PAU Latin II (Madrid) common mistakes
PAU Latin II (Madrid) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating a subordinate clause as if it were the main clause, or flattening an ablative absolute into a bare noun phrase, so the Spanish sentence loses the logical link between clauses (e.g. rendering 'Urbe capta, milites fugerunt' as 'La ciudad capturada, los soldados huyeron' instead of 'Tomada la ciudad, los soldados huyeron' or 'Una vez tomada la ciudad...').
Candidates translate word by word in Latin order and do not first identify the syntactic skeleton (main verb, subject, subordination) before writing Spanish; participles and absolute constructions look like simple adjectives to an untrained eye.
What to do instead
Before writing any Spanish, parse the period on paper: bracket each subordinate clause, mark the main verb, and label every participle as conjoined, subordinate or absolute. Then build the Spanish sentence from the main clause outward, giving each participle an explicit temporal, causal or concessive connector where Spanish requires it.
Leaving a Latin case construction untranslated in Spanish, producing calques such as 'fue matado por la espada' for an ablative of instrument, or 'digno de ser alabado por' where a plain adjective suffices; also keeping Latin word order in Spanish when it is ungrammatical.
The candidate maps each Latin word to one Spanish word and does not know that Latin ablatives, genitives and datives cover several distinct Spanish functions (instrument, agent, possession, interest, reference); fear of departing from the dictionary gloss reinforces literalness.
What to do instead
Practise a fixed checklist of case functions (agent vs instrument vs manner vs means vs respect) and write the Spanish version with Spanish syntax, not Latin syntax. After translating, reread the Spanish alone: if a native reader would find a phrase odd, recast it.
Misidentifying a verb form because the same spelling serves several tenses or moods (e.g. 'amaverat' vs 'amaverit', 'esset' vs 'esse', 'feceris' vs 'feceris' perfect subjunctive vs future perfect), and then translating with the wrong tense or mood throughout the passage.
Candidates rely on the dictionary headword and the ending alone, ignoring vowel quantity, context and sequence of tenses; they also forget that deponent and semi-deponent verbs look passive but are active in meaning.
What to do instead
Learn the ambiguous endings as explicit pairs with quantity (e.g. -ĕrunt perfect vs -ērunt alternative; -ĭs perfect subjunctive vs -ĭs future perfect) and always confirm a form against the surrounding clause: check for a subordinating conjunction, an ut/ne, or a cum. Keep a personal list of deponents (loquor, sequor, patior, vereor, utor, fruor, potior) and test each verb against it.
Describing a construction only by naming it ('es un ablativo absoluto') without stating its components, its function in the sentence and its translation into Spanish, which is what the commentary question actually rewards.
Candidates memorise labels from grammar tables but never practise writing a full commentary; they assume the label is the answer rather than the starting point for analysis.
What to do instead
Use a fixed four-part template for every item: (1) quote the form, (2) identify case/number/gender or tense/mood/person, (3) name the construction and its syntactic function, (4) give the Spanish translation of the phrase. Rehearse it aloud on short sentences until it is automatic.
Choosing the first dictionary meaning of a polysemous word instead of the sense required by context (e.g. 'res' as 'cosa' when it means 'situation' or 'affair'; 'imperium' as 'empire' when it means 'command'; 'virtus' as 'virtue' when it means 'courage').
Candidates study vocabulary as one-to-one glosses and do not check which senses a word actually has; they also ignore collocations and the semantic field set up by the rest of the sentence.
What to do instead
Build vocabulary cards with two or three contextual senses and one short authentic collocation each (e.g. 'imperium gerere', 'res publica', 'virtutem praestare'). In the exam, after drafting a translation, reread and ask whether each key noun's chosen sense fits the sentence's argument; if not, substitute and re-check agreement.
Confusing near-identical or etymologically related words (e.g. 'consulere' vs 'consulere aliquem', 'providere' vs 'providere aliquid', 'petere' vs 'petere ab aliquo'; 'hostis' vs 'hospes'; 'civis' vs 'civitas'), producing a meaning opposite or unrelated to the text.
The candidate recognises the root but not the construction or the exact lexical item; false friends from Spanish and English ('actualis', 'familiaris', 'negotium') reinforce the error.
What to do instead
Learn verbs with their case government as a unit ('consulere + dat. = velar por; consulere + acc. = consultar'), and keep a short list of Latin false friends with their true meanings. When a translation reads oddly, suspect a lexical confusion before suspecting the grammar.
Writing a literary commentary that summarises the content of the passage ('dice que César llegó y venció') instead of analysing genre, structure, style and rhetorical devices, and failing to connect the passage to its author, work and period.
Candidates have read the text in translation only and lack practice in close reading; they are unsure what a commentary is supposed to contain and fall back on paraphrase, which feels safe.
What to do instead
Structure the commentary in labelled blocks: genre and subgenre, position in the work, structure and progression of the passage, stylistic features with quoted Latin (alliteration, chiasmus, hyperbaton, anaphora, historic infinitive, brevitas), and finally the author's purpose. Quote at least three short Latin phrases as evidence and name the device each illustrates.
Attributing a passage to the wrong author, period or genre, or dating an author a century off (placing Livy in the Republic, Seneca the Younger in the first century BC, or confusing Seneca the Elder with Seneca the Younger).
Candidates learn authors as isolated names and dates without a chronological frame, and the two Senecas, the two Plinies and the Caesar–Livy–Tacitus historiographical line are easy to blur.
What to do instead
Draw a single timeline from Plautus (c. 254–184 BC) through the Silver Age to late antiquity, placing each prescribed author on it with one defining work and one defining feature. Learn the pairs explicitly: Seneca the Elder (rhetorician, Suasoriae, Controversiae) vs Seneca the Younger (philosopher and tragedian, Epistulae, Phaedra); Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia) vs Pliny the Younger (Panegyricus, Epistulae).
Treating Latin literature as a list of titles without genre conventions, so the candidate cannot say what makes an eclogue different from a georgic, a satire from a diatribe, or a Roman comedy from a tragedy, and cannot match a passage to its genre.
Revision focuses on plot summaries and author biographies, which are easier to memorise than formal features; genre is often taught implicitly rather than as an examinable skill.
What to do instead
For each prescribed genre write a one-line definition plus its metre and typical features: epic (hexameter, arma virumque, divine machinery), elegy (elegiac couplet, love and myth), satire (hexameter, Horatian vs Juvenalian tone), historiography (prose, speeches, digressions), oratory (exordium, narratio, argumentatio, peroratio). Test yourself by identifying the genre from metre and opening formula alone.
Answering questions on Roman legacy with vague generalities ('Rome gave us law and culture') instead of specific institutions, terms and survivals (e.g. the praetor and the edict, the ius civile / ius gentium / ius honorarium distinction, the Digest of Justinian, the cursus honorum, the Latin roots of legal and administrative vocabulary, Roman engineering forms such as the arch and the basilica in later architecture).
Candidates treat the legacy block as general culture and revise it last, without a factual base; they do not realise the questions ask for named institutions and concrete continuities.
What to do instead
Build a table of legacy items with three columns: Latin term, what it was in Rome, and where it survives (e.g. 'praetor - magistrate issuing an annual edict - origin of case law and equity; 'basilica - Roman hall of justice - model for Christian church plan'). Revise by explaining each row in one sentence aloud, and link each item to a named later institution or text.