A Five Tool Player: Latin for the New Millennium

Five Tool Player? 

A five tool player is a baseball term that refers to someone who excells at all five of the basic baseball skills: hitting for average, hitting for power, speed, throwing, and catching.

In evaluating Latin textbooks I also look for five “tools” which I detail in my article “Latin Textbook Reviews: How to Choose.”   Very briefly, that “package” includes:

-1. A clear, rigorous presentation of Latin grammar.

-2. Ample opportunities for reading authentic Latin.

-3. present the Latin language as an ongoing, living literary medium over from B.C. to present.

-4. Provide literary and historical context for the Latin language over the past 2,000 years.

-5. Offer an inviting and lively invitation to the study of Latin.

I’ve never found a textbook series that fully lives up to that. After all, the textbook is just a resource.  A teacher will take what is useful from the book, but the book can’t teach a class.  And, of course, any actual learning is, in the end, up to the student.  Nonetheless, some books make better resources than others.

Latin for the New Millennium is the closest thing I’ve found so far to fulfilling all five criteria. It’s certainly not perfect, as we’ll see, but for now at least it’s my preferred classroom text.  I’ll briefly hit each point below, indicating where LNM does well, and where it could do better.

Grammar: A Happy Middle Ground 

The grammar and syntax lessons are well done.  New points are introduced under the heading of “Language Fact.”  Each chapter has up to five of these, each designated with a Roman numeral (Language Fact I, Language Fact II). The explanations are clear, with lots of examples drawn from the chapter’s reading passage.  They tend to occupy a happy middle ground between the spare explications in Oxford Latin and the intimidating masses of text in Wheelock.

There is a sufficient number of exercises to acquaint students with new points of grammar and reinforce those that they have previously learned.  Some of these can be perhaps a little complicated.  Students might be asked, for instance, to fill in the blank with the correct form and then translate the sentence.  Very often, however, some of the forms will be nouns and others verbs.  

 Exercises and Irregular Verbs

The book does provide an example of how to complete the more complicated exercises.  If it happens to be one of the exercises where answers could be nouns or verbs, the example will invariably show how to do only one of the two.  The more adept students won’t be troubled by this, but many students will find it confusing.

There is a student work book that has more exercises.  Many of these are more straightforward drill exercises. I tend to avoid ancillary books for a variety of reasons, but it’s there if you want it.

See a brief assessment of all the books on my list:

“What’s the Best Book? Survey of Latin Textbooks”

On the whole, I’m pleased with the grammar content.  It’s relatively rigorous, for which reason LNM (unlike, say, the Oxford Latin Course) is also suitable for college students.  With younger high school age students you can use the ancillary books as well and slow down the pace.

Aside from my quibble about complicated exercises, I have only one more complaint.  I would like to see more of the irregular verbs, sooner.  Sum and possum appear early on, but volo, nolo, and eo aren’t introduced until well into the second book.   Those minor issues aside, the grammar content goes firmly into the plus column.

 Pride of Place 

The Latin readings are another strength. They take pride of place, just as they do in reading-based series such as Cambridge and the Oxford Latin Course. That is, an extended passage in Latin is the first thing students see when they start a new chapter. The readings in LNM are not as extensive as they are is those other texts, but they have other virtues.

To begin with, they present a direct connection to real Latin literature written by eminent authors.  The reading in chapter 1 is a very simple re-telling of the Romulus and Remus story. Every chapter after that, however, bases its reading on a specific text by a particular author.  These readings are arranged in chronological order.  The first is taken from the Menaechmi, a comedy by the playwright Plautus.

We meet the big names of the 1st century BC (Cicero, Caesar, Vergil), but we don’t stay there. Chapter 21 at the end of the Level 1 book brings us Boethius, writing in the early 6th century AD. Our literary trek through time ends in chapter 15 of the Level 2 book, where we find a reading drawn from The Underground Journey of Nicholas Klim.  The author is the Dane Ludvig Holberg, the book a proto-science fiction novel published, in Latin, in 1741.

 A Trek Through Time 

One of my frustrations with many of the reading-based texts (especially Cambridge) is how much time and effort students expend on stories and characters made up by the creators of the textbook. Isn’t it better to connect students to the authentic literary works of real Latin authors? That’s the strength of the LNM reading program.

That’s point #2 on my list. Additionally, the chronological range of authors is also a big plus for me.  It’s hard to counter the slur that Latin is a “dead language” when the most recent product of the language you can offer is two millennia old. Instead, we can point to eminent authors writing in Latin up to the lifetime of George Washington. In other words, the selection of readings also addresses points 3 & 4 on the list.

The main weakness with the readings is that they are fewer and shorter than we find in the reading-based books.  To be fair, there are additional short reading passages in the review chapters (after every third numbered passage), and also in the ancillary work book.  Also, in the Level II book every chapter has a second unadapted reading from Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Atticus. The fans of Cambridge and Ecce Romani will probably still find the quantity of readings insufficient, but LNM more than makes up for that defect in quality and content of its passages.

 Inviting and Lively 

As for point 5, offer an inviting and lively invitation to the study of Latin, well, yes. We might not all consider things like color and page layout to be important, but it makes a difference to most students.  I think very highly of the Wheelock text in many respects, for instance. Even my head swims, however, when I look at its uniformly black and white pages densely populated with many, many, many (did I mention many?) words. Just imagine the reaction of your typical adolescent student.

So, if you’re looking for “inviting and lively,” a little white space on the page, tinted boxes around grammatical charts, and lots of color pictures certainly help. The content is good, too. The reading passages are inherently interesting.  In addition, they tend to be about major literary or historic figures. I once decided to give up on a well-known reading based text permanently after wading through one too many made up stories about a fictional master yelling at this fictional slave. I’d prefer Catullus and Lesbia, the Battle of Salamis, and The Consolation of Philosophy any day.

 Something for Everyone 

One last thing. These days any introductory Latin series needs to provide more background information than it can reasonably incorporate into the Latin readings. Latin for the New Millennium has three brief background articles in each review chapter.  

The first of these is always a brief description of one or more of the classical gods, the second a cultural or historical topic (slavery, marriage, clothing).  These first two are written on a level appropriate to middle school and early teen students.  

The third article is directed toward a college age readership.  These more scholarly offerings are authored by eminent professors and deal with more sophisticated topics such as “Politics in Greece, Rome, and the United States.”  In keeping with the overall spirit of the series, they tend to emphasize the connections between the classical world and our own.

 All Five Tools 

The bottom line is that Latin for the New Millennium does at least reasonably well in all five categories, and better than reasonably well in most.  It’s a five tool player.  It’s not perfect, of course, and I pointed out some of its deficiencies above.  Its virtues, however, outweigh its vices. It’s my preferred classroom textbook for that reason.  I can see it as a valuable resource for homeschool and self-taught learners* as well.  

My rating: ★★★★★

*By the way, I’m currently creating an online course using Latin for the New Millennium that I hope to have finished and posted on the Udemy platform by September 2024. Keep your eye on this space!