My Plan for The Aeneid -- Any Advice?

Latin Learning Latin
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I would like some input on my plan for The Aeneid. First my background. I’ve been working on Latin for about fours years as a self-learner. I started with “Latin 101” from The Great Courses and moved on to Carolus and Maria, Cornelia and the like. I sent through about half of “Latin Via Ovid.” Then I came upon LLPSI and went through FR and Fabulae Syrae. Plus Fabulae Faciles, “Latin For Americans Book I”, a little of Caesar and some other material.

Now I want to work on the Aeneid. My primary goal is to read as much of the text as Latin with understanding, not translating it (and not necessarily in meter). The secondary goal is to read/recite selections of the more interesting/dramatic passages in meter with understanding of the Latin as written. Obviously these are “stretch goals.” As I progressed in my studies I find I can read more and more in Latin without translating. That’s what I trying for here.

In order to do this my plan is to a) produce my own translation by using commentaries (Pharr or someone else) only, which will force me to get a sense of the text in English; b) compare my translation with that of either Fagles, Mandlebaum or Fitzgerald, in order to correct any fundamental errors in the overall sense of the narrative. (More stretch goals!) Normally I don’t write out translations, but because this is poetry and the word order is so much fun (!), I thought I’d better write it out.

The resources I currently have are the Legamus transitional reader and Pharr. I have the LLPSI Virgil supplement, and Roma Aeterna, which has a prose version of large sections of Books I, II, and IV. I also have downloaded copies by Knapp; Page; and Henderson and Hagarty (except Book 4; I can’t seem to locate it. If anyone has a source for it, please let me know.). I also use Anki daily for vocabulary, verb forms, verb principal parts, idioms, etc.

So, I would like feedback on my plan based on your experiences. This is my first crack at poetry, should I start with someone else first? Which of the resources are better than others? Should I build an Anki deck just for The Aeneid? Is this too ambitious?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

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I’m sure better, more apt advice will be forthcoming after what I have to say, but for what it’s worth: I have been on a similar trajectory, self-learning, and figuring I’d have to read some Caesar or other prose author before I could tackle poetry on my own, but I was in contact with Prof. Richard LaFleur, known for editing the more recent editions of Wheelock’s Latin, and I told him where I was in my own Latin learning journey, and he said if I wanted to get into poetry right away I could probably successfully tackle Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which he said was the easiest of the Roman poets, so I gleefully dove in and with the help of several commentaries (and some help here) I have been having a fun time with Ovid and I think I’m pretty much succeeding in deciphering or at least understanding all the grammar, with the help of the aforementioned resources.

I know you said “Aeneid” and I realize that reading that noble work may be your primary focus, not just reading any old poet. You may well want to not just tackle poetry but to specifically work on Vergil. If so, my comments may be of no use to you. But I have the impression that if I’d tried that instead of Ovid, I would have had a much rougher time of it, and might not have been able to get through it on my own, without the assistance of a tutor. Maybe further replies will edify me as well.

Either way, enjoy your self-study of Latin! I certainly am!

:smiley:

P.S. If you decide to try Ovid, I can give you a pretty complete list of commentaries. I bought every one I could find.

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Honestly, the only way you know if this plan will work is if you implement it. It seems to be a bit complicated, but not sure how to streamline it. Some suggestions:

  1. Don’t’ wait to do the meter. Thanks in part to Michael’s posts on the subject, I have become more keenly aware of just how important it is really to understand and appreciate the poetry. Otherwise, you might as just well read a prose author.

  2. Latina prima! Commentaries and translations (and especially good commentaries) can go a really long way toward deepening your understanding of the text. But before you resort to them, do your best to read and comprehend the Latin apart from any aids. Read through a selection of text, metrically, slowly, and try to grasp the whole. Then, if necessary, go back using a lexicon to nail down any vocabulary items you might be unsure of. Then once your are reasonably, or at least tentatively sure of your reading of the text, read through the selection again. Then hit the commentaries and translations. Of course, I’m not suggesting you be legalistic about, especially if you hist a real puzzler that just won’t cooperate. And you can always ask questions here.

  3. in my ideal teaching sequence, my 4th year students do two units in Cicero (Catiline) and 1 unit in Ovid, reading Pyramus and Thisbe and Baucis and Philemon. Then 5th year we do Caesar and Vergil (that sequence was originally chosen because of the AP board changing their examination to Caesar and Vergil). I particularly find Ovid a somewhat gentler introduction to Poetry in general and hexameter in particular. Therefore I agree that starting with some Ovid is not a bad thing!

So however your plan actually works out, take it slow and enjoy the experience. Having fun doing it is a huge part of the learning experience.

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Thanks to both of you for the suggestions. I am certainly willing to work through easier material first.

Because Ovid seems a better first choice, can you suggest a few useful commentaries? Is the Legamus Ovid helpful? In my studies I have used the textbook “Latin Via Ovid” which contains a lot of the Metamorphoses stories as prose (greatly simplified), so I am familiar with those stories. I also have the textbooks “Latin for Americans”; in Book 3 there are several selections from Metamorphoses, but there isn’t much help or commentary.

Getting the meter going early is a good point, but without feedback from an instructor, I am concerned about botching it and heading down the wrong path. The rules for elisions drive me a little crazy. I’ve found audio for The Aeneid, I 'm sure I can find it for Ovid too.

I have the book “Beginning Latin Poetry Reader,” although it’s been collecting dust. How useful is that book as an introduction?

Thanks again, I appreciate any help.

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Hi Wilbur,
I agree with Leisulin and Barry that Ovid might be a good place to start and Leisulin can help you out with the commentaries. If I remember correctly, there are over 200 stories in Ovid over the course of 15 books, so you will want to select the stories that will help you get started. Here is a list of stories that are (or used to be) read in the 2nd,3rd and 4th years of secondary school Latin in preparation for the Aeneid, which is typically offered in the fourth year:
2nd year:
Daedalus and Icarus (M.viii.183-235)
Atalanta’s Race (M.x.560-680)
The Creation (M. i. 5-88)
The Flood (M. i.253-312)
Pyramus and Thisbe (M. iv. 55-166)
Orpheus and Euridice (M. x. 1-63)

3rd year:
Deucalion et Pyrrha (M. i. 313-415)
Phaethon (M. ii. 1-328)
Philemon et Baucis (M. viii. 620-724)

4th year:
*Ovid’s Autobiography (Tristia iv. 10)
*Hardships of Life at Tomi (Tristia iii. 10)
*Dido to Aeneas (Heroides vii)
*The Founding of Rome (Fasti IV. 809-850)
*The Destruction of Cacus (Fasti I)
Jason and Medea (M. vii. 1-158)
Perseus and Andromeda (M. iv. 662-763)
Midas and the Golden Touch (M. xi. 85-145)

*These are in elegiac couplets, all the rest are in dactylic hexameter.

I also agree with Barry and Leisulin that you should learn to read metrically from the start. Dactylic Hexameter is the metre that normally everyone starts with. The rules can be found in most grammar books that have a section on Prosody, such as Allen & Greenough and there really aren’t that many rules as compared with other metrical schemes. Most school textbooks devote all of two or three pages to scanning dactylic hexameter.

Enjoy! After you get used to reading poetry metrically, going back to prose is almost deflating!

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Hi Wilbur,

BARRY’S ADVICE IS GOOD (I bet he never thought I’d say that), and I will not repeat it. You have fine advice from everyone else here too.

Just a few other miscellaneous things, some of them already touched on by others.

  • Don’t obsess about finding the right materials in preparation, and don’t pile up a whole lot of resources in advance. Just get started, and make do.
  • Give up your plan to produce your own translation, and get away from translations as much as possible. The Italian saying “traduttori traditori” (translators are traitors) is true of any text, but especially of Vergil.
  • Make sure you understand the grammar. It’s not the most important thing (remember that), but it’s an essential preliminary.
  • The more real Latin you read first (prose as well as verse) the better. Vergil is not simple, and encompasses earlier poetry. Ideally he’d be left until we had read everything that he had (Greek as well as Latin). The better you know Latin, the more you’ll get out of Vergil. Ovid is easier in a way, and he plays mind games that Vergil doesn’t. He’s wicked fun.
  • Elisions in Latin verse are easy. Just elide any final vowel (or vowel+m) that’s followed by a word beginning with a vowel (or h). And as for the meter, just get the basic rhythm into your head, and the rest will follow. (Don’t you hate it when people say “Just”?)
  • Feel free to ignore all the above.
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OK! Commentaries for Ovid, mostly for the Metamorphoses. I consider the quality of a commentary to be based on just how much it helps me through difficult spots in the Latin text. If I had an expert tutor, I’d be able to ask for help on ANY problem I might encounter. So for me, if a commentary doesn’t offer much help, I won’t rate it very highly.

I began with the most helpful commentary I have run across: Love and Transformation, An Ovid Reader, Second Edition. It’s designed, I think, to be a commentary for people first jumping into poetry. The author is Prof. Richard A. LaFleur, published by Addison Wesley Longman, 1999. When I tried to find it I think it was out of print but I think Prof. LaFleur said it was going to be reprinted soon. It provides so much help that you’d definitely want to follow Barry Hofstetter’s advice about trying hard to figure out the grammar of the Latin on your own and using the commentary as a last resort if you get stuck. It covers the following well-known stories: Daphne and Apollo, Pyramus and Thisbe, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion, Daedalus and Icarus, and Baucis and Philemon. It also covers seven selections from Ovid’s Amores. The Introduction covers everything you’d need to know about the meter, and also has a section on idiosyncrasies in Ovid’s grammar (e.g. the frequent use of -ere in place of -erunt in the perfect tense).

Another really great commentary is Selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Frederic J. DeVeau and Norris M. Getty, Independent School Press, Inc., 1969. It has lots of annotations, covers a whopping 35 stories from the Metamorphoses, and best of all, it has an introduction with an Outline of Grammar and Prosody 19 pages long! It’s out of print, but I was able to find a copy through a used book source.

Reading Ovid, Stories from the Metamorphoses by Peter Jones, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 9th printing 2016. Covers 19 stories, and glosses seemingly every vocabulary item encountered at the bottom of the page it appears on, and there’s a complete vocabulary index as well.

The Student’s Ovid, Selections from the Metamorphoses by Margaret Worsham Musgrove, University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Has 21 stories, lots of annotations, and short sections on meter and grammar.

Ovid Metamorphoses Books I-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII, XIII-XV edited by D. E. Hill, Aris & Phillips Classical Texts, Oxbow Books, reprinted this century. There are actually 4 of these, each with just its own range of book numbers in Roman numerals. The annotations are relatively sparse. The left-hand pages contain the Latin text and on the right there is a translation. I like the translations since they seem to be fairly literal and thus easier to check your own translations against to check your understanding of the Latin. I was using the Penguin Classics translation by Mary M. Innes as a trot, but she is very free with her translation, as far as I can tell, where Hill’s translations seem closer to the literal Latin. Also note that Hill’s four volumes cover ALL of the Metamorphoses. However, as I implied, rarely do I find a useful annotation when I need help. So I find his editions most useful simply as trots.

Selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by William S. Anderson and Mary Purnell Frederick, published by Longman, 1988. Copious notes, but it only covers 4 stories: Baucis and Philemon, Acis, Galatea, and Polyphemus, Narcissus and Echo, and Pentheus.

Ovid Metamorphoses XI, ed. G.M.H. Murphy, Bristol Classical Press, 1979. Lots of annotations, and a vocabulary index, but only covers Book 11 of the Metamorphoses.

Ovid Metamorphoses XIII, ed. Neil Hopkinson, in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series (the green and yellow covers), 2000. Hugely well-equipped with annotations, but only covers Book 13 of the Metamorphoses.

Ovid Metamorphoses XIV, ed. K. Sara Myers, in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series (the green and yellow covers), 2009. Hugely well-equipped with annotations, but only covers Book 14 of the Metamorphoses.

Saving the best for last:
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 1-5, ed. William S. Anderson, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. I’m thankful that this one and its companion below are available. Prof. Anderson covers ALL of Books 1-5, and has just the right amount (in my opinion) of annotations–about 1/4 of the book is the Latin text and introductory material, and 3/4 is commentary. When I ran out of annotated stories in the other books of selections, I could luckily fall back on Prof. Anderson’s commentaries of the first 10 books. Too bad he didn’t do a 3rd volume to cover the last 5 books!
and
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 6-10, ed. William S. Anderson, University of Oklahoma Press, 1972. Notice the publication dates for these two editions. He began with books 6-10, and then much later went back and did books 1-5.

I have a few other commentaries which are all “inferior” in some way, either offering very few annotations or only small collections of major stories annotated elsewhere.

You might also want to get a copy of R. J. Tarrant’s Oxford Classical Text of the Metamorphoses, published in 2004. From what I’ve read I think it’s looked on very favorably by professional Latinists.

There you go! Good luck!

Dave S.

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I humbly hope you’d agree, though, that it’s important to have at least a well-annotated edition to begin with or else the 2nd part of the quoted advice would be hard to come by for a self-learner like me. I guess it depends on just how well-practiced you are when you make the leap to poetry. I myself would have been in trouble without a lot of grammatical help when I began working on Ovid (and I still need help now), but I had done very little reading except the sort of watered down exercises you get at the end of each chapter in a textbook like Wheelock’s Latin.

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I have to say that I am overwhelmed by all the thoughtful advice. Over the last year or so, I have occasionally lurked on this forum and could see that folks were getting good advice, so I finally joined to participate myself. I never thought I’d get such great suggestions to my newbie question. I want to thank each of you for your time in responding.

As a result of your efforts, I now have a more clearly defined plan of what to do and not to do, and I believe it will be of great benefit to my enjoyment of Latin.

Aetos: the list of stories in some sort of order is a fantastic help. My approach would have been to start at the beginning of Book 1, and probably gotten discouraged right out of the gate.

leisulin: the list of commentaries and your comments are invaluable. I would have done a blind search and just picked one or two at random. Now I have a better idea of what to get.

leisulin, Barry and mwh: reinforcing a start with Ovid is very convincing. Also the other tips about meter, not translating, constant reading, etc. really solidify what I need to do.

I continue to work on grammar, and the more I read the more seems to get ingrained. I still have some trouble with gerunds/gerundives/future participles and indirect discourse. Oh, did I mention subjunctive?

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I forgot to mention that I have downloaded two books from archive.org:

Selections from the Poems of Ovid, by Allen, Allen and Greenough; and
A Term of Ovid, by Clarence Gleason

Are these at all useful? Thanks.

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This is such a rich and useful conversation!

As a neophyte, I don’t have anything too productive to add to this conversation, but here is what I can offer:

First, like you Wilbur, my goal is to be able to translate Virgil’s epic. Let me provide some friendly encouragement! These are the kinds of things we do and look back on with great satisfaction. I trust that your adventure will no doubt be a good one, even if that means going through Ovid first. As a few have said already, just get started; the rest will come in time.

Second, per one of your earliest questions: I love the Mandelbaum translation. Just thought I would through my hat in the ring on that topic. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I find it more musical and, fundamentally, more well-rounded than the Fitzgerald translation. The Fitzgerald came across with too many substantive adjectives, and too much of a one-dimensional “masculine” sound. Mandelbaum reminded me more of Milton (whom I love), especially a larger tonal range.

At any rate, very much good luck with your adventure and please post your progress!

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Thank you iamrian…

Encouragement for beginners like me is always welcome and appreciated. I also found in other areas of endeavor a satisfaction gained through hard work. But I enjoy the journey as well, as little successes pile up.

I find the Fitzgerald translation too stiff or formal or something; I can’t find the right adjective. But the Mandelbaum one gives me great pleasure in reading it. It becomes a “page turner.”

I did redirect my efforts to Ovid, starting with Pyramus and Thisbe. But, alas, happenings in life over the last month have consumed much more time than usual and I have been slowed considerably. I am eager to get back at it. But I am able to keep up on my Anki flashcards!

Thanks for your thoughts.