Assignment for Mon. Nov. 21/Wed. Nov. 23

• Read in Latin Pro Archia 14-18: we’ll finish translating 12-13, and move on from there, hopefully getting through 14-15 on Monday, finishing up 16-18 on Wednesday.

Sight translation

• On Monday I will be giving each of you a (different) sight passage from Cicero to complete at home and turn in at your leisure, but no later than Monday, 11/28. This will be roughly the length of a sight passage you might expect to see on the Latin translation exam (15-20 lines); and while there is no time limit for this exercise, ideally you should be able to complete it in 30 minutes or less (about the amount of time you’d have to devote to it in the real examination...which features 6 passages – 2 of them sight passages – to be completed in 3 hrs.) Please use no dictionaries (vel sim.)

Papers

As a reminder: a description of your papers is now posted here. Remember that I’d like to have some idea of your topic before the break!

Ponderanda

• Be prepared to discuss briefly, with respect to the sections read for this week (but starting with 12), how Cicero manipulates the sentiments of the listeners. What specific remarks can you point to in support of your ‘argument’?
• What are the fundamental precepts of a Ciceronian education? To judge from these sections, that is, what does he think an educated person ought to know?
• Thinking about the ‘legal’ argument of the first part of the speech, what contribution to these sections make to the overall rhetorical strategy of the Pro Archia? Does anything he says here bear any relationship to what he has said in 1-11?
• Roscius makes yet another appearance: why? what does Cicero mean to achieve by bringing him up at this point?