A Level Latin verse help

•

Brush up on your noun and adjective charts. You're totally right that verse word order can be unpredictable, so knowing the endings inside out is a big help. Remember that noun and adjective endings don't have to match in order to agree in case, number, and gender.

•

For elegy, consider each couplet a complete thought. If you're finding the first verse difficult, try the second one instead, to build more context.

•

Look up the Wikipedia entries on Ovid's major works like "Metamorphoses", "Heroides", "Amores", "Fasti", etc (there are about ten in total). This will help you to become familiar with the themes and genres of each of his texts, which in turn can help with translation. E.g., the "Ars Amatoria" is a mock didactic poem, that is, a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual on romance. So if you notice that the passage on the exam is drawn from this text, you might expect to see grammatical forms associated with instruction/commands as the poet addresses his "pupils", e.g. 2nd person singulars and plurals, imperatives, jussive subjunctives, etc. Just anticipating the likelihood of these forms gives you an edge in translation.

•

Unlike at GCSE and AS Level, there's no set vocab list for the A Level, so build a habit of learning new vocab frequently. Try to learn ALL the common definitions of a given Latin word, because often one fits better than another in the context of a poem. Make sure you're at least familiar with the top 300 Verse Unseen words in Taylor's "Latin Beyond GCSE". There are additional Ovid lists available on Quizlet, especially from Matthew Owen's textbook. Try searching for terms like "Owen Latin verse vocab".

•

Keep a running list of Ovid's favourite idioms and grammatical constructions as you encounter them, e.g. split passive forms where the perfect passive participle is far away from its accompanying form of "esse" and sometimes in reverse order (e.g. "est . . . puella portata" instead of "puella portata est").

•

Be aware of alternative forms of verb endings, which are more common in verse than prose because of the metrical constraints. E.g. "-ere" ("portavere") instead of "-erunt" ("portaverunt") for the 3rd person plural perfect; "-ere" ("amabere") instead of "-eris" for ("amaberis") for 2nd person singular passive forms.

•

Notice and keep track of examples of Ovid's characteristic sense of humour as you read, as similar types of stylistic witticisms tend to come up frequently. He loves juxtapositions and zeugma, where a concrete noun is paired with an abstract one for humorous effect, e.g. "she went off in a huff and an Uber" (= not actually a quote from Ovid)

•

Above all: just keep swimming! Latin is a difficult language, but remember, you have another full year of translation practice to hone your skills. The more translations you do - keeping a list of unfamiliar vocab and grammatical missteps each time - the more comfortable you'll become.