Latin Study Library.

Latin prose reading and grammar foundations · Core noun declensions (1st–5th) and case functions · Verb conjugations across all four conjugations and irregular verbs · Tense, mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive), and voice (active, passive, deponent) · Sentence structure and Latin word order patterns · Introduction to sight-reading strategies for non-syllabus prose · Required vocabulary acquisition (~1,000-word list introduced in 2025-26 CED)

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 6.16 (eyewitness account of the Vesuvius eruption to Tacitus — Pliny the Elder's death) · Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 6.20 (eyewitness account — Pliny the Younger's own survival) · Epistolary Latin prose: conventions of Roman letters (greeting, body, farewell), contrasted with Vergil's poetic syntax · Historical and cultural context: AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius, destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Roman attitudes toward death and duty · Pliny's rhetorical style: use of description (ekphrasis), direct speech, emotional modulation · Subordinate clause structures frequent in Pliny: indirect statement (accusative + infinitive), cum clauses, purpose and result clauses · Translation of epistolary Latin: identifying head verbs of embedded indirect statements, rendering present/perfect/future infinitives with correct temporal relationship

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 7.27 (the haunted house letter — ghost story, philosophical skepticism) · Pliny, Epistulae 10.33–40 and 10.90 (correspondence with Emperor Trajan on administrative questions including Christians — Ep. 10.96–97 context) · Pliny, Epistulae 1.6, 2.6, 6.4, 6.7, 7.5, 7.24, 9.6, 10.5–7 (personal and social letters: hunting, dinner parties, family, freedmen, requests) · Pliny's tone modulation: the intimate personal letter versus the formal imperial correspondence — lexical and syntactic markers of each register · Roman social structures: patron–client relationships, the role of the emperor as correspondent and judge, epistolary conventions of petition and response · Indirect question clauses (num, -ne, utrum…an, quis, quid, quando) with subjunctive — frequent in Pliny's deliberative letters · Non-syllabus sight-reading skill-building with parallel prose texts chosen by the teacher

Vergil, Aeneid 1.1–33 (proem: invocation of the Muse, statement of themes — pietas, fate, Juno's anger) · Vergil, Aeneid 1.418–440 and 1.494–578 (Aeneas observes the Carthaginian murals; Dido and the Trojans) · Vergil, Aeneid 2.40–56 (Laocoon warns the Trojans about the horse) · Vergil, Aeneid 2.201–249 (death of Laocoon and his sons; Trojans drag the horse inside) · Vergil, Aeneid 2.268–297 (the ghost of Hector appears to Aeneas) · Vergil, Aeneid 2.559–620 (Aeneas sees Priam's death; prepares to flee) · Dactylic hexameter: scansion (long/short syllables, spondees vs. dactyls), elision, caesura, diaeresis · Poetic diction and word order: hyperbaton, synchysis (interlocked word order), tmesis, enjambment · Rhetorical and literary devices: chiasmus, anaphora, alliteration, assonance, litotes, simile · Vergil's themes: pietas (duty to gods, family, Rome), fatum (fate), furor (destructive passion) vs. pietas · Narrative craft: the embedded narrator (Aeneas recounting Troy's fall to Dido in Books 1–2)

Vergil, Aeneid 4.160–218 (Dido and Aeneas in the cave; Fama spreads the rumor of their union) · Vergil, Aeneid 4.259–361 (Mercury appears to Aeneas; Aeneas prepares to leave; Dido confronts him) · Vergil, Aeneid 4.659–705 (Dido's suicide; Anna's grief; Juno sends Iris to release Dido's soul) · Vergil, Aeneid 6.295–332 (the entrance to the Underworld; Charon and the unburied dead) · Vergil, Aeneid 6.384–425 (Aeneas crosses the Styx; encounters Palinurus) · Vergil, Aeneid 6.450–476 (Aeneas meets Dido's shade in the Fields of Mourning) · Vergil, Aeneid 6.847–899 (Anchises' prophecy — Rome's mission; 'tu regere imperio populos' passage) · Vergil, Aeneid Books 7, 11, 12 (selected passages — Italic peoples, Camilla, Turnus: added in 2025-26 redesign) · The Underworld as narrative and ideological space: Elysium, Tartarus, the souls awaiting rebirth, Anchises' revelation of Roman destiny · Dido as tragic figure: the conflict of amor and pietas, Vergil's use of simile and apostrophe in the death scene · Furor vs. pietas in the Italian War (Books 7–12): Turnus, Camilla, Juno's continued opposition · Vergil's use of simile (especially epic simile), apostrophe, and direct address to shape reader sympathy · Syntax of complex periods: nested relative clauses, ablative absolutes stacked within long verse paragraphs

Course Project: four non-syllabus passages selected by College Board (diverse authors and periods — not publicly announced in advance; assigned to students during the course year) · Two in-class checkpoint tasks completed during the course and submitted via AP Digital Portfolio — results contribute approximately 2% of the FRQ section score · FRQ 4 (exam): prose passage analysis essay — brief summary followed by a 7–8 sentence analytical argument using Latin evidence from the Course Project prose passage · FRQ 5 (exam): poetry passage analysis essay — brief summary followed by a 7–8 sentence analytical argument using Latin evidence from the Course Project poetry passage · Analytical essay writing in AP Latin: constructing a claim, integrating Latin citations with English translation/paraphrase, explaining the effect of stylistic devices in support of a thesis (not mere cataloguing) · Sight-reading poetry: reading non-syllabus Latin verse with attention to meter, poetic diction, and meaning under timed conditions · Teacher's choice Latin poetry: non-syllabus verse selected by the teacher to build poetic reading fluency and broaden authors encountered beyond Vergil