Camillus PDFs, Vocabulary, Exercises, Grammar Notes, Dictātiō audio files (Patreon)

This is the index for the PDFs of the chapters of Camillus, Columbus Rōmānus, along with Latin-English vocabulary list with audio, chapter comprehension questions with audio, classroom exercise, and Dictātiō audio recording of the chapter (which may be used to practice taking dictation, rewriting the phrases only be listening — an excellent way to improve spelling and listening comprehension! — as well as being useful to listen and repeat phrase by phrase).

Camillus Cap.1 PDF, Vocabulary, Exercises, Grammar Notes, Dictatiō

Camillus Cap.2 PDF, Vocabulary, Exercises, Grammar Notes, Dictātiō

AN INTRODUCTION TO CAMILLVS COLVMBVS ROMANVS

Salūtātiō

I am very pleased to present a new graded reader for the Latin language, a story about an Ancient Roman pigeon whose travails and adventures take him from the Eternal City to the far reaches of the Empire.  The scope of this project is to develop a graded reader on recently proven paedagogical principles while telling an entertaining story that engages the reader.  The drafts of the chapters will be released as visual audiobooks on the ScorpioMartianus YouTube channel.  When the finalized text has reached a mature stage, I intend to publish it as a printed book.

Methodology & Paedagogy

While inspired by great introductory readers that have come before, like Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latīna Per Sē Illūstrāta, Pars I: Familia Rōmāna, in Camillus, a different approach has been taken.  Latin is often taught with a focus on grammatical progression; for example, one learns certain classes of nouns before others, like first and second declension before third, fourth, and fifth declension, and all forms of the present tense before past tense or future tense, etc.  Such an approach assumes people acquire language by learning “simpler” grammar and building from that foundation to more “complex” morphology and usage.  The reality, as demonstrated by Second Language Acquisition researchers like Stephen Krashen and Bill Van Patten, is that grammar is acquired in an order completely unrelated to the apparent complexity of grammatical paradigms, and language acquisition is accomplished primarily through understanding new information intuitively through context, especially through a story.  By focusing the paedagogical experience on the story, the intent of Camillus is to excite in students a desire to learn what happens in each subsequent chapter, and on the journey guide them from absolute beginner to fluent reading ability while imparting all key vocabulary and grammar almost as if a secondary and inevitable consequence of wanting to finish the book.  This aspect of the present approach owes a great deal to Colin Gorrie and his recently published Ōsweald Bera: An Introduction to Old English, which accomplishes this so masterfully.

In Camillus, much of that context is given through illustrations and deictic boxes.  This is fairly similar to Familia Rōmāna, with the important exception that the marginal notes have been eschewed for deictic boxes.  This aspect of the approach has been developed with much art and study by Logan Kilpelä, who has pioneered this technique in an as-yet unpublished work, in collaboration with our colleague Raphael Turrigiano.  The reason to forgo marginal notes is that, in our experience, even after repeated prompting, most students do not look to the margin to learn the meaning of new vocabulary given there.  Our conclusion in that a multicolumnar presentation of critical information, while efficient in use of space of the page, is ultimately less effective.  Thus in Camillus the information has been presented in unicolumnar format with deictic boxes, a technique which, in honor of colleague friend, I have named Kilpelätion (as opposed to Ørbergization — see another example of Kilpelätion in my Kilpeläted edition of Thrasymachus called Thrasymachus’ Catabasis.)

Inspired on what I deem to be the phenomenal success of Gorrie and Kilpelä, I have not strained to reduce the vocabulary or its expression to certain morphological groups; thus third declension nouns appear in the first chapter, as well as verbs in the singular and plural and in all three persons.  Unlike a book such as Familia Rōmāna, where the goal of any given chapter is to master a morphological group like the second declension or the future perfect, the goal of these chapters is first and foremost to tell a comprehensible and, hopefully, entertaining story: full mastery of any given category, such as third declension plurals vs. second and first declesnios plurals, will come through extensive exposure to these paradigms in context over several chapters; and when enough input has been given, paradigms will be shown, and the traditional schematics of grammar instruction will be fulfilled.

That some terms may be recognized per sē is taken for granted as with similar textbooks, such as videō being associated with seeing, and nōmen easily deciphered as the word for “name.”Audio & Autodidact/Classroom Support Materials

In addition to separate audio files for each chapter, ancillary materials include a PDF which has Latin-English vocabulary (with accompanying audio file), comprehensions questions (also recited as an audio recording), and a Dictātiō recitation of the chapter.

Dictātiō

The Dictātiō can serve two purposes.  One is to practice the skill of dictation, writing down each phrase exactly with the goal of achieving perfect spelling including macrons (the long marks over phonemic long vowels).  The other is to listen to and repeat every phrase.  Therefore the Dictātiō audio recordings have pauses after each phrase.  This allows the autodidact to practice speaking aloud.

The Dictātiō audio is also useful in the classroom or homeschooling setting: the students may be instructed to repeat every phrase they hear.  The teacher may choose to show the students the text to help them read along, or may focus on ear-training alone and have the students repeat what they hear without any visual reference.

To take dictation, one should pause the recording after each phrase, and do one’s utmost to spell the words exactly as they appear in the chapter.  This will inevitably lead to the important realization that certain sounds emerge out of combination that are not obvious from the printed text.  For example, final ‘-s’ when followed by a voiced consonant, such as in Drūsus duo, changes in pronunciation from [s̠] to [z̠]: [druː.s̠uz̠ duo].  This is a mandatory sound change in Latin, because maintaining the voiceless [s̠] pronunciation would result in the devoicing of the ‘d’ in duo, producing

[druː.s̠us̠ tuo] — in reality, most native English speakers make this precise error in reciting Latin, since the rules of English phonology demand forwards devoicing, while Latin demands backwards voicing.  Other similar phenomena of phonetic assimilation (also called sandhi) include the pronunciation of final ‘-m’ before vowels, as opposed to consonants, and many other subtle but important alterations.  I would encourage even experienced Latin teachers to attempt this exercise with the Dictātiō recordings, as it may present a challenge and may guide one to a yet more accurate Classical Latin pronunciation.  (Although my own Latin pronunciation is far from perfect, I have made great efforts over the years to learn its finer points, and I hope the recordings present an adequate model for one to follow.)

When taking dictation with the Dictātiō audio, I would also recommend a modified version of the method shown in this video on the Scriptorium technique on the polýMATHY channel.  Replace Step 1 of the Scriptorium technique with the audio recording, and say aloud the words as you write them.

The Story Behind the Story

In September 2024, my fiancée Irene La Preziosa and I found a young injured pigeon on the streets of Rome, whom we took in and nursed back to health, naming him Camillo.  The full account has been given in Ancient Greek on my podcast Legio XIII.  Even if you don’t understand Ancient Greek, the pictures given in that video are effective to get to know Camillo.

At the time, I had already begun experimenting with writing my own Kilpeläted readers for Ancient Greek and Latin, but my Latin story needed a main character.  Once I met Camillo, deeply sympathizing with his plight, I began writing Camillus, Columbus Rōmānus.

Grātiae Agendae

Thanks so much to each and every one of my Patreon supporters for making this project possible.  This book is in very experimental stages at the moment, as are my drawing skills which are quite primitive.  I am hopeful that the months that follow will allow this project to develop fully, and become a useful tool for Latin teachers and autodidacts.  In the meantime, it is a great pleasure to see Camillus take flight.