vergil.co.uk - an online reader for the Eclogues

Latin Learning Latin
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I’ve recently been making an online reader for the Eclogues. It’s hosted at vergil.co.uk. You’re all very welcome there, and I hope that it might help someone out there approach these challenging poems, and find the satisfaction of being able to read them through.

The site is designed for intermediate readers, which I take to be those who have A level or first-year-university equivalent language skills. I’ve had autodidacts in mind too.

The project takes inspiration from several other online readers and commentaries, such as the Greek Learner Texts Project, the Dickinson College Commentaries and aeneid.co. I’ve tried to focus the experience on reading, and providing mostly language help.

I’ve used lemmatised text, which I’ve subsequently double-checked and edited, and cross-referenced with OLD and commentaries by Clausen (1970) and Coleman (1977). This means that, unlike some other online projects, the information is curated for this particular text, from high quality sources.

The site isn’t “finished”, and currently lacks poems 2 to 10 (!!). I also hope to add further grammatical and contextual comments over the coming days, as most of the help currently given is glosses and parsing.

I’d be thrilled to have any visitors from Textkit. Comments, criticism, and any other feedback is very welcome, either here, or (probably better) via the email link in the footer of each page.

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Opus bonum est! I like the vocaulary help tool. Very useful!

I’ve been sampling Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Geoffrey Steaman’s editions (Daedulus and Icarus, Daphne and Apollo, Pygmalion and Galatea). I’m about to start the textbook Latin Via Ovid. I’m both an intermediate reader and an autodidact, who would like to try Vergil at some point. (My first Latin reading was from the Vulgate.) I’ve sampled a few lines of the Aeneid from a Florilegium reader by Moses Hadas some years ago. Despite some gaps in grammar and vocab knowledge, I am finding Ovid not that difficult. I have gone through about 25% of Wheelock, twice, in two different editions. Despite being a person who likes grammar, that approach wasn’t helping me retain the vocabulary that well. (I faithfully did the exercises, too, including the extra self-tutorial exercises.) I then went through the Cambridge Latin Course books (North American edition), which I liked very much. However, I found that while I liked the reading/story approach, there was an excessive amount of new vocabulary for each chapter, Also, there was not enough repetition of the new vocabulary. Again, I did not retain enough of the vocabulary from that approach, though I recommend it over Wheelock.

I currently am working to fill in the gaps on vocabulary and grammar in a couple of different ways. First, learning with the 3rd-century A.D. Greek-Latin phrasebook of the Hermeneutata Pseud., the Colloquium Leidense (Bibliotheca Augustana), including reading/speaking them aloud. I am going to make a set of Anki digital flashcards (with both languages)of the vocab and the grammar in this conversational context, accompanied by sound files and pictures. I have long believed from my experiences in learning modern languages (Spanish, French, German, Portuguese) that vocabulary and grammar are acquired and retained best from a communicative approach, in a real world context. (I was late coming to this view about doing this with ancient languages, partly because I wasn’t aware it could be done.) Second, the Latin via Ovid does a grammar overview and also has some practice with Latin composition. Then, I’ll consult the grammars on specific areas to learn better or review. Also, rather than memorizing a core Latin vocabulary of several hundred or a thousand words, It seems better to just learn the vocabulary needed for particular works of the authors I’m interested in, as needed or desired.

I really enjoy poetry, so the idea of reading Vergil appeals to me. Given my background, would you say that reading Ovid would help prepare me for reading Vergil at all? Would reading the Ecologues before attempting the Aeneid be a good approach? Any advice would be appreciated.

Ave atque vale,
Persequor

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Thanks for the feedack Persequor :smiley:

I think many of us can empathise with what you describe - that tricky situation where you know enough to want more than the basics, more than just a shedload of grammar and exercises, but struggle to find the next thing to read that is at the right level. It’s exactly this circumstance that I’ve been aiming at with vergil.co.uk.

Ovid is certainly very good preparation for Vergil, and they share a lot in common, not least because Ovid was drawing so much on Vergilian verse for his own works. I would suggest that the Aeneid will probably be the simplest first work of Vergil’s to encounter. Most people start with the Aeneid, and there are plenty of resources our there for it. My recommendations would be to start with Book 1 (Aeneas shipwrecked at Carthage), 4 (Dido and Aeneas) or 6 (Aeneas in the Underworld).

But it seems to me that interest is so important anyway, and that this should drive the general direction of our reading. So if you fancy the Eclogues, give it a go. They are “clever” poetry, where what is explicitly said is not necessarily the most important part of an expression. In this they can be quite tricky. But happily they are shorter (c. 100 lines each) than a book of epic.

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I appreciate the advice, Jacknoutch. I may wait a while before dipping into the Aeneid so I can read more Ovid first. However, I definitely will try it first, then the Ecologues. I enjoy reading epic as well. I hope to read Homer in the original one day (Have read the Illiad and Odyssey in the older English translations by W.H.D. Rouse). I enjoyed Milton’s Paradise Lost and am slowly getting back into it for a second read. Sometime I want to read Dante’s Divine Comedy as well. I read an excerpt from the Inferno last year and found it fascinating.

Am glad to hear that reading Ovid will help prep me for Vergil. I enjoy reading the myths, and it is a special pleasure to read them in the original. The https://aeneid.co/ site looks promising. Geoffrey Steadman also has a free reader with selections from the Aeneid for the AP tests (College Board Advanced Placement, in the U.S.). His edition has the Aeneid’s core vocabulary, a running set of notes on non-core vocab, and grammar notes. I have found his format to be very helpful for readers like me and heartily recommend it. Besides these, the NoDictionaries site has the Aeneid with line by line vocabulary help and some grammar notes. It has some value as well.

Best wishes with your Ecologues project online. I will visit there again. Do you plan to also add Vergil’s other works to the site after you get the Ecologues part done?

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Epic is great, and Milton is the best. Just the best.

As you can see, there are other good resources out there for the Aeneid, so I feel there is less need to make more material for that. (On Latin Discussion I was reminded of The Vergil Project too.)

I’m not aware of a Georgics reader/commentary online, but I know that text less well. Still, it’d be a good way to learn!