ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON FIRST PART OF PREPARATORY LATIN COURSE IN ENGLISH—FROM COMMENCEMENT OF BOOK TO PAGE 167.

By A. M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.

1. Q. What is the general purpose of the series of four books, of which the present is the second in order of preparation and publication? A. To conduct the readers by means of the English tongue alone, through substantially the same course of discipline in Greek and Latin Literature as is accomplished by students who are graduates from our American colleges.

2. Q. What does this second volume of the series seek to do? A. To go over the ground in Latin literature usually traversed by the student in course of preparing himself to be a college matriculate.

3. Q. What three elements may be said to be in any body of literature? A. A substance, a spirit, and a form, somewhat separate one from another.

4. Q. Of these three elements, what two is it the hope of the author to communicate to his readers? A. The spirit as well as the substance, so far as they are separable one from another.

5. Q. By whom was the literature called Latin produced? A. By a people called Roman, chiefly in a city called Rome.

6. Q. Over what does the name Roman lord it exclusively? A. Over everything pertaining to Rome, except her language and her literature.

7. Q. What may this circumstance be taken to indicate in reference to Rome? A. What is indeed the fact, that literature was for her a subordinate interest.

8. Q. When was the city of Rome founded? A. An unreckoned time before the history of the city began.

9. Q. According to the fable followed by Virgil, by whom was Rome founded? A. By Æneas, escaping with a trusty few from the flames of Troy.

10. Q. According to a second legend, lapping on and piecing out the first, who was the founder of Rome? A. Romulus, whose father was Mars, the Roman god of war.

11. Q. What legendary line of rulers succeeded Romulus? A. A line of legendary kings, followed by a Republic.

12. Q. What may be assumed as the starting-point of Roman history, worthy to be so called? A. The war with Pyrrhus, which broke out two hundred and eighty-one years before Christ.

13. Q. After Rome had absorbed Italy into her empire, with what African city was a prolonged war waged? A. With Carthage.

14. Q. What three names were prominent on the Carthaginian side during this war? A. Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal.

15. Q. Give three prominent names on the Roman side? A. Regulus, Fabius and Scipio.

16. Q. After the subjugation of Carthage, what is said of the dominions of Rome? A. Her dominions were rapidly extended in every direction until they embraced almost literally the whole of the then known world.

17. Q. When was the Augustan age of Latin literature? A. During the reign of Augustus CÆsar.

18. Q. What is said on the whole of the fame of ancient Rome? A. It is the most famous city of the world.

19. Q. What is stated in regard to the natural advantages of Rome? A. Its remove from the coast secured it, in its feeble beginning, against pirates, while the navigable stream of the Tiber made it virtually a seaboard town.

20. Q. What was the height of the buildings that covered much of the extent of ground within the limits of the city of ancient Rome? A. Six and eight stories in height.

21. Q. At what has the population of Rome at its maximum been estimated? A. From two to six million souls.

22. Q. For what was a large area reserved, inclosed between the Quirinal hill and the river? A. Exclusively to public buildings, and here there was an almost unparalleled accumulation of costly, solid, and magnificent architecture.

23. Q. What is now one of the chief spectacles in modern Rome to excite the wonder and awe of the tourist? A. The Coliseum, a roofless amphitheater for gladiatorial exhibitions, built of stone, and capable of seating more than eighty thousand spectators.

24. Q. From what people were the Greeks and Romans descended? A. The Aryan or Indo-European, a people having its original home in Central Asia.

25. Q. How did the Romans conquer and govern the world? A. By being conquerors and governors.

26. Q. For what did the Romans all live? A. For the state.

27. Q. What was the one business of the state? A. Conquest, in a two-fold sense: first, subjugation by arms; second, consequent upon subjugation, rule by law.

28. Q. What is said of the cultivation of letters by Rome? A. Letters she almost wholly neglected until her conquest of the world was complete.

29. Q. In what way did the Romans make peace with other nations? A. They never made peace but as conquerors.

30. Q. What course did the Romans take in regard to whatever superior features they found in the military scheme of other nations? A. They did not hesitate to transfer and adopt it into their own.

31. Q. What nations in turn enjoyed the honor of furnishing to the Romans the model for their sword? A. The Spaniards and the Gauls.

32. Q. From whom did Rome learn how to order her encampment? A. From Pyrrhus.

33. Q. From what people did Rome learn to build ships? A. From the Carthaginians.

34. Q. As soon as Rome had conquered a people what did she make that people? A. Her ally.

35. Q. What phrase has Rome made a proverb to all time of false dealing between nations? A. “Punic faith.”

36. Q. At whose expense did Rome do her conquering and her governing? A. At the expense of the conquered and the governed.

37. Q. What effect did war have upon the wealth of Rome? A. She never herself became poorer, but always richer, by war.

38. Q. What was all that enormous accumulation of public and private resources which made Rome rich and great? A. It was pure plunder.

39. Q. What is a momentous fact in regard to the population of the Roman Empire? A. That in the end over one-half the population were slaves.

40. Q. Notwithstanding the injustice of Rome, how did she govern as compared with other ancient nations? A. She governed more beneficently than any other ancient nation.

41. Q. What blessing did she extend to all the countries she conquered? A. The blessing of stable government, of an administration of law at least comparatively just and wise.

42. Q. What effect did Rome have upon the civilization of those she subjugated? A. After her fashion she civilized where she had subjugated.

43. Q. What did Rome do that is to be accounted an immeasurable blessing to mankind? A. She made the world politically one, for the unhindered universal spread of Christianity.

44. Q. Who are some of the historians mentioned as having written works on the history of Rome, that are commended to the reader? A. Creighton, Leighton, Liddell, Mommsen, Merivale, Arnold and Gibbon.

45. Q. What work on the literature of Rome is spoken of as perhaps the best manual of Latin letters? A. Cruttwell’s “History of Roman Literature.”

46. Q. During what period was Roman literature produced, that is usually termed classic? A. From about 80 B. C. to A. D. 108, covering a space of 188 years.

47. Q. What writer begins, and what one ends this period? A. Cicero begins and Tacitus ends it.

48. Q. Who may be regarded as the beginner of Latin literature? A. Livius Andronicus, a writer of tragedy about twenty-four years before Christ.

49. Q. Who wrote a sort of epic on the first Punic war, esteemed by scholars one of the chief lost things in Roman literature? A. NÆvius.

50. Q. What is the next great name in Latin literature, and what is said of his influence and example? A. Ennius, and his influence and example decisively fixed the form of the Latin poetry.

51. Q. Who were two great Roman writers of comedy? A. Plautus and Terence.

52. Q. What form of composition in verse may be said to be original with Rome? A. The satire.

53. Q. What seems to be a general fact in literary history, in regard to the first development of a national literature? A. That verse precedes prose.

54. Q. Who was the creator of the classic Roman satire? A. Lucilius.

55. Q. Who were the great Roman masters of satire? A. Horace and Juvenal.

56. Q. What English writers have written brilliant imitative satires with the essential spirit of Horace and Juvenal? A. Dryden, Pope and Johnson.

57. Q. To whom may be attributed the merit of being the founder or former of Latin prose? A. Cato, the Censor.

58. Q. Who among the Romans, with Demosthenes among Greeks, reigns alone as one of the two undisputedly greatest masters of human speech that have ever appeared on the planet? A. Cicero.

59. Q. Who among Romans were eminent writers of history for Rome? A. Cato, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus.

60. Q. In what age, and by whom, was the great epic of Rome produced? A. The Æneid, in the age of Augustus, by Virgil.

61. Q. Who by eminence was the Roman poet of society and manners? A. Horace.

62. Q. What is any Latin Reader, like any Greek, pretty sure to contain? A. Its share of fables, of anecdotes, of historical fragments, of mythology, and of biography.

63. Q. What revived plan of making up Latin Readers is among the late changes in fashion introduced by classical teachers? A. Of making up Latin Readers that consist exclusively of selections credited to standard Latin authors.

64. Q. What two writers sometimes find a place in these Latin Readers, that are sometimes wholly omitted in the course of Latin literature accomplished by the college graduate? A. Sallust and Ovid.

65. Q. What three historical works did Sallust write? A. The “Conspiracy of Catiline,” the “Jugurthine War,” and a “History of Rome from the death of Sulla to the Mithridatic War.”

66. Q. In the midst of what was the residence Sallust occupied in Rome? A. In the midst of grounds laid out and beautified by him with the most lavish magnificence.

67. Q. What did these grounds subsequently become, and what name do they still bear? A. They subsequently became the chosen resort of the Roman emperors, and they still bear the name of the Gardens of Sallust.

68. Q. With what is Sallust’s “Jugurthine War” commenced? A. With a sort of moral essay, or homily, not having the least particular relations to the subject about to be treated.

69. Q. What is the subject of the “Jugurthine War”? A. The war which the Roman people carried on with Jugurtha, king of the Numidians.

70. Q. What are the names of three Romans who took prominent part in the Jugurthine war? A. Metellus, Marius and Sulla.

71. Q. With what did the war end? A. With the capture of Jugurtha by the Romans through the treachery of Bocchus, his father-in-law.

72. Q. Where and when was Ovid born? A. In northern Italy, in 43 B. C.

73. Q. With what did the youth of Ovid coincide? A. Either with the full maturity, or with the declining age, of the great Augustan writers, Virgil, Livy, Horace and Sallust.

74. Q. By whom was Ovid banished from Rome? A. By Augustus.

75. Q. What may be considered as the chief work of Ovid? A. His “Metamorphoses.”

76. Q. What does this title literally mean? A. Changes of form.

77. Q. What is Ovid’s idea in the poem? A. To tell in his own way such legends of the teeming Greek mythology as deal with the transformations of men and women into animals, plants, or inanimate things.

78. Q. What has this poem been to subsequent poets? A. A great treasury of material.

79. Q. What episode, taken from the second book of “Metamorphoses,” is given by our author? A. PhÆton driving the chariot of the sun.

80. Q. In what is the legend of PhÆton conceived by many to have had its origin? A. In some meteorological fact—an extraordinary solar heat perhaps, producing drought and conflagration.

81. Q. Of what two other stories from the “Metamorphoses” does our author present a translation? A. The story of Daphne’s transformation into a laurel, and the tragic story of Niobe.

82. Q. What American writer has quite extensively treated Ovidian topics in a way that is at once instructive and delightful? A. Hawthorne.

83. Q. Ovid’s verse in the “Metamorphoses” is the same as what? A. As that of Virgil and Homer, namely, the dactylic hexameter.

84. Q. What has the general agreement of thoughtful minds tended to affirm in regard to Julius CÆsar? A. The sentence of Brutus, as given by Shakspere, that he was “the foremost man of all this world.”

85. Q. What is the principal literary work of CÆsar that remains to us? A. His “Commentaries,” which is an account he wrote of his campaigns in Gaul.

86. Q. With the exception of a few instances, in what person does CÆsar write? A. In the third person.

87. Q. From whom did the ancient patrician family of CÆsar claim derivation? A. From Iulus, son of Trojan Æneas.

88. Q. The word CÆsar was made by Caius Julius a name so illustrious that it came afterward to be adopted by whom? A. By his successors in power at Rome, and finally thence to be transferred to the emperors of Germany, and to the autocrats of Russia, called respectively Kaiser and Czar.

89. Q. With whom was CÆsar associated in the first triumvirate? A. Pompey and Crassus.

90. Q. Out of the eight books comprised in CÆsar’s “Gallic Commentaries,” how many is the preparatory student usually required to read? A. Only four.

91. Q. With what two series of military operations on CÆsar’s part does the first book principally occupy itself? A. One directed against the Helvetians, and one against a body of Germans who had invaded Gaul.

92. Q. Of what is CÆsar’s tenth legion, that became famous in history, still a proverb? A. For loyalty, valor and effectiveness.

93. Q. In the second book CÆsar gives the history of his campaign against whom? A. The Belgians, made up of different tribes.

94. Q. Who were esteemed the most fierce and warlike of all the Belgian nations? A. The Nervians.

95. Q. After CÆsar’s successful campaign against the Belgian tribes, what was decreed for his victories? A. A thanksgiving of fifteen days, an unprecedented honor.

96. Q. In the third book an account is given of a naval warfare against whom? A. The Veneti.

97. Q. What is the first thing of commanding interest in the fourth book of CÆsar’s “Commentaries?” A. The case of alleged perfidy, with enormous undoubted cruelty, practiced by CÆsar against his German enemies.

98. Q. What famous feat on the part of CÆsar is narrated in the fourth book? A. That of throwing a bridge across the river Rhine.

99. Q. What were the dimensions of this bridge? A. It was fourteen hundred feet long, furnishing a solid roadway thirty or forty feet wide.

100. Q. With the relation of what enterprise does the fourth book close? A. The invasion by CÆsar of Great Britain.