LATIN READER: CONSISTING OF SELECTIONS FROM PHÆDRUS, CÆSAR, CURTIUS, NEPOS, SALLUST, OVID, PLINY, AND TACITUS. With Copious Notes and Vocabulary. PREPARED BY WILLIAM F. ALLEN, A.M., PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND HISTORY IN THE AND JOSEPH H. ALLEN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS, BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY EDWIN GINN. CHICAGO: FRED B. GINN. 1869. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by J. H. AND W. F. ALLEN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. PREFACE. OUR first object in the preparation of this Reader, has been to furnish for beginners a sufficient amount of the easiest and most interesting reading-matter to be found in purely classical writers. We have considered that, after a few month's careful training in the elements of the tongue, for which the "Lessons," published last winter, were specially designed, a good deal of time may best be devoted to mere translation, with the object of practising what has been already learned, rather than of acquiring a greater mass of purely theoretical knowledge; giving the most careful attention to accuracy, but leaving the nicer points of grammar for later study, except an occasional parsing lesson be had, so as to keep the learner in practice and the memory fresh. For the sake, however, of teachers who may prefer to use this as a drill-book, and of classes that may have no more extended course of Latin study in view, we have given copious references to the Grammar, covering nearly every point after the paradigms of verbs; in general, referring to each principle of syntax once, and only once, or, if a second time, then simply as the best way of giving help in a difficult passage. In order to facilitate, in some degree, the familiar. acquisition of so difficult a language as Latin, we have employed in this book those helps to the eye of accents and" digraphs," which the custom of three centuries has sanctioned, and which even the practised reader will not always disdain. In the Grammar and Lessons, which are supposed to be studied under the constant direction of the teacher, we preferred to dispense with these aids, that so the pupil, at the cost of a little more pains at starting, might be prepared to take up whatever edition of the classics might come to his hand; for the special uses of this volume, we think they will be found serviceable. In orthography, we have on principle admitted considerable freedom as to points which may be regarded as still unsettled; in general keeping to the best recent authorities, but aiming to habituate the eye of the student to those varieties of spelling he is likely to meet in a variety of authors and editions. For the sake of those schools and classes to which the Reader comprises, practically, all the Latin ever expected to be learned, we have desired that this volume might enlarge and not belittle the notion of what a classic language and literature mean. The best justification of classical study, after all, is not its value as a mere means of mental discipline, for which modern and scientific methods are to so large an extent coming to take its place; but that it combines that discipline with some guiding of the mind towards. the higher interpretation of history, and the deeper lessons of human life. With this view, every firstclass name in Roman literature, excepting Livy and Horace, is represented in this collection; and special care has been taken, both in text and notes, to make |