Description

It is sometimes hard to convince students that they will profit from studying a ‘dead’ language. But there is nothing dead about a city and civilization that continues to shape our fundamental conceptions about science, law, government, civic life, not to mention our language. That civilization, the direct inheritor of the wonders of Greece, fashioned its own distinctive vision of what it means to be truly human, and that vision is preserved in the supple expressiveness of its language, which remains to this day the standard by which all other languages are judged. Our program strives to perpetuate this language in its richness and depth in the minds of good students.

Many students come to Rome; most can only gape in speechless awe. Our program, however, seeks to ensure that students think about what they see. It is a college Latin course from which a good student can earn three credits. On the one hand, we make many trips to sites in and around Rome; we visit Cicero’s lovely birthplace, Arpino; near Naples we climb the summit of Vesuvius, and explore Oplontis and Pompeii. To animate our reading of Virgil, we also visit Cumae and the Cave of the Sibyl. We also view some of the wonders of post-imperial Rome, with visits to St. Peter's, and other extraordinary churches. But our students are not mere site-seers; they also read, study, and reflect on the record of Roman greatness, written in their Latin language. Thus they try hard to understand the otherwise mute and crumbling stones, which we see as we walk among the ‘ruins’ of ancient Rome.

Since our program is not merely a tour but a college course, enhanced by travel, we are careful to admit only good students, who seem most willing and best able to profit from it. Please read attentively the ‘Application Requirements’ section at the end of this letter.
In small group ‘tutorials’--that is, by dividing the whole group into smaller groups of five or six apiece--we try to sharpen and deepen each student’s command of the Latin language, both by the variety of the readings and by learning fundamentals well. By ‘fundamentals’ is meant not only grammar but even the humblest forms (inflections, principal parts, pronouns, etc.); for these too are important (though often neglected) and have their own beauty. We try to show students that grammatical understanding is a means to precision of thought, and to teach them how to translate into expressive, living English.

The Latin texts are taken from four or five ‘major’ authors, but also include inscriptions and other small texts, related to the sites we visit. The Latin readings are supplemented with passages read in translation, that focus upon the Roman constitution and the earlier history of Rome, the founding era, and the growing awareness, in the time of Cicero, of the possible loss of that past.

Traveling in Europe can be tedious and stressful unless one knows where to go, how to get there, how to converse, and how to think about what one sees. This kind of travel is the norm, not the exception, at the University of Dallas. The university began its unique Rome program for sophomores in 1970; since then, over 80% of our undergraduates have spent a semester in Rome studying and traveling. The summer Rome program for high school students is a natural extension of this larger program, which has been successful for over forty years. One director of our program, Dr. David Sweet, Dean of the Braniff Graduate School, taught for several years on the Rome campus; the other, Dr. Karl Maurer, chairman of the Classics Department of the University of Dallas, has taught on Latin in Rome since 2001.

Students are taught, and befriended, not only by the two professors but also by a large staff of assistants drawn from present and past UD students, all of whom majored in Classics, know Latin extremely well, and are attentive, kind and good teachers. Most of them are now graduate students in Classics; all of them have a love of Latin.