| The Aeneid in English
| Joepye Latin Bookstore |
| Collins2006 Ecclesiastical Latin Study Group
| Collins2007 Ecclesiastical Latin Study Group |
|
|
|
Wheelock's has been in use for over 50 years and is now in its 6th Edition, Revised. Richard A. LaFleur has been in charge of both the 5th and 6th Editions and has substantially enlarged and improved the book. Wheelock's now contains 18 pages of introductory material, 291 pages of Latin lessons, 12 pages of adapted readings, 52 pages of unadapted readings, 40 pages of self-tutorial exercises (with answers), a Summary of Forms, and a Vocabulary - lots of good material at a resonable price. If you feel the need for more exercises, there is an accompanying workbook. And when you finish Wheelock's, there is a reader to give you reading practice. One of the advantages of using Wheelock's is that there are a lot of other resources that you can use along with the book. Two of many online sites you might want to investigate are The Official Wheelock's Latin Series Website and LatinStudy, for Latin Autodidactics. For some print resources, jump down the page to Auxiliary Materials for Wheelock's.
If you're doing fine with Wheelock's alone, you don't need any of these books. But if you're having problems, or looking for further practice, you might find these useful. Grote's A Comprehensive Guide to Wheelock's Latin contains fuller explanations of the grammar in Wheelock's, as well as some exercises (with key) and etymological information. It has helped a lot of people. Thirty-Eight Latin Stories is designed to be read along with Wheelock's, beginning with some very easy (obviously) stories and working up to some to more complex material. The book includes a glossary. English Grammar for Students of Latin "explains the grammatical terms that are in your Latin textbook and shows how you they relate to English Grammar," to quote the preface. A handy book to have if your grammatical knowledge is weak. The book contains some exercises with a an answer key.
Wheelock's is a good book, but you can't cram everything there is to know about Latin in one book. You might find a comprehensive grammar book useful at times. The grammar I have found most useful is Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar. This is an updated version of an old classic, and it's section on prosody has been useful to me. Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar is another old American classic. As nearly as I can tell, except for the bibliography, this book has not been updated for about 140 years. I prefer Greenough's. Finally, A Latin Grammar was the recommended grammar in a distance Latin course I took with Richard LaFleur. It isn't quite as comprehensive as the preceeding two, but it has a lot of material in it. If you're interested in a Latin dictionary, here are three of varying price and completeness.
Collins' A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin is a beginning Latin text whose aim, to quote the preface, "is to give the student - within a year of study - the ability to read ecclesiastical Latin." There are 35 units of study, followed by 47 pages of continuous readings and the usual morphology charts and vocabulary. Many of the exercises and readings come directly from the Vulgate. Unlike Wheelock's, there are few supporting materials that I know of - no workbook, no reader, no web sites. But there is a new answer key by John R. Dunlap, published just this year. (There are also online study groups working through the Primer - check out the Collins2006 Ecclesiastical Latin Study Group and the Collins2007 Ecclesiastical Latin Study Group.) The book presupposes no knowledge of Latin, so a beginner could use it, although in my opinion Wheelock's is a better book for the absolute beginner. One of the weaknesses of Collins' book is the glossary, so you might consider adding Stelten's Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin to your library. It's a good book at a modest price. And finally, be optimistic and buy a Vulgate. Even if you don't ever get to the place where you can read it comfortably, it will look great on your bookshelf.
For a reference grammar, jump to Reference Grammars.
If you know some Latin but don't feel you can handle the Aeneid without some help, these books by the Bristol Classical Press might be for you. Besides the Latin text, each book contains some introductory materials, some comments on scanning Vergil's hexameters, a glossary and commentary on the text. Typically, the text is only about 25% of the book - the rest of the book consists of aids for the reader. There appear to be books available covering all of the Books of the Aeneid with the exception of Book XI.
If you would rather not buy a dozen books to cover the Aeneid, the Bristol Classical Press also publishes a two-volume Aeneid, edited by R. Deryck Williams. Each volume contains 29 pages of introductory material, divided into Preface, Introduction, Life and Works of Virgil, Virgil and Augustus, The Legend of Aeneas, Sources of the Aeneid, Synopsis of the Aeneid, Structure and Themes, Virgil's Hexameter, The Manuscripts of the Aeneid and the Ancient Commentators, Differences of Text (Volume I contains those differences relevant to Books I-VI, Volume II those relevatnt to Books VII-XII), and Bibliography, as well as commentary. The commentary is not quite as extensive as in the individual volumes above, but there is still well over twice as much commentary as text. There are, however, no glossaries in these two volumes.
Another two-volume Aeneid is the Loeb Classical Library version. Rather than the text and commentary, the Loeb books feature the text and an English translation on facing pages. There is less introductory material in the Loebs than in the Williams books above, but with the Loebs you also get the Eclogues and the Georgics, as well as some shorter works that have been attributed to Vergil over the years, but are almost surely spurious.
I have used all the following online booksellers successfully, although of course there is no guarantee that you will never have any trouble with one or the other of them. Caveat emptor! All these booksellers sell both used and new books. Amazon is probably known more for its inventory of new books, but it also offers used books through a network of affiliates. Biblio is a network of independent booksellers - it has 4,000 members with an inventory of 30 million books. Alibris is similar, although I believe Alibris itself carries some inventory. They claim 50 million books in their database.
Clicking on any of the icons below will take you to the advanced book search page at the indicated site. If you know the ISBN of the book you want, that is a good place to start your search. But beware - older books don't have an ISBN, and booksellers aren't always careful about entering the ISBN in recent or current books. Booksellers don't always enter the translator in the author field, either, so if you are looking for a specific translation of the Aeneid, you will probably find more results by searching on the keyword expression "Aeneid and Lewis" than you will find by putting "Aeneid" in the Title field and "Lewis" in the Author field.
Good luck, and happy hunting!
| The Aeneid in English
| Joepye Latin Bookstore |
| Collins2006 Ecclesiastical Latin Study Group
| Collins2007 Ecclesiastical Latin Study Group |
| Created on December 22, 2005. Updated on February 11, 2008. Comments to joepye@pobox.com. | |||
