In the notes, outright translations are given as seldom as possible. Instead, words that are likely to be unfamiliar are glossed, and comments on grammar and context are provided to help students comprehend the Latin and arrive at an accurate understanding of the text through their own abilities.
Finally, the end vocabulary includes English meanings for all Latin words appearing in the text, the sole exception being certain personal names and other proper nouns that are adequately defined in the notes. Macrons, though not appearing in the text (since the Romans themselves did not ordinarily employ them and they are not used in advanced Latin textbooks), are provided in the vocabulary.
To Professor Edwin S. Ramage of Indiana University I am very grateful for his most conscientious and critical survey of the manuscript of the passages and notes; many of his suggestions have led to improvements. Likewise I am grateful to Professors Joseph J. Prentiss of West Virginia University and W. M. Read of the University of Washington for submitting lists of corrigenda for the book’s second printing. To the keen observation, good judgment, and acute queries of Dr. Gladys Walterhouse of Barnes and Noble I am also deeply indebted. Finally, my heartfelt and abiding thanks to my very patient and very devoted wife, Dorothy, who typed the manuscript so accurately and so understandingly, and to my daughter Deborah for her very faithful and accurate assistance in proofreading the galleys.
FREDERIC M. WHEELOCK
Amherst, New Hampshire
Summer, 1969
The Revised Edition
In many respects Wheelock’s Latin Reader (originally titled Latin Literature: A Book of Readings) is one of the very best intermediate Latin texts published in the last generation. When the book first appeared in 1967, reviewers extolled the accessibility and comprehensiveness of its readings from Cicero, Livy, Ovid, and Pliny, praised its incorporation of selections from medieval Latin and the Vulgate as “a particularly happy innovation,” and hailed the volume as “a solid companion” to Wheelock’s Latin, the author’s best-selling beginning Latin textbook.
The book’s primary virtues were, and remain, these two: the wide range of selections from both classical and medieval Latin—about 3,400 lines altogether—and Professor Wheelock’s judicious annotations. From Cicero are included a rich and diverse sampling of his widely varied works, constituting nearly half the volume’s readings: the extensive excerpts from Cicero’s orations against Verres, the corrupt governor of Sicily whom he courageously prosecuted in 70 B.C., provide valuable insights into the political and judicial proceedings of the late republic and a marvelous specimen of Ciceronian rhetoric; the selections from two of his philosophical treatises, the De Officiis and the De Amicitia, probingly examine ethical and moral issues that continue to be of great concern to us today; and the several letters (most of them included in their entirety), addressed to family, friends, and associates, give us some remarkably candid glimpses into the personal and political life of that most famous orator and statesman.
The selections from Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, which include the story of Romulus and Remus and other legends of early Rome, as well as an account of Hannibal’s assault on Italy during the Second Punic War, are at once invaluable historical documents and lively, captivating narratives. The four transformation tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—the tragic love stories of Pyramus and Thisbe, and of Orpheus and Eurydice, the myths of Daedalus and Icarus and of Midas’ golden touch—make for delightful reading and provide an ideal introduction to classical Latin poetry. The selections from Pliny’s literary epistles present an interesting contrast with Cicero’s more spontaneous letters and contain important and interesting information on social and political institutions of the early empire, as well as detailed evidence for both the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79 and the Roman government’s policies regarding practices of the early Christian church during the reign of the emperor Trajan.
The passages from St. Jerome’s Vulgate edition of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Prodigal Son, and others, are an excellent introduction to that profoundly influential document and to the vulgar Latin (the Latin of the vulgus, the common people) of the early fifth century. And finally, the several selections drawn from Latin literature of the Middle Ages demonstrate the evolution of the language from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries as well as the remarkable diversity of matter and manner seen in such disparate works as Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, the allegorizing tales of the Gesta Romanorum, the sometimes reverent, sometimes raucous Carmina Burana, and the hypnotic power of that most powerful of medieval hymns, the Dies Irae.
It would be difficult to improve upon so rich a selection from Latin literature, ranging as it does over the prose and verse of some 1,400 years and including ample material from which to pick and choose for a semester’s course in college or, if read straight through, for up to two college semesters or a year’s work in high school. Thus I have made few changes to the content of the reading passages. Here and there I have restored some of the Latin that Professor Wheelock omitted, but only when the level of interest was high and the difficulty low, and often in order to reconstitute a continuous, unexcerpted passage (as, for example, in some of the letters, the Ovid selections, and all the readings from the Vulgate). In a very few instances I have deleted passages that seemed to me inordinately difficult for students at the intermediate level (including the notoriously abstruse preface to Livy’s history). Perhaps most obviously, the layout of the Latin text has been entirely redesigned and set in a more legible 12-point font.
The layout of the notes has likewise been redesigned, removing them from the back of the book and setting them in a larger font on pages facing the text. I have made considerable changes to the content of the notes as well, deleting some that seemed to provide unnecessary information, adding others where intermediate students might need more help. The glossing of vocabulary has been systematized; within each unit definitions are provided for words that students are not likely to have encountered in their previous study (including words not found in the Latin-English end vocabulary to Wheelock’s Latin) and whose meanings cannot be easily deduced based on English derivatives; several definitions are usually given in each gloss, so the student must select the one that best suits the context; vocabulary glosses, usually including the nominative singular for a noun and the second principal part for a verb, are provided at a word’s first occurrence within a unit and are repeated at the first occurrence in subsequent units, since some teachers and students may not read all the selections in the text or may not read them in the order in which they appear. In any case, as noted earlier in Professor Wheelock’s preface, nearly every word in the text is defined in the extensive end vocabulary, which has been expanded in this edition and indicates those words that occur five or more times in the text and which therefore should be memorized.
Difficult or unusual grammatical constructions, figures of speech, and poetic and rhetorical devices that merit comment are printed in SMALL CAPITAL LETTERS LIKE THESE to focus the student’s attention; in some instances, explanations or definitions are provided, but in most the teacher is expected to elaborate.
Each unit has been provided with a short introduction, drawn in part from comments previously included in Professor Wheelock’s end-notes; and the brief bibliography, listing works useful for background and supplemental information, has been completely updated. Also new to this edition are several maps listing nearly every placename mentioned in the Latin text and many of those in the notes, as well as dozens of photographs which are intended to enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the text.
Once again it has been a pleasure and a privilege to have the opportunity of revising one of Frederic Wheelock’s books, thus completing the “Wheelock’s Latin Series” and rendering the three volumes (Wheelock’s Latin, Paul Comeau’s Workbook for Wheelock’s Latin, and this Wheelock’s Latin Reader) more serviceable, it may be hoped, for a new generation of Latin students. I am particularly grateful to Professor Wheelock’s daughters, Martha Wheelock and Deborah Wheelock Taylor, my “sisters-in-Latin,” for extending me this opportunity, and to my editor at HarperCollins, Greg Chaput, for supporting my work on all the Wheelock projects every step of the way.
Thanks are due to many others as well: to my stalwart graduate assistants Brandon Wester and Jim Yavenditti for their service in a wide range of research and proofreading tasks; to Tom Elliott, Nicole Feldl, Alexandra Retzleff, and Joyce Uy of the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina, for their expert assistance in producing the maps newly included in this edition; to Tim McCarthy of Art Resource for his generous help in researching literally hundreds of photo options for the book; to my friend and Senior Associate Editor on the staff of The Classical Outlook, Mary Ricks, for reading and commenting ever so helpfully on numerous drafts of the typescript; to my colleagues Jim Anderson, Bob Curtis, Timothy Gantz, Bob Harris, Sallie Spence, Fran Teague, Erika Thorgerson, and Ann Williams, for their assistance in providing illustrations and information on topics beyond my very limited areas of competence; and finally, most emphatically and most affectionately, to my dear wife Laura, for her constant love and her unceasingly cheerful tolerance of all my little undertakings.
RICHARD A. LAFLEUR
Athens, Georgia
Spring, 2001
Maps
ANCIENT ITALY
Map by Richard A. LaFleur, Tom Elliott, Nicole Feldl, Alexandra Retzleff, and Joyce Uy. Copyright 2001, Ancient World Mapping Center (http://www.unc.edu/depts/awmc)
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Map by Richard A. LaFleur, Tom Elliott, Nicole Feldl, Alexandra Retzleff, and Joyce Uy. Copyright 2001, Ancient World Mapping Center (http://www.unc.eduldeptslawmc)
ANCIENT GREECE AND THE AEGEAN
Map by Richard A. LaFleur, Tom Elliott, Nicole Feldl, Alexandra Retzleff, and Joyce Uy. Copyright 2001, Ancient World Mapping Center (http://www.unc.eduldepts/awmc)
CICERO’S ORATIONS AGAINST VERRES
Marcus Tullius Cicero was ancient Rome’s most famous orator, an eminent statesman, and one of the best known, most prolific, and most admired of all classical Latin authors. Born in Arpinum in central Italy on January 3, 106 B.C., Cicero’s family was wealthy and well-connected. His father saw to it that the young man received an excellent education, and after a brief stint in the army when he was only 17 years old, Cicero turned to the study of law, serving an apprenticeship with some of the leading jurists of the day. He argued his first case in 81 B.C., and in the following year his successful defense of Sextus Roscius in his trial for murder—a case in which he risked incurring the enmity of the dictator Sulla—earned him a reputation as a bold and highly competent lawyer. In 79 his wife Terentia gave birth to their daughter Tullia.
“Cicero Denouncing Catiline in the Roman Senate” Cesare Maccari, 19th century, Palazzo Madama, Rome, Italy
Scala/Art Resource, NY.
During the early 70’s Cicero continued his study of philosophy and rhetoric in Greece and returned to Rome to commence a political career, which began with his election to the quaestorship in 75 B.C., to the praetorship in 66, and, despite his status as a novus homo (a candidate whose family had no tradition of office-holding), to the consulship in 63. Cicero’s year as consul was notable for his suppression of the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina, an episode of Roman history richly documented in a monograph written by the contemporary historian Sallust and especially in Cicero’s four highly celebrated Catilinarian orations.
Cicero’s speeches were so persuasive, and the evidence so compelling, that Catiline fled Rome immediately and joined his rebel troops. Soon he and his army were outlawed, five conspirators who had remained in Rome were arrested and executed, and in early 62 Catiline and nearly all his forces fell in battle at Pistoria, in northern Etruria, in a bloody confrontation with the Roman legions sent in their pursuit. Thanks to Cicero’s personal courage, his political adroitness, and his oratorical skills (well evidenced in the excerpts you are about to read from his earlier Verrine orations), he managed to suppress a rebellion that could have had far more sweeping, and violent, consequences.
In executing several of the Catilinarian conspirators, Cicero had acted under the authority of an emergency decree of the senate; nevertheless, the legality of the action was open to question and Cicero’s political adversaries ultimately engineered his banishment from Rome in 58 B.C. With the support of Pompey the Great, Cicero was recalled the next year; but under the shadow of Pompey’s alliance with Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus (the so-called “first triumvirate”), he played a less active role in politics during the mid-50’s, devoting his time instead to the courts and to writing a number of oratorical and political treatises, including the De Oratore, the De Republica, and the De Legibus.
