A First Latin Reader

by Herbert Chester Nutting (Creator)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

270 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2015

About the author

Nutting was perhaps the last major writer on Latin grammar of our time. In addition to his many articles and numerous notes on grammatical usage, he wrote a number of teaching texts, yet was a boring and repetitive teacher, especially in his elementary classes. His student Joseph Fontenrose gives an account: "The Latin text was never read; there was no discussion of a play or poem or essay nor of the author's literary art. The routine was invariable: Nutting called on a student to translate; the student translated a few lines or sentences, and then at a convenient stop Nutting would say, 'Sufficient for the translation,' make any necessary corrections, and occasionally point out some syntactical feature. Then he called on the next person to translate, and the cycle was repeated, and so on through the hour." He also wrote short Latin plays modeled on Plautus, which he would assign his students as an introduction to the author, before reading his edition of the Trinummus. He worked hard in the losing battle to keep Latin in California high schools and, though not warm, was kindly, helpful, calm, and proper.

Reviews

[Gregorius Minor · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the worst book in Latin I've ever read, I thought it would be relatively fun, considering its about history and I generally like history, but it definitely was not. For one it was extremely boring, I think more than halve of the book was about random battles or raids in North America where women and children were killed by native Americans, this gets boring extremely quick, it isn't interesting any more the second time around, and it certainly isn't interesting the 30th time around. It is also racist, or at least very biased against native Americans. It is quite tragic that the author who wrote 'Ad Alpes', which is charming, also wrote this book. The only things which might make it worth your time are that it is relatively long as far as Latin readers are concerned (it is about 13000 words), which makes it obviously give more input, and the vocabulary isn't very big, which will make you understand the (very uninteresting) stories easier.