Latin Lesson: Ovid's Metamorphoses III. 528-733: Pentheus and Dionysus

Teacher's Tips for using the materials:

• The running vocabulary allows students to move through the story as quickly as possible. As readers of Ovid quickly realize, the poet's vocabulary is extensive and can change dramatically from one episode to the next. An asterisk is placed after words that I felt the students should really learn; there is no scientific basis nor a thorough review of these, so teachers can use them as they wish or ignore them (which is what many of the students do).
• The notes are aimed at leading students to look at the Latin and they provide help when I thought it appropriate. For most students this is their first exposure to poetic word order and to figures of speech; they are also learning metrical scansion and first encountering a text without macrons.
• The web format was prepared in Adobe PageMaker 7.0 to be reader-friendly and replicable in booklet form. Each file contains two pages: the commentary with illustrations (from a German website dedicated to Ovid's Metamorphoses) and the facing Latin text with its running vocabulary below. Because of the color pictures the PDF file takes some time to load, but it is well worth the wait.

Introduction, Latin text, notes, running vocabulary

Worksheets to Accompany the Lesson:

These worksheets can provide students with practice if assigned for homework or a quiz and can serve as a review aid when studying for a test. They contain the following abbreviations:

• C+R stands for Case and Reason (e.g. Ablative of Means)
• FS stands for Figure of Speech
• Intros stands for Introduces (a clause)
• TMV stands for Tense, Mood, Voice.