; 6. Alphabets; 7. Transliterated texts; 8. Texts with the original Greek; 9. Texts without word division; 10. Overview of the ancient Latin-learning materials; Bibliography.