Matura Latin and Classical Culture cheat sheet

Five declensions are identified by genitive singular ending: -ae, -ī, -is, -ūs, -ēī; the genitive also gives the stem for the other cases.

Six tenses of the infectum/perfectum systems: present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, future perfect; perfect stem = perfect 1st person singular minus -ī.

Four conjugations by infinitive: -āre (1), -ēre (2), -ere (3), -īre (4); 3rd-conjugation -iō verbs (capere) pattern partly like the 4th.

Passive personal endings: -r, -ris, -tur, -mur, -minī, -ntur; perfect passive = PPP + present of esse, pluperfect passive = PPP + eram.

Case functions: nominative subject/predicate; genitive possession/partitive; dative indirect object/agent with passive periphrastic; accusative direct object and motion toward; ablative separation, means, manner, absolute; vocative address.

Ablative absolute = noun/pronoun in ablative + participle or adjective, grammatically detached from the main clause (e.g. urbe captā, hostibus victīs).

Subjunctive uses: purpose (ut/nē), result (ut/nē with correlatives), indirect question, cum-historicum, cum-causale, fear clauses (nē/ut), indirect command, potential and optative.

Sequence of tenses: primary sequence (present, perfect with present sense, future) takes present/perfect subjunctive; historic sequence (imperfect, perfect, pluperfect) takes imperfect/pluperfect.

Step 1: locate the finite verb of each clause; the verb determines subject agreement, tense, mood, and voice.

Step 2: mark clause boundaries at subordinating conjunctions (ut, cum, quod, quia, dum, postquam, antequam, sī, nisi, quamquam) and relative pronouns (quī, quae, quod).

Step 3: resolve ambiguous forms by syntax, not by first-listed dictionary meaning - e.g. cum may be preposition + ablative or conjunction; -ā may be nominative or ablative singular.

Hyperbaton: adjectives and genitives may be separated from their nouns; restore the pair before translating the phrase.

Latin uses fewer pronouns and conjunctions than Polish; supply Polish subject pronouns and conjunctions (on, ten, a, więc) where Latin relies on endings.

Render participial constructions idiomatically: convert Latin participles to Polish relative clauses or adverbial clauses rather than literal adjectival forms.

Indirect statement (accusative + infinitive) becomes a Polish że-clause; keep the tense relation of the infinitive (present, perfect, future).

Leave proper names in a standard Polish Latin-transliteration (Iulius → Juliusz, Caesar → Cezar) and keep Roman institutions in a recognizable Polish form.

Identify the genre signals first: hexameter narrative (epic), elegiac couplets (love elegy, epigram), prose periodic style (Cicero, Livy), sermo (satire, letters).

Locate the main verb and subject to distinguish main clause from subordinate material; Latin often places the verb last.

Track connectors: sed, tamen, autem, enim, igitur, ergo, nam mark contrast, concession, emphasis, and causal or inferential links.

Recognize rhetorical figures in context: anaphora, chiasmus, asyndeton, polysyndeton, hyperbole, apostrophe, praeteritio.

Distinguish authorial voice from reported speech: inquit, dixit, ait, and accusative + infinitive signal a shift in speaker.

Metrical clues: a spondee-heavy hexameter line often signals gravity or slow action; dactyls accelerate narrative.

Contextual vocabulary: determine meaning from collocation and case government rather than from a single dictionary gloss.

Identify the addressee and purpose (dedication, invective, consolation, panegyric) from vocatives and second-person forms.

Epic: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (dactylic hexameter); Virgil's Aeneid links Rome's founding to Trojan legend; Lucan's Pharsalia treats civil war without divine machinery.

Didactic epic: Hesiod's Works and Days, Lucretius' De rerum natura (Epicurean philosophy in hexameters), Virgil's Georgics.

Lyric: Sappho and Alcaeus (Lesbian lyric); Horace's Odes adapt Alcaean and Sapphic metres into Latin.

Elegy: Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid; elegiac couplet = hexameter + pentameter; themes of love, loss, and mythological exempla.

Historiography: Herodotus (inquiry, ethnography), Thucydides (critical method), Livy (annalistic Rome), Tacitus (Annals, Histories, Germania).

Oratory and rhetoric: Cicero's forensic and deliberative speeches; Quintilian's Institutio oratoria codifies rhetorical training.

Comedy and satire: Aristophanes (Old Comedy), Plautus and Terence (palliata), Horace and Juvenal (Roman satire), Petronius' Satyricon (Menippean prose-satire).

Tragedy: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides; Seneca's Latin tragedies adapt Greek models for recitation and later European drama.

Greek chronology: Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age; Dark Age; archaic colonization; classical period 5th–4th c. BCE; Hellenistic era after Alexander's death (323 BCE).

Key Greek institutions: polis, Athenian democracy (Cleisthenes' reforms, Council of 500, ostracism), Spartan dual kingship and agoge.

Persian Wars: Marathon 490 BCE, Thermopylae and Salamis 480 BCE, Plataea 479 BCE.

Peloponnesian War 431–404 BCE, ending with Athens' defeat; Thucydides is the principal narrative source.

Roman chronology: monarchy to 509 BCE, Republic to 27 BCE, Principate from Augustus, Empire through the 5th c. CE in the West.

Roman institutions: consuls, senate, tribunes of the plebs, comitia centuriata, cursus honorum, provincia and provincial governors.

Punic Wars 264–146 BCE; Carthage destroyed 146 BCE, same year as Corinth - conventional markers of Mediterranean hegemony.

Late Republic crises: Gracchi, Marius vs Sulla, Catiline, First Triumvirate 60 BCE, Caesar's dictatorship and assassination 44 BCE.

Olympian core: Zeus (sky, justice), Hera (marriage), Poseidon (sea), Demeter (grain), Athena (wisdom, craft), Apollo (prophecy, healing), Artemis (hunt), Ares (war), Aphrodite (love), Hephaestus (craft), Hermes (messenger), Dionysus (wine, ecstasy).

Roman interpretatio: Zeus–Iuppiter, Hera–Iuno, Athena–Minerva, Aphrodite–Venus, Ares–Mars, Hermes–Mercurius, Poseidon–Neptunus, Hephaestus–Vulcanus.

Myth types: cosmogony (Hesiod's Theogony), aetiology (origin of rites or names), katabasis (descent to underworld), hero cycle (birth, trial, return).

Roman state religion: pontifices, augures, Vestal Virgins, flamines; pax deorum maintained by correct ritual (do ut des).

Domestic cult: Lares, Penates, Genius, Vesta; household shrines (lararia) and daily offerings.

Mystery cults: Eleusinian mysteries (Demeter and Persephone), Orphism, Mithraism popular in the Roman army.

Sacrifice: animal sacrifice (hostia) with libation and exta inspection; votive offerings and the formulaic prayer style.

Christianization: Edict of Milan 313 (toleration), Theodosius' restrictions on pagan cults in the 390s mark the end of official state paganism.

Transmission: Carolingian scriptoria copied classical manuscripts; Byzantine scholars brought Greek texts to Italy in the 15th century.

Renaissance humanism: studia humanitatis - grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, moral philosophy - based on classical Latin and Greek texts.

Petrarch's revival of Ciceronian Latin and his rediscovery of classical manuscripts are conventional starting points of humanism.

Neo-Latin literature: Erasmus' Praise of Folly and Colloquia; Latin remained the language of scholarship into the 18th century.

Drama and epic after antiquity: Shakespeare's Roman plays (Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra), Racine's Phèdre, Milton's Paradise Lost.

Enlightenment and revolutionary reception: neoclassical architecture and the Roman republican vocabulary in 18th-century political discourse.

19th–20th c. reception: Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Freud's use of Oedipus, modern stagings and film adaptations of Greek tragedy.

Philology as a discipline: Lachmann's method of textual criticism and the modern critical edition derive from classical scholarship.