In the later stages of a pupil’s Latin education, appropriate unseen translations exist in gratifying abundance. I imagine I am far from alone in possessing a vast archive of Common Entrance, CASE and scholarship papers dating back to well before the year of my birth. GCSE passages, Cullen’s Latin Stories and myriad ye olde readers such as Hillard & Botting and Via Vertendi all make up an embarrassment of riches for the student reaching the end of his or her prep school career.
It is at the outset of studying Latin, however, that the available resources are so much more meagre, for reasons which become apparent as soon as one attempts to produce unseens at that level. The limitations of rudimentary grammar and vocabulary prevent adaptations from genuine texts and, at their most restrictive, make the creation of fluent Latin a very tall order indeed.
I have however come very much to enjoy the challenge of generating acceptable Latin prose within the narrow confines of 1st declension nouns and the present tense of 1st conjugation verbs.
Through poring over Lewis & Short and Smith’s English to Latin lexicon (available in immensely helpful electronic form at www.latinitium.com/latin-dictionaries) I have developed an array of appropriate vocabulary.
Categorising that vocabulary can help to inspire varied plotlines. For example –
- Military: copiae, advena, regina, Britannia, Roma, Agricola, Cotta, Belgae; esseda, hasta, sagitta, fossa; pugno, oppugno, expugno, neco, vasto, vulnero.
- Maritime: nauta, pirata, archipirata; aqua, navicula, ora; navigo, guberno, nato.
- Pastoral and domestic: agricola, femina, filia, cena, villa, terra; gallina, vacca, fera; paro, porto, aro, aedifico.
- Scholastic: grammatista, schola, puella, discipula; specto, laboro.
Verbs of motion are key – ambulo, appropinquo, erro and festino in particular – as are those expressing emotional states like lacrimo, trepido, reformido and despero. Animals also come in handy, beyond the farmyard staples – aquila, lea, lupa, ursa etc.
In the first volume of my new five-part CE course, Clarke’s Latin, I purposefully introduced adverbs and subordinate clauses before embarking upon any cases besides the nominative. The text below, depicting a chaotic classroom scene, is the first continuous passage of CL I.
olim schola laborat. grammatista imperat. iuvat et nuntiat, dum puellae laborant. puellae bene laborant, quod grammatista spectat. si puellae diu laborant, grammatista laudat.
subito intrat vespa. vespa celeriter volat et magnopere bombitat. mox puellae turbant. ubi vespa appropinquat, puellae et clamant et reformidant.
deinde vespa devolat, oppugnat, vulnerat. puellae lacrimant et trepidant. iam grammatista appropinquat. dum vespa volitat, grammatista statim oppugnat et necat. vespa exspirat. ‘heus!’ clamat grammatista. (grammatista exspectat dum puellae cessant.) ‘vespa non iam pugnat. supero! iam aut laboratis aut paratis.’ tandem puellae nec clamant nec turbant. iterum laborant.
Below is a segment of another unseen, this time in an outdoor setting.
The reverse of this worksheet contains the vocabulary in bold.
CL I contains twenty-eight such continuous passages (a mixture of unseens, comprehensions, CE-style grammatical questions and prose compositions) which, I hope, will prove useful to those seeking to balance grammatical rigour with enjoyable exposure to life in the ancient world.
I would be very happy to share my categorised vocabulary lists and other resources – please feel free to contact me at latin@highfieldschool.org.uk.
I think these are great, Ed. I’m looking forward to adapting these as an exercise in vocab deduction for my Year 9 group. They’ll be able to handle the syntax and grammar no problem and this should free up head-space for guessing sensibly what words like ‘reformidant’ mean. So key to control the variables when doing an unseen – it’s a multi-process exercise and most of the time I just want to assess the process we’ve been tackling in class, e.g. spotting conjunctions or parsing nouns. Thanks again!