Latin Via Ovid: a Message from Exile

 Latin Via Ovid?

My review of Latin Via Ovid starts, appropriately enough, with a message from an exile.*  A few years ago (maybe 10 or 12) I received an unexpected email at my place of work.  An inmate at a local prison was looking for constructive ways to use his time while in his exile.  He had found a Latin textbook in the prison library and decided to teach himself Latin.  Would I be willing to correct his work and offer suggestions and encouragement? I was teaching at a Catholic school at the time, and this seemed a prime opportunity to practice a corporal work of mercy (I could virtually visit the imprisoned, at any rate).

I was also interested in the textbook my incarcerated pen pal had found.  Its name was Latin Via Ovid (find it here). I had first heard about it some twenty years previously when I was an undergraduate. I had heard that an introductory Latin class was using it as their basic text.  The idea was, as the title says, Latin by way of Ovid.  That is, the mythological stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses provided the raw material for learning the language.

Filius Pius 

Now, I didn’t get a chance to look at the book in any depth the first time around.  It’s possible that I was too distracted by the non-academic aspects of collegiate life.  Nevertheless, I was and remained interested in how the book worked. And did it work?

My arrangement with the prisoner gave me an opportunity to put it to the test.  It gave me, however, only a partial sense of the book.  First, simply correcting one man’s work via email wasn’t really an adequate substitute for really teaching (or learning) with the book.  Also, I didn’t actually have the book (as I mention in my Survey of Latin Textbooks).  All I saw were the translations and exercises that my friend in exile typed up and sent me. I couldn’t really evaluate the text, much less write a review. Well, one of my sons has rectified that last issue.  He very thoughtfully bought me a copy of Latin Via Ovid for Christmas.  Now I’m ready to roll with a review.

The mythological stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses provide the raw material for learning the language.

 A Spoon Full of Sugar 

At the outset, it’s easy to see the appeal in the concept.  In her preface, author Norma Goldman says:

‘We chose abridged versions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for the readings, both for their value as background in mythology and for their rich, narrative style, which should impel the reader to continue his pursuit of meaning in a foreign language.

In other words, Ovid’s vivid mythological tales add an element of fun to encourage students to keep going through some of the more tedious aspects of language acquisition.  They are the “spoon full of sugar,” as noted Lucretius scholar Mary Poppins put it, that helps the medicine go down. As the students are learning the Latin language, they are also gaining familiarity with stories that have been a huge part of our literary heritage for the past two thousand years. That’s what we call a “twofer.”

 Readings up Front 

Let’s start with the format of the book.  Each chapter starts with a brief Dialogue.  The author suggests that by building on these it might be possible to conduct class almost exclusively in Latin by chapter XX.

A much bigger impact item is the reading passage, which comes next. As the first big item in every chapter, the readings take pride of place. Each reading (except the very first) is an adaptation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  They get progressively longer and more complicated (and closer to Ovid’s original text) as you move through the book. The last chapters also include unadapted passages of poetry from the Metamorphoses as well as from some other poems such as the Heroides. The reading passages are long and, as she says,

We attempted so far as possible to cling to the original to illustrate Ovid’s imagery and graceful style, but we also tried to employ prose forms that the student will need to recognize when he encounters the work of other authors.

Like Yet Unlike 

Again, Goldman is trying to get as much value out of her readings as possible. Latin Via Ovid clearly has many things in common with reading-based texts such as Cambridge and Ecce Romani.  In its focus on a single author, it anticipates the Oxford Latin Course and its focus on Ovid’s near-contemporary Horace.  Latin Via Ovid, however, is significantly different from all of these, as we shall see.

After each reading passage is Vocabulary for students to memorize.  These lists are longer than those in many other books. Goldman says there are “around thirty” words, but some chapters have over forty. These are separated in the list according to part of speech. Unlike a reading text such as Ecce Romani, which doesn’t include forms students have not yet learned, LVO includes the full dictionary entry for nouns starting in Chapter III, and all principal parts for verbs beginning in Chapter IV.  

 Structure & Exercises 

The next section is Structure.  This is where the text introduces and discusses grammar, syntax, etc. LVO follows the ancient and honorable custom of numbering each paragraph. We go from 1, “The omission of the article” in Chapter I to 197, “The many uses of the dative case” in Chapter XL.   In the first couple of chapters, these lessons tend to be inductive, covering specific points that come up in the reading. By Chapter III, however, we get “a more deductive, summary-of-forms method.”  So, for example, in the third chapter, we get the full set of first declension endings, even though students haven’t covered uses of all the cases.

After that come the Exercises.  Lots of exercises.  The only other book I know with more exercises is Henle Latin.  If you judge that you don’t need all of them, of course, you can skip some. You may choose, for instance, to do only the odd numbered problems.  But a student who does them all will really reinforce the lesson.  For what it’s worth, my inmate correspondent did them all.  Of course, he had a lot of time on his hands.

A Deep Dive into Etymology 

Finally, we come to the etymology section.  I don’t know of any other textbook that does it in quite this way, or goes into this much depth.  Professor Goldman explains that “The etymology sections are intended to enrich the student’s English vocabulary and word-building awareness.” These often use use words or ideas in the chapter as the inspiration for the etymology topic.  For instance, in the chapter involving the mythical musician Orpheus we find a discussion of musical terms.  Sometimes etymology provides a convenient occasion to discuss relevant topics that don’t fit in other places.  For instance, Chapter IV explains both the connections between Romance Languages and the way Latin prefixes have found their way into English.

Starting with Chapter XXXII the etymology lessons grow into something more like the history and culture sections in other books.  Again from Prof. Goldman’s preface:

In the sections on Roman life, we expanded the Etymology to add a note on Roman education, names, food clothing, and housing, as the excitement of explaining pedagogue, Caesarian section, gustatory experience, tunic, and atrium spilled over into brief summaries of each of these subjects.

As an aside, I can’t help but admire Prof. Goldman’s enthusiasm for her project.

An Inviting and Lively Invitation 

Now that we’ve run through the basic features of the text, how does Latin Via Ovid stack up? In my previous article “Latin Textbook Reviews: How to Choose” I outlined five standards with which to assess texts. Since the readings adapted from Ovid are the most distinctive thing about the text, I’d like to start there. The fifth standard is that a Latin text should be “an inviting and lively invitation to the study of the Latin language.” I concur with Prof. Goldman’s assertion that students will inevitably find Ovid’s mythological stories charming.  I teach a mythology class that invariably has a full enrollment of (mostly) enthusiastic students.

Now, the appearance of the book tends to be a little less lively.  There are no colors, photos of picturesque ruins, or classical paintings.  The only pictures in the book, in fact, are on the introductory page to each chapter.  There we can find modest but attractive black illustrations on a gray background related to the story in each chapter. The author’s husband Bernard Goldman and Betty Hanson modeled the drawings on Greek black figure amphorae.  Interestingly, some years later Maurice Balme’s daughter Kathy created similar illustrations for Balme’s intro Greek series Athenaze.

How “lively and inviting” the book is, then, depends on your individual proclivities.  I personally tend to think that the readings compensate for the lack of color and the dense format of the pages.  I suspect many students, especially younger or less advanced, might disagree.

A Mixed Bag

Since I started at the end with standard 5, we might as well move on to 4 and 3 next. Number 4 is that the text provides “a reasonably comprehensive view of the literary and historical context that produced and has continued to nourish the Latin language” up to the present day.  Standard 3 asks that it “present the Latin Language as an ongoing, living literary medium over the past two thousand years.”  The exclusive focus on one author from more than two thousand years ago would seem to create a problem for both of these standards.  Additionally, LVO makes little effort to provide separate discussions of historical or cultural topics.  At least, not until well into the last fourth of the book, and these deal exclusively with Ovid’s era.

If Latin Via Ovid had chosen any literary work other than the Metamorphoses as its exclusive focus, I would have to say the book failed both these standards. Classical mythology has an enduring appeal, however.  Knowing the mythology is an automatic literary and cultural connection to virtually every era between Ovid’s age and ours.  Even today, classical mythology is embedded in every aspect of our culture. It’s in the arts, in the sciences, in the names of ships, and in a surprisingly large number of films and television programs. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid has assembled the most comprehensive compendium of mythology available. Not only that, his version of many of the myths is often the most familiar. For those reasons we can give the book partial credit on those standards.

Reading and Grammar 

Latin Via Ovid scores much higher on the next two (that is, the first two) standards. Number 2 looks for the book to

Provide students with ample opportunities for reading Latin prose (and occasional poetry) that is as authentic as possible for their stage in the learning process.

I can’t think of another program that does a better job of doing this.  Honestly, I can’t think of one that does as good a job. The readings are extensive, but very engaging. They embody Ovid’s original narrative surprisingly well for adapted texts. At the same time, as Prof. Goldman explains above, she shaped her adaptations, at least in part, in such a way as to prepare students for other authors as well.  What more can we ask for?

Finally, the first standard: “Include a clear, rigorous presentation of Latin grammar.  With emphasis on clear.” As I explain above, this is one of the more rigorous presentations of Latin grammar I’ve come across.  Fortunately, it is also clear.  The numbered paragraphs provide straightforward explanations of points of grammar and syntax, with just enough detail.  The extensive exercises also very clearly reinforce the points that particular chapter introduces, as well as reviewing and reinforcing earlier lessons.

Structure and Content

On the whole, I like this book a lot.  Like the more recent Latin for the New Millennium, Latin Via Ovid (successfully) combines aspects of both the new reading-based approach and the old school grammar-intensive philosophy. Both the readings and grammar treatments are more intense in Latin Via Ovid. The most significant difference beween the two, however, is the choice of source material.  LNM looks looks at a separate author in each chapter, arranged in chronological order.  That automatically addresses (at least in part) the need to provide historical and literary background over the past two millennia.

So, in the end, the big question is this: do the strengths of the exclusive focus on Ovid outweigh the drawbacks? On the whole, I think they do . . . with conditions.  No text can teach a course on its own. Also, students today are less prepared in terms of grammatical preparation and historical knowledge than they were even fifty years ago when Norma Goldman was developing Latin Via Ovid. Particularly if you are teaching a high school or younger Latin class in a conventional school, the teacher needs to provide a lot of structure and context.

 The Bottom Line for Latin Via Ovid

So, here’s my final word. Latin Via Ovid would be an excellent choice for a college level class or an adult DIY student (such as my Latin learner from exile). It gets very positive reviews at amazon.com (4.7 stars), mostly from learners in these categories. Motivated homeschool adolescents might also enjoy its particular virtues.  It probably would be beyond all except the highest achieving groups in a conventional high school. For older and sufficiently motivated students, however, I give Latin Via Ovid four stars.

My rating: ★★★★

Rating based on the five points I outline in my earlier post, “Latin Textbook Reviews: How to Choose.”

Rating based on the five points I outline in my earlier post, “Latin Textbook Reviews: How to Choose.”

*The poet Ovid was exiled to Tomi on the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus in the year AD 8. He remained there until his death ten years later.

Featured image top of page: Ovid among the Scythians, by Eugène Delacroix, 1859. A representation of the poet in exile.