CUNY Latin Institute

Textkit Community Open Board
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I didn’t want to overshadow Mofmog in his post, so I figured I’d start a new thread.

I’m starting at the 10-week CUNY Latin Institute program on Monday, and I’m incredibly excited. About a week or so again they sent me a list of required books for the course, which seems to include a rather hefty reading list. For anybody unfamiliar with the CUNY program, it’s supposed to be around 4 - 6 semesters of college Latin over a 10 week period. The first five weeks are spent cramming basic forms (using M&F at the pace of one chapter per day!!!) while studying Catullus and Caesar. On a sidenote, Rita Fleischer, the author of M&F, heads the institute. The next five weeks are spent covering a significant amount of unadapted literature:

Classical Prose: Cicero and Sallust. A close translation and comparative examination of the syntax, style, and rhetoric of Cicero’s complete First Oration Against Catiline and of selections from Sallust’s The Conspiracy of Catiline.

Augustan Epic: Vergil. Book IV of the Aeneid is read in its entirety with a view toward an appreciation of Vergilian style and poetic technique.

Survey of Latin Literature. Lectures and discussions on the development of Latin prose and poetry from Livius Andronicus through the Silver Age and into the medieval period and the Renaissance. Representative passages are translated and analyzed.

Classical Lyric Poetry. Selections from the four books of Horace’s Odes are read and analyzed in terms of themes, language, and metrics.

And then there are some two-week elective courses ranging from Tacitus, Livy, Vergil’s Eclogues, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Petronius’ Satyricon, Roman Elegy of Ovid, Tibullus, etc.

I’ve only studied a bit of Wheelock’s on my own, however when combined with all my other responsibilities I’ve been unable to progress at a productive speed. So, instead of continuing trudging on, I cleared my whole summer to devote to this. I feel like a child on Christmas eve (or to keep with the theme of Antiquity, Yule’s eve?) waiting for the holiday to come!

I’ll update to let you guys know how it’s going once the program starts…

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good luck :slight_smile:

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There’s a healthy dose of envy flooding my veins right now. As you may have noticed in the other post, I was accepted into the Greek intensive course at CUNY for this summer and would have undertaken it if I had not decided to go to Korea instead. So, it’s envy of a sort, but I don’t regret my decision.

I’ll second the good luck (BONAM FORTVNAM) that Nostos wished you!

-David

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Ahh, Korea’s a great place…watch out for the drivers though! When I was in Seoul, if my girlfriend hadn’t started screaming in Korean at the guy who almost hit me and then jumped out of his car to fight, I might not be sitting here right now typing this to you :blush:

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Ah…thank you for the advice! Since I don’t have a Korean girlfriend at the moment, I’ll try to stay off the road as best I can.

-David

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Ah, Korean women. Simply the best. I think that makes three of us here now with Korean women, am I right?

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Please give us updates about how it’s going (or at least report back once it’s over if you don’t have time during your 10 weeks – it sounds like you’ll be busy).

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edited for brevity