Latin Literature AP
This class is the final course offered at Moses Brown.  Lyric poetry is both beautiful and challenging, but well worth the time and effort.
    Catullus, the master of emotion and love, is the first poet we study.  He writes about his passion for Lesbia, who is really a noblewoman named Clodia.  Their relationship goes through many stages, until the final end.                                      

  Catullus  makes the Roman world of Cicero's time come alive with his poems about friendship, loss and travel.  This fresco illustrates a line from his wedding hymn:  

idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui (when love, like a flower, is plucked by a gentle fingernail)
Horace, the other poet in this class, is of a much different nature and era; he writes after the civil war, under the reign of Augustus, and was a friend of Vergil.  He is a philosopher who espouses Stoic virtues in public and Epicurean ones in private.  This fresco symbolizes his public view:
Somnus agrestium  lenis virorum non humilis domos fastidit (Gentle sleep does not scorn the humble houses of rural men)              
      While his  poetry is complex, Horace offers insights to the reader. Here are two of his most famous quotes:  

 dulce et decorum est pro patria mori     (sweet it is and fitting to die for one's country)  

carpe diem   (literally: pluck the day; commonly translated as seize the day)