It’s Nice to Have a Go-To Text
It’s nice to have a go-to text for your 3rd year Latin students (or for that matter yourself, if you’re a DIY Latin scholar). Now, you certainly can do a lot by the time you or your students have reached the third year of studying Latin. By this point, learners will have worked through most of the essential grammar and syntax topics and will have acquired a foundation in Latin vocabulary. They’re ready to start directly exploring the vast treasury of authentic Latin literature. Whether you’re teaching or learning at the third year level, you have a wide array of choices.
In recent years, I’ve made the most of this freedom and have done without a textbook in my advanced Latin classes. Instead, I rely on resources I have created myself over the years to address grammar, usage, and literary topics. I take readings from the variety of books I have acquired over the years or which are already present in my classroom. If I’m interested in reading something that I can’t find in one of those books, I can always find the basic text at thelatinlibrary.com. Selected texts with excellent notes and other resources are also available online on the Dickinson Commentaries site. I used this site extensively for remote classes during the bad old days of COVID.
Not All Jenneys are the Same
I haven’t always done things that way, however. Before I had built up the resources, experience, and confidence to blaze my own trail, I tried out several different books as my basic Latin III text. The most successful of these by far, one which I used for many years, is Jenney’s Second Year Latin.
Before taking a look at this book’s strengths and weaknesses, however, I need to make a couple of clarifying points. First of all, don’t let the title fool you. I’ve never encountered a second year Latin class that was ready for this book, at least not a high school class. This text is the sequel to Jenney’s First Year Latin, which takes at least two years to work through . . . at least two years.
Also, editions of Jenney’s Second Year Latin published after 1990 are not the same book. My review here is of the 1986 edition. As is the case with Jenney’s First Year Latin, the editors’ attempts to give the text a little more eye appeal in more recent editions have had the unwelcome effect of undermining the book’s strongest features.
Thorough, Rigorous . . . but not Too Complicated
And what, you may wonder, are the strongest features? Glad you asked. As is the case (again) with the first book in this series, clarity and thoroughness are the strengths of Jenney’s Second Year Latin. These features are particularly evident in the first twelve chapters, which offer a comprehensive review of Latin grammar.
Those first dozen chapters, in fact, are the one thing that most distinguishes this book. It’s always been my practice to begin third (and for that matter, fourth) year classes with a fairly intensive review of grammar and syntax. Students will forget a lot over the summer, that is, if they have really absorbed the information in the first place. Jenney’s Second Year Latin takes them through the material in a logical and thorough way.
Jenney’s Second Year Latin takes students through the review material in a logical, thorough way.
The explanations in each chapter are clear and direct. They’re comprehensive, but spare enough that students won’t spend most of the year slogging through them. After page 75, in fact, the grammar review is over, and the rest of the book contains only readings. The exercises are designed to give students a good grounding in the topics under review in that particular chapter. They’re rigorous, but not too complicated, so students don’t lose sight of the matter under review. This is an area, by the way, in which newer editions of the book are sadly deficient.
Logical Organization
Part of what makes a book a go-to text is its value as a reference. Students need to be able to find what they need easily. Jenney organizes its review topics with this purpose in mind. The first three chapters cover, in order: nouns; adjectives and adverbs; pronouns and numerals. Each chapter also reviews two or three different cases and their most common uses. After chapter 3, we find a helpful Summary of Case Uses.
The next chapters deal with verbs. Chapter 4 presents a comprehensive review of the indicative mood, chapter 5 infinitives and imperatives. The remaining seven chapters explore more advanced topics in greater depth: participles, gerunds & gerundives, ablative absolute, the subjunctive mood and the whole panoply of specialized clauses. These are topics that students may have studied incompletely, or cursorily, or even not at all in their second year class. You can use these later chapters to introduce this material to students for the first time.
Latin Readings
Chapters 1-12 contain more than just grammar review. There is also a vocabulary list of 70-80 review words from the previous book and exercises involving both the grammar lessons and review vocabulary from the chapter. Finally, each chapter also includes a lengthy reading (20-40 lines) taken from Richies Fabulae Faciles to prepare students for the authentic Latin readings later in the book.
The literature section of the book is good, but not much different from comparable books of its era. Caesar provides the lion’s share of the readings, with extensive selections from books I -VII of The Gallic War. Half-a-dozen stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses offer an appealing introduction to dactylic hexameter poetry. A few excerpts from Plautus and Cornelius Nepos round out the literary offerings.
The notes provide helpful support to the students, without (for the most part) doing for them what the students should be able to do for themselves. In a similar spirit, the editors have included macrons (long marks) in the text of the first couple of readings from Ovid, but not the later ones. The idea here is that the macrons are there to help the students when they are first learning how to scan dactylic hexameter. With practice, however, they should be able to determine the meter without them. In fact, they should eventually be able to reverse the entire process and determine the long syllables from the meter.
Not a Whole Lot to Criticize
I can’t find a whole lot to criticize in the pre-1990 Jenney’s Second Year Latin. Some critics will point out that the organization of the material in the first twelve chapters is rigid and “unnatural.” Such critics are less likely to explain why this is such a problem. The fact is that this section is intended as review of material that students have already learned. It’s not intended to mimic the natural learning process. Rather, its purpose is to reinforce student learning in the most efficient way possible. As we noted above, it can also serve as a reference after students have moved on to the literary portions of the book. The more easily they can find the information they need, the more useful it will be.
Some naysayers might also be less than enthusiastic about the Caesar-heavy reading selection. Now, I happen to think that Caesar can be a very engaging author for students young and old (see here and here) . . . especially in the hands of an enthusiastic teacher. But of course, there’s nothing stopping you from supplementing with readings from other sources, as I have often done. Having a textbook for your class, even a primary textbook, doesn’t mean it has to be the only textbook.
Easy to Find . . . but Be Careful
One issue for older textbooks which, sadly, are out of print, is availability. Fortunately, Jenney’s Second Year Latin is easy to find at a very reasonable price from the major online book sellers.
By the way, make sure the book you’re buying is the edition with the picture of Messalla, the bad guy from the classic film Ben Hur, standing with a number of other Roman legionaries. Well, actors dressed like legionaries. The very nice-looking edition featuring Alexander the Great is the newer version, in which the twelve concise review chapters have become twenty-four which are, well, not at all concise. I can’t recommend the new book.
“The editors’ attempts to give the text a little more eye appeal in more recent editions have the unwelcome effect of undermining the book’s strongest features.”
Left: the newer, less desirable, Jenney’s 2nd Year Latin
An Excellent Choice
The 1980s edition, however, I do indeed recommend. I don’t have a rating system for upper-level Latin textbooks as I do for introductory books. Most of us wouldn’t want to build an entire Latin III class around a single book. We might want a go-to text, however, a resource to help our students reinforce their prior learning and prepare them to scale the heights ahead. If that’s what you’re looking for, the pre-1990 Jenney’s Second Year Latin is an excellent choice.
