Ovid Unseens provides a bank of 80 practice passages of Latin verse, half elegiac and half hexameter. Taken from across Ovid's works, including the Metamorphoses, Fasti, Heroides, Amores and Tristia, the passages help build students' knowledge and confidence in a notoriously difficult element of Latin language learning. Every passage begins with an introduction, outlining the basic story and theme of the passage, followed by a 'lead-in' sentence, paraphrasing the few lines before the passage begins. The first set of passages are translation exercises of 12-16 lines, each accompanied by a Discendum box which highlights a key feature of poetic Latin, equipping students further with the skills to tackle ever more difficult verse passages at first sight. These are followed by longer passages with scansion exercises and questions on comprehension and stylistic analysis, replicating unseen verse exam questions in full. The comprehensive introduction provides an overview of Ovid's life and work, an account of some of the stylistic features of his poetry, and practical help in the form of tips on how to approach the more challenging lines of Latin verse and produce a fluent translation. A step-by-step guide to scansion, with practice exercises and answers, covers the essential principles for scanning lines of Latin verse, from the basics of understanding syllables, feet and types of metres, to coping with elision and caesurae. A guideline verse vocabulary list is provided which covers words particularly common in Ovid's works. Broken down into small 'checklists', each corresponding to a group of four passages, the vocabulary is learnt cumulatively and as it is encountered.

This volume is designed to accompany the OCR A-Level specification in Latin (first teaching September 2016), with practice unseen passages from Livy, the set prose for Paper 1, together with passages from a selection of other writers to support Paper 2, for which no author is set. A bank of 80 passages aims to take Sixth Form students from the level of heavily adapted post-GCSE ('AS'-equivalent) passages and develop their knowledge and skills to reach A-Level standard. But this is not just a book of unseen passages: there is a chronological progression through the unseens in order to give the reader a sense of the narrative of Roman history, exploring key events through the words of original texts. Every passage begins with an introduction, outlining the basic content of the passage, followed by a 'lead-in' sentence, paraphrasing the few lines before the passage begins. Part 1 passages are straight translation exercises on the model of the A-Level Paper 1. They also feature, however, a 'Discendum' box, highlighting a facet of Latin prose with which students may not be familiar, or extension questions on grammar and style. Part 2 passages are accompanied by questions on comprehension, translation and grammar, replicating the demands of Paper 2 in full. An extensive word list is provided in the form of checklists which build the reader's knowledge of the most commonly occurring words and phrases in Latin prose. The passages are punctuated with discussions of Roman history during the periods covered in the passages, and a comprehensive introduction includes portraits of the authors featured in the book, as well as grammatical reminders to help readers deal with both the trickier elements of unseen prose and with A-Level grammatical analysis questions.

This reader of Virgil's text features passages from the first half of the Aeneid and is designed to help students understand and appreciate Virgil's poem, as well as improve their Latin reading skills. Each Latin passage is accompanied by running vocabulary, on-page commentary notes and targeted questions. The book can be used as a source of one-off unseen passages or as a reader for students working through individual books or the whole poem. The commentary notes explain references to characters, places and events, provide linguistic and grammatical help on more challenging Latin phrases, and point out stylistic features. The questions test students' comprehension of the characters and storyline, and give them practice in handling literary terms. The passages are linked by summaries of the continuing plot, so students can grasp the progression of the poem as a whole. An in-depth introduction sets the story of the Aeneid in its mythological, literary and historical contexts; a glossary of literary devices and sections on style and metre are included. At the end of the book is a complete alphabetical vocabulary list.

This reader of Virgil's text features passages from the second half of the Aeneid and is designed to help students understand and appreciate Virgil's poem, as well as improve their Latin reading skills. Each Latin passage is accompanied by running vocabulary, on-page commentary notes and targeted questions. The book can be used as a source of one-off unseen passages or as a reader for students working through individual books or the whole poem. The commentary notes explain references to characters, places and events, provide linguistic and grammatical help on more challenging Latin phrases, and point out stylistic features. The questions test students' comprehension of the characters and storyline, and give them practice in handling literary terms. The passages are linked by summaries of the continuing plot, so students can grasp the progression of the poem as a whole. An introduction sets the story of the Aeneid in its mythological, literary and historical context and includes a glossary of literary devices and essays explaining the principles of Virgil's word order and metre. At the end of the book is a complete alphabetical vocabulary list.

This book helps students to write Latin using increasingly complex forms of expression. Part 1 gives guidance and practice exercises for the new sentences required at GCSE, while Parts 2 and 3 contain a series of chapters of grammatical introduction and exercises for translation into Latin leading up to A Level and Pre-U. Part 4 takes students into more advanced areas of composition. Continuous passages are included from an early stage alongside stand-alone sentences. Leigh gives clear guidance on the characteristic features of Latin prose, such as word order and subordination, as well as more advanced grammatical complexities. At the back of the book, lists of vocabulary and accidence provide reference and revision tools for students at all levels. Working through the book the rewards of learning to write Latin are clear: not merely a challenge to be overcome, prose composition gives a heightened appreciation of how Latin authors used the language to express themselves in their own particular styles.

This collection of Latin unseen passages forms a companion volume to Latin Momentum Tests for GCSE, and is intended to be used similarly by students preparing for examinations at AS, A2 and AEA levels. The largest section is set at AS level and comprises prose passages forming a coherent story based on original sources but simplified to maintain a level of difficulty appropriate for this level. The text assumes the student will have a working knowledge of a typical vocabulary list of about 1000 words. Most of the rest of the passages are, with rare exceptions, un-adapted Latin, both prose and verse, taken from the authors used in the examinations. Difficult or rare words are glossed. The last few passages are of a standard of difficulty appropriate to AEA level. All passages are of a similar length and format to those used in the examinations. One sample mark scheme has been included to give teachers and students some insight into how these unseens are marked in the examinations.

In AD 8 Ovid's brilliant career was abruptly ruined when the Emperor Augustus banished him, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, to Tomis (Constanta) on the Black Sea. The five books of Tristia (Sorrows) express his reaction to this savage and, as he clearly regarded it, unjust sentence. Though their ostensible theme is the misery and loneliness of exile, their real message, if they are read with the care they deserve, is one of affirmation. With a wit and irony that borders on defiance, Ovid repeatedly asserts the injustice of his sentence and of the preeminence of the eternal values of poetry over the ephemeral dictates of an earthly power. In technical skill and inventiveness these elegies rank with the Art of Love or the Fasti. For this new translation Alan Melville has reproduced, in rhyming stanzas, the virtuosity, wit, and elegance of the original.