--Instructor Information

--Meeting Place and Time

--Important Electronic Addresses

--Course Description

--Required Textbooks

--Assignments and Grading

--Important Course Policies

Instructor: William Hutton

Office: Morton 326

Phone: 221-2993

Office hours: MWF 11-12 a.m. and by appointment.

Time and place of Class: MWF 2-2:50, Morton 343

Class e-mail list: WMLATIN-L@listserv.cc.wm.edu

Dale Grote's Study Guide to Wheelock's Latin:

After a thorough review of all the basic Latin you’ve forgotten over the summer, we will begin reading unadulterated selections of Latin prose. We will focus on two related genres of literature in which the Romans made positive advances over their Greek predecessors: Biography and the (autobiographical) Literary Epistle. The major texts read will be Cornelius Nepos’ biography of the Greek statesman and playboy Alcibiades, Suetonius’ biography of the ever-popular emperor Caligula, and selected Letters by Pliny the Younger. We will build your vocabulary, exercise your grasp of grammar and increase the speed and confidence with which you read Latin. At the same time we will also encounter elements of Roman history and culture of both the Republic and the Empire and discuss issues that are of importance in understanding biographical literature from any time and place.

F.M. Wheelock, Wheelock's Latin, Revised by R.A. LaFleur, ed. FIFTH EDITION, HarperCollins, 1995..

B. Roebuck, ed., Cornelius Nepos, Three Lives. Bolchazy-Carducci, 1958.

B. Vine, ed. Suetonius: The Life of Caligula. CANE, 1991.

Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars. Robert Graves, tr. Penguin, 1957.

A. Sherwin-White, ed. Fifty Letters of Pliny. Oxford UP, 1969.

Your grade will be calculated as follows:

Class participation: 15%

Short report 5%

Quizzes 10%

Review exam: 15%

Midterm exam: 25%

Final exam: 35%

NOTE: Your grade will be calculated on a strictly numerical basis and converted to letter grades on the following scale: 93-100 = A; 89-92 = A-; 85-88=B+; 81-84 = B; 77-80 = B-; 74-76 = C+; 71-73 = C; 68-70 = C-; 64-67 = D+; 60-63 = D; 55-59= D-; Below 55 = F.

Class participation: Includes attendance, preparation, promptness, minor assignments and in-class exercises. Your grade for class participation will be adversely affected by the following (this is not an exhaustive list): Missing class without a very good reason (see important note on attendance below), frequent tardiness, obvious lack of preparation not participating in discussions, sleeping in class (particularly if you snore), eating noisy food in class, being inconsiderate or disrespectful to other members..

Short Report: Ideally this will be a brief (absolutely no more than 5 minutes!!) oral report on a topic pertinent to the class, and agreed upon with me in advance. A list of suggested topics will be distributed early in the semster. Since time is limited, the times in which talks will be scheduled will be strictly controlled. If it is impossible to schedule your oral report at an appropriate time, the assignment will transform into an brief research paper (with footnotes, sources and all that nasty stuff), so get your talk scheduled early!!

Quizzes: Five quizzes, ten to fifteen minutes duration, are scheduled in the course of the semester. Any unscheduled (aka "pop") quizzes given will be figured into you "class participation" grade, rather than into your quiz grade.

Review Exam: An exam testing grammar, vocabulary and reading ability, scheduled after the review of Wheelock.

Midterm Exam and Final Exam: May include grammar and vocabulary exercises and questions about the content of the Latin texts you have read, but they will mainly focus on translation from the texts covered in class and from unseen texts by the same author or by another author whose style or subject matter is similar.

No late assignments will be accepted. No make-ups will be given for the quizzes under any circumstances (note that you can drop two of the quiz scores). Make-ups for the review and midterm exams will be granted only under dire and verifiable circumstances. Special arrangements for the final exam, if necessary, will have to be arranged through the College. I have no authority to make such arrangements.

TENTATIVE CLASS SCHEDULE: There is some wiggle room here, but the following things will remain constant: 1) Quizzes WILL occur as scheduled below; 2) The REVIEW EXAM and MIDTERM EXAM will occur as scheduled below; 3) The FINAL EXAM will occur as scheduled by the College.