By Milena Minkova, Terence Tunberg

Description

Reading Livy’s Rome is a graded Latin reader designed for college use and to prepare high school students to read sight passages of Livy such as those presented on the high level International Baccalaureate exam. This innovative reader takes students who have learned the essentials of Latin grammar by stages into reading their first extended passages of a Latin author. High-interest readings are drawn from legendary ancient Roman history as told in Books I–VI of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita: Romulus and Remus, Cincinnatus, and more. Readings progress from paraphrases to authentic Livian passages, all annotated but with increasingly fewer vocabulary aids. An appendix of authentic Livian passages is included for all simplified selections.

A Teacher’s Guide is available separately.

Special Features

• Simple Latin paraphrases for pre-reading
  
• Graded Livian Latin passages with same-page glossaries
  
• Inserts on features of Livy’s language
  
• English section titles provide context
  
• Graduated notes on syntax and grammar
  
• Appendix of authentic Livian Latin for all paraphrases
  
• Full vocabulary
  
• 6 black-and-white illustrations

Teacher’s Guide Features

• Literal English translation of all Latin paraphrases

Reading Livy’s Rome errata, student text and teacher's guide. Click here to download PDF.

Author Bios

Milena Minkova teaches classical languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Minkova has previously written a manual of introduction to Latin Prose Composition, as well as books on Latin inscriptions, and on medieval philosophy. Terence Tunberg teaches classical languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Tunberg has widely published on Latin prose style and edited Latin texts. Drs. Minkova and Tunberg have coauthored a manual on Latin composition, and the new Latin Series, Latin for the New Millennium Levels 1 and 2.

Comments and Reviews

The Classical Outlook/Summer 2005
Reading Livy's Rome: Selections from Books I- VI of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita. By MILENA MINKOVA and TERENCE TUNBERG. Wauconda IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 2005. Pp. xii and 276. Paper. $32.

I have been looking forward to this new text by Minkova and Tunberg. Delighted with the innovative and compelling approach which they adopted in their recent Readings and Exercises in Latin Prose Composition from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Focus Publishing, 2004), I was expecting a text with which to transport intermediate Latin students beyond grammar drills into the place where practice begins to pay off the reading of a "real" author. I hoped for a work which would honor the intelligent student's thirst for a literary experience while still providing some lexical and syntactical assistance. In Reading Livy's Rome I have not been disappointed.

But be prepared for something new. You will find all the features of a school reader in Reading Livy's Rome—historical and biographical discussion, grammar notes, glossary—but reformatted to facilitate the authors' goal: easing the student into reading Latin as literature. The canonic narratives from Livy's early books are here, but newly arranged: a paragraph of Livy's text on the right (in some cases very slightly adapted, the original text of Ogilvie's Oxford edition being contained in an appendix), facing a Latin paraphrase of the same material on the left. Abundant vocabulary is provided on each page and, for the genuine Livy portion, a commentary on social, cultural and historical material. The student is invited first to read through the paraphrase to grasp its content, then to assay the genuine Livy. This presentation continues for approximately two-thirds of the book. Then, at the beginning of the passages from Book IV, Minkova and Tunberg vary the pattern: the genuine Livy alone is presented, with only the more complex passages given a Latin paraphrase which now is relegated to the footnotes. The notes in turn become more detailed.

Minkova and Tunberg assume that the student has worked through a primer and has acquired a basic familiarity with as much Latin morphology and syntax as have been presented in a work such as Wheelock's; in fact the glossary in Reading Livy's Rome specifically includes only those words not found in Wheelock. However, its notes provide ample references to Gildersleeve and Lodge, along with helpful stylistic discussion interspersed in a pleasant format throughout the text.

You will find all the old favorites here: Romulus and Remus, Coriolanus, Lucretia and Camillus. I was a little disappointed at the absence of Virginia (although Minkova and Tunberg have included the Twelve Tables), and the heroic cackling of Juno's geese is left out of the Gaulish Sack. Were I making the selections, I think I would have omitted the Licinio-Sextian Rogations, considering the amount of sociological background with which students will have to be provided to put them in an historical context. Such prejudices aside, however, let me say that I am delighted with the book's format, and I am convinced that my second-year students are fortunate in being able to begin their study of Latin literature with this text.

— Diane Johnson
Western Washington University

I'm also currently working my way through Reading Livy's Rome. Tunberg and Minkova have done a great job. I'm sure Latin for the New Millennium will be equally impressive.

— Brent, Harvard University