Summer Intensives 2026

The Fast Track exists for the student who arrives at Latin as a complete beginner and intends to sit the AP Latin Exam the following May. The first four weeks complete the whole of Latin grammar; the next four turn immediately to the prose and poetry required for AP. This sequence, offered nowhere else in its combination of speed and comprehensiveness, positions the student to join Emerson Latin's weekend AP Latin program in the fall term with the preparation the exam demands.

The grammar-translation method governs the first half, because it is the most efficient means of equipping a student to read Roman authors in the original. The second half moves into authentic Latin prose and poetry alongside the analytical work the exam expects. No acceleration is possible without genuine sacrifice of time. Those who cannot commit their summer wholly to Latin should consider another course.

Cambridge Latin introduces younger students to the Latin language through reading — ancient Roman stories form the primary text, with grammar and syntax treated as tools for understanding rather than ends in themselves. The philological tradition that made Cambridge University's classical faculty formidable for centuries remains the foundation, but the emphasis falls on the pleasure and habit of reading Latin prose.

Two kinds of students find this course well suited to their purposes: those who wish to arrive ahead of their peers when Latin begins at school in the fall, and those whose schools do not offer Latin at all but who intend to pursue international competitions in Latin and the classical humanities as part of a serious academic profile — for boarding school or university admission. Meetings continue once weekly when the fall term begins.

Oxford Latin 1 employs a hybrid method, drawing equally on grammar-translation and the nature method. Its particular placement at the end of the summer intensive calendar is deliberate: students whose schedules could not accommodate an earlier start may still complete a full year's beginning Latin before the fall term.

The Oxford tradition — that Latin is not a technical accomplishment but the key to the great ideas of Western civilization — animates every class. Students encounter the philosophical questions that Rome's finest writers posed, not merely as an exercise in declensions, but as the beginning of a genuine intellectual encounter.

The three Oxford courses taken in sequence are equivalent to three years of Latin instruction at a boarding or independent school. Oxford 3 introduces authentic Roman poetry; upon its completion, a student is equipped to translate and analyze the Latin prose and verse that appear on the AP Latin Exam.

The program is designed for flexibility. Students may join at any level, complete one or two courses, and extend or conclude their summer studies as circumstances allow.

ASAP Latin covers the entirety of Latin grammar and syntax — material that consumes three years in a typical boarding school — across thirty class sessions in a single summer. Classes meet every other day, a rhythm that preserves the time needed to work through assignments with the care they demand.

The method is hybrid: half grammar-translation, half the nature method, so that the student develops analytical precision alongside growing ease with Latin as a living medium of thought. Upon completion, students can translate and analyze authentic Latin prose and poetry at the level required by the AP Latin Exam, the IB, and the A-Level.

Where ASAP Latin distributes its work across ten weeks, Intensive Latin concentrates the same substance into four — four hours a day, five days a week, for the first month of summer. It is the most compressed course Emerson Latin offers, and the most direct preparation for competitive Latin study.

The distinguishing feature is the immediacy of the encounter with authentic Latin. On the first day of class, students read Cicero, Vergil, and Augustine — in the original. Grammar is not a prerequisite to be satisfied before the real work begins; it is learned in the presence of the greatest writers who used it.

Natural Latin proceeds by immersion rather than by paradigm. Students read accessible Latin stories with sustained repetition of grammar forms and sentence patterns, coming to understand the text from within rather than by grammatical analysis alone.

Natural Latin continues through the fall, winter, and spring terms. Students may subsequently take the summer courses in Authentic Latin Literature and advance toward the AP Latin Exam.

AP Latin Prose covers every required letter of Pliny — completely, with the analytical depth the exam demands. Each letter becomes an occasion to practice the full range of AP questions: multiple choice, short answer, translation, short essay, summary, and formal analysis. This course is ordinarily taken alongside AP Latin Poetry.

Vergil's Aeneid is among the most formally accomplished poems in the Latin language — and among the most demanding to read well. This course works through every required book of the Aeneid with the attention to detail the AP Latin Exam expects. Scansion is mastered. Poetic devices are not merely identified but explained for their contribution to meaning. This course is taken concurrently with AP Latin Prose.

Working from the prose selections required by the College Board, students translate and analyze each passage line by line, attending to every element the AP Latin Exam tests. This course is taken concurrently with Foundational Latin Poetry.

Students work through the poetry selections required by the College Board, mastering scansion, dactylic hexameter, and the principal figures of speech that Roman poets employed with precision and purpose. Taken concurrently with Foundational Latin Prose.

This course reads selections from Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico — among the most celebrated prose in the Latin language. All passages have been audited and approved by the College Board as teacher's choice passages for the AP Latin Exam.

This course reads selections from Vergil's Aeneid — the central poem of the Latin literary tradition and the text around which the AP Latin Exam's poetry component is built. All passages have been audited and approved by the College Board as teacher's choice passages for the AP Latin Exam.

Cicero II is the first course taken after successful completion of the AP Latin Exam. The course turns to Cicero's First Oration Against Catiline — Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? — the speech by which Roman political oratory is most often introduced to English-speaking schoolchildren, and the one by which Latinists return to the language at its most powerful.

This is a course in Latin philology and textual history. Its primary text is the Gospel of Mark as rendered in Jerome's Vulgate. Parallel passages from Matthew and Luke are introduced throughout, alongside historical and grammatical analysis that introduces students to the discipline of textual criticism. Successful completion of Emerson Latin's full language and literature sequence is the equivalent of the classical requirements for a university degree in Classics at a Western institution.