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A complete classical formation — grammar, prose, and poetry — for the student who has never studied Latin and intends to be ready for AP Latin coursework by September.
What the great boarding schools of New England and England accomplish across four academic years — the full grammatical formation of a student in Latin, from first principles through the prose and poetry of four major Roman authors — this course accomplishes in a single summer.
Not by shortcuts, but by concentration: the removal of every competing subject, and the application of sustained, sequenced, mentor-guided instruction to a single intellectual purpose. The course is open to any serious high school student who has not yet studied Latin and intends to be prepared to begin AP Latin coursework at Emerson Latin by September.
The course divides into two equal movements. The first four weeks work through the complete architecture of the Latin language — every grammatical structure that classical literature requires. The second four weeks enter immediately into Caesar, Virgil, Catullus, and Ovid — one week devoted to each — read in original Latin, with close attention to translation, style, and the analytical habits the AP examination demands. All passages in the second movement are College Board-approved teacher's choice selections.
The two movements are not merely additive; they are catalytic. The grammar phase is designed from its first chapter with the literature already in view. Every construction introduced in weeks one through four reappears, alive and purposeful, in the texts of weeks five through eight. A student who arrives at Caesar having just mastered his grammar reads with a precision and confidence that years of slow, incidental exposure cannot reliably produce.
AP Latin Fast Track is not itself an AP Latin course. It is the foundation upon which AP Latin coursework, beginning in the fall term, is built. The Emerson Latin AP Latin program — prose on Saturdays, poetry on Sundays, from September through the AP examination in May — receives Fast Track graduates fully prepared to work at pace.
"Grammar was not regarded as mechanical labor, but as the architecture of language itself — and therefore of reason."Emerson Latin · On the Tradition of Grammatical Formation
| Week | Content |
|---|---|
| Week I Ch. 1–10 |
The Language from the Ground Up
The foundations of Latin in ten concentrated chapters: the first and second conjugations in the present tense; the first declension; second declension masculines and neuters; the verb esse; the present system of first and second conjugations including future and imperfect; sum and possum with the complementary infinitive; third declension nouns; the third conjugation present system; demonstrative pronouns and special -ius adjectives; and the third -io and fourth conjugation present system. Throughout every session of the grammar phase, students read Latin sentences drawn from a broad range of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance writers — a running encounter with the life of the language across centuries, not yet concentrated on any single author. |
| Week II Ch. 11–20 |
Pronouns, the Perfect System, and the Passive Voice
Personal pronouns; the perfect active system across all conjugations; reflexive pronouns and the intensive pronoun; third declension i-stem nouns with the ablatives of means, manner, and accompaniment; numerals; third declension adjectives; the relative pronoun; first and second conjugation passive voice in the present system; the perfect passive system in all verbs; fourth declension nouns with ablatives of place and separation; and the passive voice of the third and fourth conjugations. |
| Week III Ch. 21–30 |
Participles, the Ablative Absolute, and Indirect Statement
The passive system of third and fourth conjugation verbs; the fifth declension with a full summary of ablative uses; participles as verbal adjectives; the ablative absolute and the passive periphrastic; indirect statement with the accusative and infinitive — the construction at the heart of Caesar's prose; comparatives and superlatives with the ablative of comparison; irregular comparatives; the subjunctive mood in the present tense with jussive and purpose clauses; the subjunctive imperfect with result clauses; and the perfect and pluperfect subjunctive with indirect questions. |
| Week IV Ch. 31–40 |
The Subjunctive Completed; Advanced Constructions
Cum clauses (temporal, causal, and concessive) with fero; adverbs, volo, malo, nolo, and the proviso clause; conditions in all varieties; deponent verbs; the dative with adjectives and compound verbs; jussive noun clauses and fio; eo with place and time constructions; the relative clause of characteristic with the dative of reference and the supine; the gerund and gerundive; and num, -ne, and nonne in direct questions, fear clauses, and the ablative of description. By the close of Week IV, the complete grammatical architecture of classical Latin is in hand. The literature begins on Monday of Week V. |
| Week | Content |
|---|---|
| Week V |
Caesar's Bellum Gallicum: Teacher's Choice Selections
A sequence of College Board-approved teacher's choice passages from the Bellum Gallicum — read with close attention to Caesar's compact, precise prose style, his syntactic control, and the rhetoric of military command. Caesar's use of indirect statement, the ablative absolute, and participial constructions — all mastered during the grammar phase — encountered here at full literary force. |
| Week VI |
Virgil's Aeneid: Teacher's Choice Selections
College Board-approved teacher's choice passages from the Aeneid — moving through the opening of the epic, the storm at sea, Aeneas's encounter with Venus, the arrival at Carthage, and the tragedy of Dido. Dactylic hexameter introduced and practiced from the first day. Epic convention, Virgil's handling of simile and pathos, and AP-style analytical writing — translation, scansion, and literary argument — throughout. |
| Week VII |
Catullus: Selected Poems — Teacher's Choice
Fourteen poems from the Catullan corpus, drawn from the College Board's approved teacher's choice list — the Lesbia cycle, the poems of friendship and grief, the invectives, and the shorter personal lyrics. The hendecasyllabic and elegiac meters introduced. Catullus's compression, emotional directness, and tonal range studied closely, with a full review of all poems at the close of the week. |
| Week VIII |
Ovid: Amores and Metamorphoses — Teacher's Choice
College Board-approved teacher's choice selections from both the Amores — elegies in the elegiac couplet — and the Metamorphoses: Daedalus and Icarus, the story of Philemon and Baucis, and Pygmalion. Ovid's control of narrative pace, his mythological wit, and the transition between his two major meters studied alongside continued AP sight-reading and analytical practice. Orientation toward the fall AP Latin program concludes the week. |
Grammar as Architecture, Not Memorization
The pedagogical tradition this course descends from — one that formed the scholars and statesmen of Renaissance Europe, and later the founders of the American republic — did not regard grammar as mechanical drill. It treated grammar as the architecture of a language: the system by which meaning is constructed through inflection, syntax, and arrangement. To master this architecture is not to accumulate rules but to understand how a language thinks. That understanding makes literature immediately accessible.
Sequence Produces Momentum
Most students struggle with Latin not because Latin is inherently difficult, but because their instruction is poorly sequenced — grammar introduced without the literature in view, literature attempted before grammar is secure. This course closes that gap entirely. The grammar phase is designed with the literature already in mind; the literature phase fulfills what the grammar phase has promised. Students consistently report that arriving at Caesar in week five feels not like a transition but like an arrival they had been moving toward all along.
Live Instruction, Every Session
No recorded lecture. No autonomous application. Every session is live — questions answered in the moment, difficulties diagnosed and addressed immediately, texts read aloud, annotated, and discussed in real time. This is the classical tutorial model: a student, a teacher, and a text. It remains the most effective form of literary and linguistic instruction ever devised.
Concentration Produces What the School Year Cannot
Summer removes the competition of other subjects. A mind that has spent a morning with Virgil's Latin carries it differently than one that visits Latin once a week beside calculus and history. Concentrated study produces concentrated retention, and concentrated retention produces the kind of fluency that part-time instruction, however excellent, cannot reliably replicate.
Formation, Not Examination Coaching
The AP examination is the natural consequence of this work, not its purpose. A student who has genuinely read Caesar and Virgil — who understands the grammar behind every construction and the precise way each author's syntax and arrangement produce meaning — will perform on the AP examination as a matter of course. Emerson Latin teaches Latin. The examination result follows.
AP Latin Fast Track is Emerson Latin's most compressed, rigorous, and intense offering. It is designed primarily for the serious high school student who has never studied Latin and wishes to be ready to begin AP Latin coursework by September — though students with some prior Latin background are equally welcome and will find the grammar phase consolidates and deepens what they already know.
What matters above all is commitment. Outside of class, students should expect to work three to five hours daily on vocabulary review, grammar practice, and translation preparation — sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the student and the week. The course rewards those who give it their full attention, and those students include some of Emerson Latin's most memorable: homeschool students who arrived with no Latin and went on to earn top prizes at international classical examinations; accelerated students who bypassed years of preparatory work and entered directly into advanced AP study; and students of every background who simply decided, one summer, to do something serious.
A brief placement conversation precedes every enrollment. It is not a test; it is a conversation about the student's goals, schedule, and readiness for sustained effort. That conversation determines whether AP Latin Fast Track, or another Emerson Latin course, is the right beginning.
AP Latin Fast Track is an entrance, not a destination. It opens a structured path that leads, for those who continue, to the most distinguished levels of classical scholarship available to secondary students.
AP Latin Fast Track
Eight weeks. Complete grammar and syntax through forty chapters. Caesar, Virgil, Catullus, and Ovid — four authors, four weeks, studied in depth in original Latin. The full foundation for AP-level work established.
AP Latin at Emerson Latin
Fast Track graduates join the Emerson Latin AP Latin program, which meets on weekends from September through the AP examination in May — prose on Saturdays, poetry on Sundays. Required readings — Pliny the Younger's letters and Virgil's Aeneid — are covered in depth alongside teacher's choice selections and independent course project passages. Students develop the translation precision and analytical range the examination demands. The Emerson Latin AP syllabus has been audited and approved by the College Board.
International Latin and Classical Humanities Examinations
Students in the AP Latin program become eligible to sit the most rigorous international examinations in Latin and classical scholarship. Emerson Latin students have earned gold medals, summa cum laude distinctions, and top prizes at international level. These achievements are the natural consequence of genuine formation.
Advanced Authors Program
Beyond the AP examination: continued engagement with the full range of classical Latin literature through Emerson Latin's Advanced Authors Program. Students at this stage compete at the most elite international Latin and classical humanities competitions available — carrying the same formation that has distinguished educated minds for five centuries.
By the conclusion of AP Latin Fast Track, the following will have been achieved.
Complete grammatical command of Latin. All five declensions, all four conjugations, the subjunctive in all tenses, indirect statement, the ablative absolute, participial constructions, deponent verbs, gerunds and gerundives, and the full range of Latin's syntactic possibilities — mastered across forty chapters in four weeks.
Close reading in Caesar. Teacher's choice selections from the Bellum Gallicum — translated with precision and analyzed for syntactic structure, rhetorical arrangement, and the particular demands of military Latin.
Close reading in Virgil. Teacher's choice selections from the Aeneid — read with command of dactylic hexameter, sensitivity to Virgil's epic diction and emotional range, and practiced skill in AP-style literary analysis.
Close reading in Catullus. Fourteen poems, teacher's choice, including the full Lesbia cycle — read with competence in hendecasyllabic and elegiac meters and attentiveness to Catullus's compression and lyric intensity.
Close reading in Ovid. Teacher's choice selections from both the Amores and the Metamorphoses — read with fluency in both of Ovid's major metrical modes and appreciation of his narrative craft.
Full readiness for AP-level study. The preparation to enter Emerson Latin's fall AP Latin program at full academic pace alongside students who have been studying Latin for years — and to sit international classical examinations in the same term.
The students who arrive at September's AP Latin program having spent their summer with Caesar, Virgil, Catullus, and Ovid carry something their peers cannot acquire overnight: the formed habit of reading Latin with care.