LATINA Latin
Latin is the language of the Roman world and a cornerstone for Western historical texts, inscriptions, and medieval scholarship. It’s also a practical bridge to Romance languages and a huge body of literature.
Family: Indo-EuropeanBranch: ItalicPeriod: c. 700 BCE → present (classical + medieval focus in many resources)
Region: Italy and the Roman Mediterranean
c. 700 BCE → present (classical + medieval focus in many resources)
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Dictionaries
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- Notes: Easy to download, easy to use. This program can save you an immense amount of time if you download and install it on your computer.
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- Notes: You can access the Lewis and Short dictionary from here, which is a very good Latin lexicon.
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- Notes: This online lexicon is well-organized and easy to use. It looks like it’s being maintained regularly, too.
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- Notes: Yes, Google Translate works for Latin, though be careful with what you get here.
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- Notes: In Italian. Enter words in the top bar and click “Trova” to search. Nouns should be in nominative singular, verbs in first person present (“amo,” “dico,” etc.), and adjectives in masculine singular nominative. If you don’t know the correct form, enter a word and check “Cerca nelle forme flesse,” which will search inflected forms.
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Lewis and Short (from Perseus)
- Notes: A quick link to the lexicon. It’s easiest to use the boxes at the top of the screen to navigate.
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Copious and Critical Latin Dictionary
- Notes: It’s both copious and critical.
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- Notes: Those school kids must have been experts in the classics.
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- Notes: For junior students. Not sure how to tell if you are one though.
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Copious and Critical Dictionary #2
- Notes: Also both copious and critical.
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- Notes: For the use of schools and colleges.
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- Notes: The only downside is that it’s not critical.
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- Notes: Translated from the German.
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- Notes: A methodological digest.
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- Notes: Io sono di Roma.
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- Notes: Very old.
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- Notes: Based on a German work.
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- Notes: For schools and private students.
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Dictionary of Latin Quotations
- Notes: For parties!
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Another Dictionary of Latin Quotations
- Notes: Classical and medieval quotes.
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- Notes: Easy to navigate.
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Latin/English and English/Latin
- Notes: Verbs must be input in the first-person singular.
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- Notes: Words for specific works.
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- Notes: Fairly old; the site itself says that better lexical tools are now available.
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- Notes: Easy to navigate and a good basic resource.
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- Notes: To impress and annoy. Mostly the latter.
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- Notes: You know, just in case.
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Glossary of Latin Terms, Names, and Phrases
- Notes: Many commonly-used phrases.
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- Notes: A fast, useful Latin dictionary, based off of Lewis and Short. The best part: there’s a downloadable (alpha) version!
Grammars
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- Notes: A classic text. This file is about 11.0 MB in size.
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- Notes: Lessons, but with lots of grammar points as well.
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- Notes: O Goodman Gildersleeve! Also, it’s pretty old.
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- Notes: A counterpart to Allen and Greenough.
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Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges
- Notes: Again, school and college kids must have known this stuff backwards and forwards. There were about 1,000 grammars and dictionaries written just for them.
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The Public School Latin Grammar
- Notes: The rich kids already had a ton of grammars anyway.
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- Notes: Thank goodness for practicality!
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- Notes: Latin Fonetics Are Great.
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Morphology of the Latin Language
- Notes: In German, for volumes; volume one is the main link.
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Handbook of Latin Phonetics and Morphology
- Notes: In German.
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- Notes: Originally written in Italian, it seems.
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- Notes: Language information integrated with lots of history and Roman culture. The texts section contains interactive quizzes.
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- Notes: Good introduction with lots of grammar points.
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- Notes: Produced by the good folks at textkit.com
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- Notes: In Italian; see instructions above.
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- Notes: Enter the first-person singular, no capital letters.
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- Notes: An older site, but still functioning.
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- Notes: Quiz yourself on nouns and verbs! Other resources available as well.
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Essentials of Latin for Beginners
- Notes: You can pick up the non-essentials later.
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- Notes: By North and Hillard. Really helps your grammar.
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- Notes: For use with the above book.
Charts & Aids
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Produced by Maurer. Uses “u” instead of “v,” which can be confusing at first.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Great as a quick reference for Latin verbs.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: A convenient one-sheet reference of noun declensions.
Texts
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- Notes: Easy to navigate between pages, and it includes an English translation alongside.
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- Notes: Easy to read and access.
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- Notes: Contains the Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, French, and German texts of the Bible, plus others. A wonderful program. You must enter a password to install it. To get the password, visit http://yegor.info/bible and email the proprietor. He will respond quickly with the password. Don’t wait, get it now!
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- Notes: Bible texts online in many languages with parallel viewing.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: A French site with a very convenient side-by-side Bible with Hebrew, French, English, Latin, and Greek. Can also produce PDF files. An excellent site.
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- Notes: Choose a passage to view in a number of languages. Contains an embedded lexicon.
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- Notes: Another multilanguage biblical comparison tool.
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- Notes: For information on how to use the Perseus Project website, see the how-to page.
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- Notes: Easy to navigate, especially if you already know what you are looking for.
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- Notes: An extensive collection of texts and information.
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- Notes: Images and descriptions.
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- Notes: A beautiful online collection of many, many authors.
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- Notes: Another great collection of online texts, organized by century.
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- Notes: Ancient and medieval authors online.
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- Notes: A site dedicated to Roman poetry.
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- Notes: Many authors with many texts; a concordance, and the ability to generate vocab lists by text (!). Utterly spectacular.
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- Notes: Texts and translations in several languages.
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- Notes: A few texts online but it is difficult to use and not finished, it seems.
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- Notes: So good he has his own website.
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- Notes: With illustrations.
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Introduction to Greek and Latin Epigraphy
- Notes: For absolute beginners.
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Introduction to Classical Latin Literature
- Notes: More of a reference work.
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- Notes: An older book.
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Latin Literature of the Empire
- Notes: This link is for prose.
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- Notes: Very interesting to read.
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- Notes: Cicero wrote about many different subjects and his works are always entertaining.
Other Resources
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Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
- Notes: A classical encyclopedia from a long time ago.
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Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Perseus)
- Notes: Hosted on the Perseus website, easier to use.
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- Notes: For different kinds of mythology.
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Dictionary of Classical Antiquities
- Notes: On the Perseus website.
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- Notes: A cyclopaedia of Greek and Roman items.
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- Notes: In French, but an excellent resource for many items.
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Checklist of Old Text Editions
- Notes: Papyri, ostraca, and tablets.
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- Notes: By the BBC. Information, images, and lots of other good stuff.
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- Notes: Many different items about the history and culture of Rome.
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- Notes: Viewable online, with links.
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- Notes: Use the site language selector to switch to English (look for an American flag icon).
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- Notes: By very enthusiastic followers of Rome.
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- Notes: Information about armies, clothing, jewelry, etc.
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- Notes: Lots of garbage gets in the way but it has a lot of good stuff too.
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- Notes: And their families.
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- Notes: A collection of links to good sources.
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- Notes: Take a tour through the collections.
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- Notes: In color and black and white.
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- Notes: In French, but easy to figure out.
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- Notes: An older book.
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- Notes: Don’t miss the reenactment events!
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- Notes: Updated podcasts discussing Roman history.
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- Notes: A site dedicated to learning Latin, written in Portuguese. Includes some exercises and other resources.
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- Notes: An organization dedicated to the restoration of classical Roman religion, culture, and virtues.
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The Roman Empire in the first century.
- Notes: A site by PBS.
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- Notes: Just the best.
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- Notes: Current events and news in Latin.
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