Section I: Multiple Choice - Reading Latin Poetry and Prose
What the section tests
The multiple-choice section asks you to read authentic Latin - usually a passage of Vergil's Aeneid and a passage of Caesar's Gallic War - and answer questions about comprehension, translation, scansion, figures of speech, and literary style. You are not asked to memorize the whole text; you are asked to demonstrate that you can parse, construe, and interpret a passage you may not have seen.
Core skills to drill
- Morphology and syntax: identify case, number, gender, tense, mood, and voice quickly, then explain why that form is used (ablative absolute, indirect statement, purpose clause, result clause, cum-clauses).
- Vocabulary in context: know high-frequency words and the several senses each can carry; the question often hinges on the sense that fits the passage.
- Scansion: hexameter for Vergil, and the prose rhythm questions may ask about clause structure rather than meter.
- Figures and tropes: chiasmus, anaphora, enjambment, hyperbaton, simile, apostrophe, hendiadys, metonymy.
Traps
A tempting answer is often a literal rendering that ignores idiom. Watch for passive vs. deponent confusion, ablative of means vs. agent, and words whose English derivative misleads you. In scansion, remember that a final -m is elided before a vowel or h, and that a vowel before muta cum liquida may scan either way.
Rule of thumb
When a translation question is hard, find the main verb first, then its subject, then work outward through the modifiers. The main clause usually carries the answer.
Worked example
In arma virumque cano, the -que is enclitic and joins arma and virum; the verb is cano, first person singular. A question asking what the poet sings expects "arms and the man," not a paraphrase that drops one object.