Artifex: A story to help Latin students
build their reading skills from beginner to intermediate
Artifex
The Artist
Wikimedia Commons: Affresco romano con una Pittrice, rinvenuto a Pompei nella Casa dell'Imperatrice di Russia, oggi nel Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (inv. 9017)
De Me
About Me
Salve! Mihi nomen est Amy Petersen.
I am a Latin teacher who is working to embrace Active Latin while also working to keep a focus on life in the ancient world. As a former archaeologist-wannabe I find the relics of the past fascinating and love sharing my discoveries with my students. This work is an attempt to help other teachers and their students have a long-term resource on which to base more active approaches for learning Latin while staying well immersed in Ancient Roman culture.
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While I feel it's time to break from the traditional 'textbooks' of the past and have been working hard to do so, I have found that both my students and I miss having a connection to characters such as those found in a reading-based textbook series. I also know it can be very hard for teachers to make the switch from more traditional methods to Active Latin methods. My goal is to help ease the transition with a series of readings that offers a cohesive reading experience with engaging stories that lend themselves more easily to the tenets and methods of an Active Latin experience.
De Fabula
About the Story
The story begins in mid 1st century Pompeii, centering on the Forum Baths, the House of the Tragic Poet and the House of Pansa. You will meet the residents of these houses, along with others in Pompeii, and later enter the big city of Rome. The storyline follows a young budding artist from northern Africa trying to manage dreams and responsibilities.
While an effort was made to incorporate historical events, known individuals from the ancient world and authentic details of all sorts, this is ultimately a work of fiction. I have made a very conscious effort to include as many authentic images as possible to enhance and ease the reading experience. Because of the challenges of copyright and just plain survival of physical evidence over millenia, you will find a creative blending of pictorial representations for the stories' scenes. My hope is that any such necessary historical inaccuracies become a fun game of "Name That Image" for those of you more in the know - e.g. "that's not Seneca's garden, that's the pope's!" For the most part, I have purposely left out full or consistent images that could represent characters in the book so that readers may create them in their own minds as they wish and perhaps more easily see themselves in the work.
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I have attempted to include more voices than you would typically find in readings of old. If you feel I have missed the mark on anyone's voice, please contribute a comment via the link to a feedback form you will find on the last slide of every story.
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Overall, this has become a labor of love and one I would like to keep improving. I hope you enjoy it and feel both comfortable pointing out needed corrections and compelled to offer your suggestions for how it could better serve your needs.
De Opere
About the Work
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This is a work in progress. I will continue to respond to feedback as it arrives and thus you may find that a revisited story may not be exactly the same as you first read it. Hopefully, it will be better.
The ultimate goal is to provide enough stories to take a student from the beginning to the intermediate reading level. While I have been adding in some brief grammatical explanations at the suggestion of readers, this is not a textbook and it may not be a resource from which one could learn all the ins and outs of Latin without additional assistance. The original push for its creation was a need for accessible and engaging reading material to supplement classroom instruction.
I would greatly appreciate your feedback on anything from missing macrons to major missteps of any kind. I would also love to hear about any additional authentic texts you would like to recommend as story supplements. There is a link to a feedback form at the end of each slideshow where you can put all your suggestions for improvement.
hoc opus dedico
Aureliae, discipulae
sapienti et diligenti