A Latin novella for beginning to intermediate learners
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Cloelia is only ten years old when she finds herself at the center of one of Roman history’s great turning points- the fall of the monarchy. Will she choose safety for herself, or risk losing everything she knows to save her city?
Join Cloelia as she navigates the dangers and choices a Roman woman faces in a man’s world. Learn along with her from tales of courage, grief, and honor, including the stories of Camilla, Kallisto, Lucretia, Mucius Scaevola, and Horatius Cocles. This book was written using forms of only 208 Latin words, roughly half of which are drawn from the Dickinson College Commentary Top 200 Latin Words list. It is intended as a transitional reader between an elementary sequence and authentic Latin literature, and with instructional support should be accessible to late elementary or intermediate students of Latin. Paperback edition: $6 Available at Amazon.com. For purchase orders or wholesale information, contact me directly. PDF edition: $0 Download it here. |
Resources
There's a communal folder of resources here. Not too much is there yet, but I encourage you to add anything you make. In the folder you can also find word lists for the whole book, notes on changes from the first to second edition, .doc files for your editing pleasure, and a rather inadequate teacher's guide with discussion questions.
A note on content
Chapters V and VI contain the stories of Lucretia and Kallisto. Accordingly, they include a suicide and two incidents of sexual violence. Consider the age and experiences of your students, and seek administrative and parental approval to read these chapters if necessary. The crisis counselor or guidance department at your school may have advice about how to discuss these difficult but important topics with your students.
Please use these chapters with caution, and give students advance warning of the content. I respectfully ask that you allow students to skip them if they want to without requiring personal explanations. Also, these chapters may be omitted without significantly impacting the narrative arc, although there are references to the vows of Lucretia and Kallisto later on.
Please use these chapters with caution, and give students advance warning of the content. I respectfully ask that you allow students to skip them if they want to without requiring personal explanations. Also, these chapters may be omitted without significantly impacting the narrative arc, although there are references to the vows of Lucretia and Kallisto later on.
FAQs
What level of Latin is this for?
My kids struggled with it but could get the gist pretty well at the end of their first year of CI Latin. The biggest issue was vocabulary, but next time I teach I'll limit it more.
If you're not teaching with CI and your kids rely on parsing to translate, they may find it more difficult. There are subjunctives in here and a lot of indirect statements. There aren't any present participles or gerund(ive)s or deponents, and the participles are all glossed as vocabulary. Try it, see how it goes, and if you have to adapt it, please share the adaptations you use!
Why is it free?
There's not much lower level, interesting, culturally relevant Latin out there, although that's changing. There's also essentially nothing available with primary characters who are women, especially women who do stuff besides get married and think about their husbands and household. I wanted to make there be more, as soon as possible, as easily as possible. The only reason I'm even doing a paperback version is to save you the aggravation of printing it.
I can't afford a class set, so I'm going to copy it. Is that cool?
Yes. The whole book- except the cover, I guess- is available for free. You can print it for your students, have them read it on devices if they're 1:1, or just keep a copy for quick reference at home. You are not violating copyright by doing any of those things. Please read about the license here:
Cloelia, puella Rōmāna by Eleanor Arnold is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
What that means is basically "you can use this for whatever you want so long as you're not making money off of it, keep my name on it, and you need to share any resources or adaptations you make of it." I'm serious about the latter part- if you make a worksheet or embedded readings, share them! I want this to be as easy for teachers to use as possible. None of your work will be included in anything that's for sale.
Will you publish a G-rated version without the Lucretia and Kallisto stuff?
No, I won't. Lucretia's rape and suicide is the major catalyst for the fall of the Roman monarchy. I'm not interested in writing women's trauma out of history; we get more than enough of that. Kallisto's story is included as a parallel to make clear how important vows were in Roman culture. Also, Latin books regularly treat murder and slavery as routine and just! Rape is violence. It is not pornography.
I also think it's incredibly important that we discuss things like rape culture and gendered social norms (pudicitia) with our students. One of the strengths of the Classics is that we can do that without having to bring in current events which could make people squirmy.
If your district balks, print out the free version and cut those chapters. It'll still make sense for the most part. But I don't want money from anyone who fears talking about the uglier side of Greco-Roman history & culture.
Can I get a refund or exchange my copy of v.1.0 for v.1.1?
I can't actually offer refunds or anything, sorry, because these are printed on demand. The differences are not very great; check the changelog in the Teachers' Guide for more information. If you would like to buy a copy of v.1.1 however, use the code M3SG2MX6 to get $0.62 off each copy you buy from the CreateSpace eStore.
My kids struggled with it but could get the gist pretty well at the end of their first year of CI Latin. The biggest issue was vocabulary, but next time I teach I'll limit it more.
If you're not teaching with CI and your kids rely on parsing to translate, they may find it more difficult. There are subjunctives in here and a lot of indirect statements. There aren't any present participles or gerund(ive)s or deponents, and the participles are all glossed as vocabulary. Try it, see how it goes, and if you have to adapt it, please share the adaptations you use!
Why is it free?
There's not much lower level, interesting, culturally relevant Latin out there, although that's changing. There's also essentially nothing available with primary characters who are women, especially women who do stuff besides get married and think about their husbands and household. I wanted to make there be more, as soon as possible, as easily as possible. The only reason I'm even doing a paperback version is to save you the aggravation of printing it.
I can't afford a class set, so I'm going to copy it. Is that cool?
Yes. The whole book- except the cover, I guess- is available for free. You can print it for your students, have them read it on devices if they're 1:1, or just keep a copy for quick reference at home. You are not violating copyright by doing any of those things. Please read about the license here:
Cloelia, puella Rōmāna by Eleanor Arnold is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
What that means is basically "you can use this for whatever you want so long as you're not making money off of it, keep my name on it, and you need to share any resources or adaptations you make of it." I'm serious about the latter part- if you make a worksheet or embedded readings, share them! I want this to be as easy for teachers to use as possible. None of your work will be included in anything that's for sale.
Will you publish a G-rated version without the Lucretia and Kallisto stuff?
No, I won't. Lucretia's rape and suicide is the major catalyst for the fall of the Roman monarchy. I'm not interested in writing women's trauma out of history; we get more than enough of that. Kallisto's story is included as a parallel to make clear how important vows were in Roman culture. Also, Latin books regularly treat murder and slavery as routine and just! Rape is violence. It is not pornography.
I also think it's incredibly important that we discuss things like rape culture and gendered social norms (pudicitia) with our students. One of the strengths of the Classics is that we can do that without having to bring in current events which could make people squirmy.
If your district balks, print out the free version and cut those chapters. It'll still make sense for the most part. But I don't want money from anyone who fears talking about the uglier side of Greco-Roman history & culture.
Can I get a refund or exchange my copy of v.1.0 for v.1.1?
I can't actually offer refunds or anything, sorry, because these are printed on demand. The differences are not very great; check the changelog in the Teachers' Guide for more information. If you would like to buy a copy of v.1.1 however, use the code M3SG2MX6 to get $0.62 off each copy you buy from the CreateSpace eStore.