Meet Quintus: Oxford Latin Course Review

Meet Quintus

Meet Quintus – Quintus Horatius Flaccus, that is.  We generally call him Horace, one of the greatest poets of antiquity.  He’s best known today among non-Latinists for his phrase carpe diem (Horace, Odes 1.11).

And meet Quintus we do, on the very first page of Maurice Balme’s and James Morewood’s Oxford Latin Course. The student’s very first encounter with the Latin language is the sentence Quintus est puer Romanus beneath a cartoon drawing of a grinning Horace as a boy.  Horace stays with us throughout the entire series. We follow his life story through every lesson until he is finally laid to rest in the final chapter of Book III.

A Reading-based Text with a Difference

The focus on the life of Horace is the thing that initially caught my attention when I first came across the OLC. At first glance it does look a lot like reading-based texts like Ecce Romani or the Cambridge Latin Course.

There’s a big difference between Oxford and those other texts, however.  While the extensive readings give students a lot of useful practice, far too much of the content of the readings in those other texts doesn’t lead them anywhere.  The major characters are people about whom we know only a name, or who are entirely fictional. Much of the action of the stories is about the activities of those fictional characters. Students spend a lot of time and efforts reading material that really has little to do with actual Latin literature.

While the running narrative in OLC is also a creation of its present-day authors, it introduces students to a great deal of relevant background information along with the reading practice. Horace, the main character, is a substantial literary figure, and the text prepares students to read and understand his poetry.  Yes, the authors must necessarily use their imaginations to create a great deal of the detail. The fictional elements, however, are inferences drawn from what we do know, either from Horace himself or other ancient authors.  We have more actual biographical information about Horace than almost any other classical author aside from Cicero and Caesar. And, as we shall see below, Horace manages to introduce us to quite a lot of other relevant information.

Learning with Quintus

Let’s start with the format of the series. As we would expect from a reading-based text, there are substantial reading passages in each chapter. In fact, each chapter has at least two such passages. These give students a lot of practice reading the language. The authors also make use of those extensive readings to provide quite a bit of important literary and historical context.  When Horace is in school in his boyhood home of Venusia, for instance, he (and we along with him) learn the stories of the Iliad the Odyssey. We also get a preview of the Aeneid, which Horace will see his adult friend Vergil compose some years later .

Balme and Morewood’s Horace is also something of an ancient Roman Forest Gump.  He somehow happens to be present at all the major historical events of his time.  As a young boy in Venusia he watches Crassus leading his legions down the Appian Way en route to his ill-fated invasion of Parthia. He just happens to be there to witness the murder of Julius Caesar.  Through his friendship with the young Marcus Cicero (no, there’s no record of it, but it could have happened) we learn a great deal about his friend’s father, that most indispensable of Romans, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Grammar and Syntax

Another feature that distinguishes the OLC from other reading-based texts (Cambridge in particular), is the treatment of grammar and syntax.  The creators of this series seem to be aiming for something that incorporates the best features of both the reading-based approach and the more traditional grammar intensive method.

Accordingly, each chapter has a corresponding grammar section in the back of the book explicating the new concepts in the readings. The explanations and paradigms are clear, and there are sufficient exercises to reinforce the lesson.

The placement of the grammar lessons in the back of the book underscores the emphasis on experiencing the written language as opposed to focusing on nuts and bolts topics. It also makes it easier for those who wish to do so to go full Cambridge and ignore the grammar lessons altogether.

Pictures and Cartoons

Each chapter also has an English language section after the readings (some of them several pages long) providing a fuller explanation of the literary, historical, and cultural content of the chapter.  These sections include colorful photos and illustrations, as do the Latin readings.  There are no illustrations in the grammar sections of the books.

The last and perhaps the most distinctive . . . no, wait, definitely the most distinctive feature of The Oxford Latin Course is the cartoons.  Each chapter begins with a comic strip of four captioned pictures.  Kathy Balme, daughter of Maurice, is the illustrator. The comic strips give a first look at the content and new grammatical concepts in that chapter. They are supposed to look like they were drawn by child or young adult, apparently with the aim of making the content seem friendlier to young students. Unfortunately, students sometimes enjoy the crudely rendered images in a less than charitable way.

The Pluses

To summarize, the Oxford Latin Course successfully combines elements of the reading-based and traditional approaches. It was my main text for first and second year Latin classes for many years.

The readings are both extensive and accessible, giving students ample opportunity to build their fluency in reading Latin. At the same time, their content provides a lot of relevant cultural, historical and literary context that most adolescent students simply don’t have today.   

As for the grammar lessons, they are clear and not overly complicated. And while OLC doesn’t match the rigor or thoroughness of a more traditional series such as Wheelock or Jenney, the textbook presents grammar topics in a more systematic and comprehensive way than is typical of reading-based texts.  

The Minuses

The Oxford Latin Course is not without its flaws, however.  A big shortcoming for me is that it doesn’t even touch upon the last two millennia of Latin.  It all ends with the death of Horace in 8 BC. The exclusion of anything written or happening after the Augustan Age makes the Latin language look more like an artifact of antiquity, and less like a living part of the culture that has been developing, and has continued to grow, through all the centuries since.

Additionally, some of the features that make this an appealing choice for younger adolescents may put off older or more advanced students. Many of these students find that the grammar lessons are not as rigorous as they would like, and proceed too slowly. Higher level students might also benefit from moving to more advanced reading more quickly.

Comics and Nudes

The aesthetics of the books can also be something of a mixed blessing. OLC does present a friendly face to those who are intimidated or put off by a comparatively stodgy traditional text. Because of those same features, however, I’ve known students to complain that it simply doesn’t give the impression of being a serious textbook.  We’ve already noted the cartoons above. When you add to those the slender size of the volumes (particularly the paperback version) and the bright colors, the result too closely resembles a comic book.

At the same time, one major way in which The Oxford Latin Course does not look like a children’s book is in the choice of many of the photographs.  We see quite a few naked bodies in the photos of classic paintings and statues (and even in some of Kathy Balme’s cartoons).  My daughter and several of her friends went through the book and put blue painter’s tape over them. The irony is that this drawback is most problematical for the same demographic that this book seems intent on attracting.

Summary of Strengths and Weaknesses

The Rating

My rating for this book is mostly positive, particularly for use by younger adolescent students (grades 7-10, roughly speaking). I give it four stars, based on the five points I outline in my earlier post, “Latin Textbook Reviews: How to Choose.”

Rating: ★★★ & .5

One last thing.  As noted above, this text may not be sufficient for older and more advanced high school students, and certainly not for college-aged students.  Oxford press has more recently produced the Oxford Latin Course, College Edition. My understanding is that it follows the same approach, but is geared to the older audience.  I haven’t had the chance to look at it, but I hope to be able to discuss it at a future date.

Featured image top of page: site of Horace’s Sabine Villa (via Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International).

Other Book Reviews:

Coming Soon: Review of Latin for the New Millennium

Aeterna Latina Book Review Page