(Grades 11-12; Prerequisite: Latin III; 4 periods/week; full year; 1 credit; Honors credit available for two projects, by department approval)
Students in this course once again sample both poetry and prose of the highest order from two near contemporaries living through the death-throes of the Roman Republic. The language of love and hatred, greeting and dismissal, invective and hymn -- it is all in Catullus' lyric poetry. Yet he was one of the few Romans, it seems, who did not try to curry favor with Gaius Julius Caesar, whose account of his military campaigns in France (de Bello Gallico) records both decisive victories and crushing defeats in lucid prose. Since they read the selections from Caesar's writing which have been set for the Advanced Placement exam (which also includes selections from Vergil's Aeneid), those students enrolled in this class are effectively preparing to write that exam in their senior year, if they so choose.

Texts:    Love and Betrayal: A Catullus Reader, eds. Arnold, Aronson and Lawal, Prentice Hall.
A Call to Conquest: Readings from Caesar' Gallic Wars, ed. Perry, Pearson.