Classics, Latin, Ancient Greek GCSE

I did Latin and most of my friends did Ancient Greek! Latin is awesome and I loved it. My school did the OCE GCSE, which involved grammar, prose literature, and verse literature. The grammar paper was 50%, and prose and verse were 25% each. For the literature, we studied extracts in the original Latin and then wrote about them in English, looking at content and style. It was probably my easiest GCSE, but I'm Italian and studied Latin for three years beforehand. (I've done a total of five years.)

My friends who did Greek did a sources paper instead of prose literature and they found it significantly harder than Latin.

However, that was probably because my school did Greek as a two year course, so it was the same material in less time.

I didn't do RS, but I did both History and Geography and they were both really interesting and definitely worth it. Geography had so many case studies though - my case study notes reached over 30 pages in length! (WJEC Eduqas)

Good luck!!

Classics is amazing!! @theJoyfulGeek has fine a pretty good job of summarising the GCSE course, so I won’t bother doing that, but I will say it’s really fun. You get to learn a language, study original texts in that language typically (which you don’t do with any MFL GCSE) and learn more about classical culture, history and politics, so they’re really good for getting to do a little bit of everything and give you a really good grounding if you want to take them further

Classical Civilisation was my favourite GCSE for sure! It's mostly a mix of history, literature, politics, philsophy, geography and with little bits of Latin and Ancient Greek thrown in. I ended up taking it at A Level too it was so good! I think Latin and Ancient Greek are also good because they cover more than just language! The languages will be v helpful if you end up doing classics at Uni but that's way far ahead in your future ahaha

Hi
I’m in year 8 and In about 9 months time I’m going to be choosing my GCSEs. I feel like history, geography and RS are talked about commonly as are the three main MFL subjects but I haven’t heard much about classics, Latin or Ancient Greek. Can anyone share their experiences?

What classics exam board are you doing?

OCR I think!

Could you tell me which sections is it like roman city life or myth and religion do you do one of those

Classics are absolutely brilliant!! (and i'm sorry but aren't Classics teachers the weirdest but most brilliant human beings that exist??)

I'm in Y10 right now (year's nearly up though, so Y11 pretty soon... eek!), and I study both Latin and Ancient Greek with the OCR board.

Both exams are made up of

1) Language paper consisting of:
a)Comprehension
b)English to Latin/Greek sentences
c)Translation from Greek/Latin into English

2) Literature paper consisting of:
a) Verse: In Latin it's extracts from Virgil's Aeneid and Greek it's extracts from Homer's Iliad
b) Prose: In Latin it's extracts from Tacitus and Pliny and in Greek it's extracts from Herodotus

I would say that Latin is pretty easy, in fact I may even say it's the easiest subject I take (I did my end of year exam a few weeks ago which was a language past paper and got 98%!! Really happy about that!!!!), though that may also be because I absolutely adore Roman history and politics and I've been studying it for 4 years.

Greek's a little harder, just because I feel like there are way more irregularities, but that may just be because it's an accelerated course as we have to fit the same things that we do in 5 years of Latin into 2 years of Greek (the Greek classes are a lot smaller though- only 8 of us), but because I love it so much I put the work in and managed to do really well in my end of year exam too! (96%- but i think the exam was easier than Latin because we haven't completely finished the language side of the course).

I have also been lucky to have two brilliant teachers for both subjects this year. My Latin teacher is staying on next year but my Greek teacher is leaving and we're getting a different member of the Classics dept next year (though he is also a decent teacher).

I think Classics are so brilliant because of how wide a range of disciplines they cover. You look at a much more analytical and mathematical side in the language section when looking into cases, tenses, voice, mood etc. but then you have the much broader and wider side in literature with text analysis. You also look into philosophy, as well as history and politics on the side.

We're all incredibly lucky to have the option to take Classics so early on (many schools don't have that option)- so, as Horace said, CARPE DIEM!! Take the opportunity you have!!

Also I love translating from original texts in Latin/Greek because you feel like such a scholar.

Maybe do some extra reading on the subjects though so you know whether you like them.
Here are some good books that I've read:

To do with the Iliad/Odyssey:
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
Translations of the epics by E. V. Rieu are the ones I read

To do with the Aeneid:
Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin
The translation of the Aeneid by Robert Fagles is brill

General mythology:
Heroes by Stephen Fry
Mythos by Stephen Fry

Roman history:
Rubicon by Tom Holland

House of Names by Colm Toibin is a retelling of the Oresteia

Without a doubt, Latin was my favourite subject at GCSE. Learning Latin is a cultural experience that no other subject really comes close to. We had so much fun in that class - awesome teacher with awesome classmates. I beseech you to take Latin - you won't regret it.