Latin A2 Thread

I think both ways are effective, just personal preference I guess. I can never seem to follow Ovid's thought process (I think this makes me more comfortable about my sanity but not for the exam!) I'm also lacking a lot of knowledge on declensions etc so that makes it quite a challenge unfortunately.

Ughh, I have never felt this unprepared for an exam before :l oh jeez, I just did a past paper comprehension/translation (I know it's elegiacs but hey) and I got 70% for section B and elegiacs are easier than hexameter and FREAKING OUT and goodbye, A*...

True, but you are not used to translating elegiacs, you have become accustomed to hexameter (I am assuming that's what you've learned to translate this year). Just take a deep breath, it will be fine. If it's hard, everyone will find it hard. I am also aiming for an A* and I also find Ovid very difficult, but last year and the year before the raw marks you needed to get 80/100 UMS was 69/100, which would mean that you can drop a few marks and still achieve over 90%. Just don't panic if it looks difficult at first glance, try to be methodical and look at the case and number of every word, then match them up and go from there. Good luck!

The ovid was SO FREAKIN HARD I want to cry :'(

it was so difficult I think the grade boundaries will have to be lowered, there were quite a few words I couldn't think how to translate. do you have any idea what the illum crenentum bit was about? Why did they make it so hard, I'm never going to have a chance of getting a high grade now At least everyone seems to agree that it wasn't easy.

Here's a translation for anyone who wants it (remember our one had omissions so there are a few parts in this translation which weren't on the paper... so don't freak out haha):

Near the middle of the mountainside, was a clearing surrounded with remote woods, free of trees, and visible from all sides. Here as he watched the mysteries, with profane eyes, his mother was the first to see Pentheus, the first roused to run at him madly, the first to wound him, hurling her thyrsus. She shouted ‘O you two, sisters, come! That huge boar, who is straying in our fields, that boar is my sacrifice.’ They all rush on him in one maddened crowd: they converge together pursuing the frightened man, frightened now, speaking words free of violence now, cursing himself now, realising his own offence. Stricken, he still shouts ‘Help me, aunt Autonoë! Let Actaeon’s shade move your spirit!’ She, not remembering Actaeon, tears away the suppliant’s right arm. Ino, in frenzy, rips off the other. Now the unhappy man has no limbs to hold out to his mother, but, showing his wounded trunk shorn of its members, he cries ‘Mother, see!’. Agave howls, and twists her neck about, and thrashes her hair in the air, and tearing off his head, holding it in her bloody hands, shouts ‘Behold, sisters, this act marks our victory!’
The wind does not strip the leaves clinging there, from the high tree touched by an autumn frost, more quickly than this man’s limbs are torn by those terrible hands. Warned by such an example, the Theban women throng to the new religion, burn incense, and worship at the sacred altars.

I thought the two essay questions were good, but I would have preferred a question on the very first bit, Rumour, or Mercury to analyse rather than Anna, I didn't feel that I had as much to say as I could have. The language questions were fine, save for the translation.

I thought that "saucius" was a noun, and wondered why they were talking about a wound! Daft mistake, I don't think I've done very well on this translation at all....really worried now!

Yeah I got really confused about that but then when I got onto the essays I saw it was the bit about Dido being 'saucia'ed so I remembered :/ that's probably about the extent of my success for the translation though

Essay questions were absolutely beautiful, wrote seven pages on the Dido one, it was gorgeous. The translation was hard in places, but I thought the comprehension questions were okay. The scansion though - did anyone else elide the "male" to the "haerente" or whatever it was?

it was the '...que' to the 'male' I thought?

Essay questions were absolutely beautiful, wrote seven pages on the Dido one, it was gorgeous. The translation was hard in places, but I thought the comprehension questions were okay. The scansion though - did anyone else elide the "male" to the "haerente" or whatever it was?

I elided male to harentes - i think you only elide an 'm' when it's at the end of the word and precedes a vowel. Not 100% sure though!

it was the '...que' to the 'male' I thought?

7 pages for one question? Wow... You must write quickly!

I'm 99% sure that you only elide 'm' at the end of a sentence, and was about 50% sure that you elide 'h' at the start of a word, so I plumped for that. Still, one foot can be incorrect and you still get 4/4.


A little too quickly perhaps... I finished the language section in half an hour though, so I had the extra fifteen minutes per essay.