Introduction

Welcome to your Wolsey Hall guide to the Cambridge IGCSE Latin course. Please take the time to read carefully through this guide. It will explain how the course is structured, how to get the most out of your Latin studies and how your work will be assessed. At the end of this guide you will find the Programme of Study which shows how the course links to the CAIE syllabus.

This course will lead you step-by-step through the syllabus by way of video links, quizzes, assignments, a set of course eBooks and a literature text so that by the end you are confident and ready to take the exam and show off all that you have learnt. Our Latin course is challenging but fascinating.  It will make you think and will instil in you a pleasure in words for years to come.

People will tell you that Latin is a “dead language”; well, it is not spoken as it was by the Romans anymore but if you go to Spain, France, Italy or Romania (the clue is in the name), you will find that you can understand a large number of words without previous study, because those Roman soldiers carried their language with them and they conquered a large part of Europe. English too uses lots of Latin – prescription, viable, civilian, military, horticulture, study.

This is not the only influence left by these amazing people; the Romans were town planners, (they weren’t the first by any means but they were the most organised), they knew the importance of public health, and the remains of Roman baths dotted around the Mediterranean are testament to this, as is the cloaca maxima (great drain) which is still in use in Rome. Roman building projects ranged from civic buildings, aqueducts and drains, to military outposts, temples and palaces and all the while they speak of what it means to be a Roman. They invented, or at least improved the use of, concrete and the dome of the Pantheon in Rome shows just how well they knew how to do it.

They were a slave-owning culture admittedly, but this gave them the leisure to produce some amazing and varied literature, ranging from philosophy to epic, from science and farming practice to love poetry. We learn about their joys and sorrows, their politics and their wars. We can see how they had the same concerns as we do, but that they also liked to watch people killing each other as entertainment in the amphitheatres that still exist.

You will spend the first part of the course learning the grammar of Latin; this will involve you looking for patterns and rules. The rules are important to learn at the beginning because it gives you a solid foundation to build on. Do not skimp on this! When you have worked through the main constructions you will begin to look at the literature.

Cicero was a lawyer and politician of the first century BC; he wrote prolifically on a variety of subjects and his Latin is carefully crafted. He breaks those carefully learned rules for effect but you need to know the rules in order to appreciate the effect. The verse paper is Virgil, a section from the end of his epic poem the Aeneid, which is the story of Aeneas’ escape from Troy and his Odysseus-inspired voyage to Italy to begin the foundation of the Roman people. It is a sweeping tale which makes us think hard about our own humanity and still speaks to us in the 21st century.

During your course, you will learn a lot about Latin that’s fascinating and useful.  By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• read, understand, appreciate and respond to some Latin literature.
• understand some of the elements of Roman civilisation.
• develop an analytical approach to language by seeing English in relation to a language of very different structure and by observing the influence of Latin on English.
• gain an awareness of the motives and attitudes of people of a different time and culture, while considering the legacy of Rome to the modern world.
• have a greater understanding of a range of aesthetic, ethical, linguistic, political, religious and social issues.

I am sure you will enjoy this course. I have been studying the ancient world for a long time now and it still has surprises for me. I look forward to meeting you and working with you.