Advanced Placement Latin: Vergil

Advanced Placement Latin: Vergil (known also as AP Latin: Vergil, AP Latin, or AP Vergil) is an examination offered by the College Board's Advanced Placement Program. The current exam focuses on selections from the Aeneid, written by Augustan author Publius Vergilius Maro, also known as Vergil or Virgil. However, for the 2012-2013 academic year, the College Board has announced that it will change the content to include not only poetry, but also prose. The prose will be selections from Commentaries on the Gallic War, written by Gaius Julius Caesar. Also included in the new curriculum will be a focus on sight reading. The student taking the exam will not necessarily have been exposed to the specific reading passage that appears on the exam; however, the College Board suggests that a curriculum include practice with sight reading. The exam, administered in May, is three hours, consisting of a 60-minute multiple section and a 2 hour free-response section.

Material tested
The AP Latin: Vergil exam is based upon Vergil's Aeneid.

Students are expected to be familiar with the following 1,856 lines of the Aeneid:
Book 1: lines 1-519
Book 2: lines 1-56, 199-297, 469-566, and 735-804
Book 4: lines 1-445, 642-705
Book 6: lines 1-211, 450-476, and 847-901
Book 10: lines 420-509
Book 12: lines 791-842, 887-952

Students must also be familiar with the total content of Books 1 through 12.

Abilities tested
The exam tests students' abilities to:

Translate a Latin passage from the syllabus into English literally
Explicate specific words and phrases in context
Identify the context and significance of short excerpts from the works specified in the syllabus
Identify and analyze characteristic or noteworthy features of the authors' modes of expression, including their use of imagery, figures of speech, sound effects, and metrical effects (in poetry only), as seen in specific passages
Discuss particular motifs or general themes not only suggested by passages but also relevant to other selections
Analyze and discuss structure and to demonstrate an awareness of the features used in the construction of a poem, thesis, or an argument
Scan the meters specified in the syllabus

Reading and translation
Critical appreciation of the Aeneid as poetry implies the ability to translate literally, to analyze, to interpret, to read aloud with attention to pauses and phrasing, and to scan the dactylic hexameter verse. Students should be given extensive practice in reading at sight and in translating literally so that their translations not only are accurate and precise, but also make sense in English.

The instructions for the translation questions, "translate as literally as possible," call for a translation that is accurate and precise. In some cases an idiom may be translated in a way that makes sense in English but is rather loose compared to the Latin. In general, however, students are reminded to remember that:

The tense, voice, number, and mood of verbs need to be translated literally
Subject-verb agreement must be correct
Participles should be rendered precisely with regard to tense and voice
Ablative absolutes may be rendered literally or as subordinate clauses; however, the tense and number of the participle must be rendered accurately
Historical present is acceptable as long as it is used consistently throughout the passage.

Exam
The 3 hour exam consists of a 60-minute multiple choice section and a 2 hour free-response section that includes fifteen minutes of reading time and 1 hour 45 minutes of writing time. The multiple choice section includes approximately 50 questions that relate to four passages: three read at sight and one from the syllabus. The multiple choice questions test the many skills learned and practiced throughout the year, including:

20-30% grammar and lexical questions (10-15 questions)
35-45% translation or interpretation of a phrase or sentence (17-23 questions)
2-5% metrics: that is, scansion of the dactylic hexameter line (1-3 questions)
2-5% figures of speech (1-3 questions)
20-30% identification of allusions or references, recognition of words understood but unexpressed, explication of inferences to be drawn (10-15 questions)
2-5% background questions on the Aeneid passage only (1-3 questions)

The free-response section includes translation, analysis, and interpretation of the Latin text from the syllabus. The format is as follows:
Question 1: a 10-minute translation
Question 2: a 10-minute translation
Question 3: a 45-minute long essay
Question 4: a 20-minute short essay
Question 5: a 20-minute short essay based on the entire Aeneid (Latin selections and parts read in English)

Course Revisions for the 2012-2013 Year
For the 2012-2013 academic year, the College Board announced that it has made revisions to its AP Latin curriculum. In general, the College Board announced new goals in the curriculum. These include:

Required readings in both prose and poetry
Development of student capacity to read Latin at sight
Greater focus on grammatical, syntactical, and literary terminology

Instead of solely focusing on Vergil's Aeneid, the curriculum will now include both prose and poetry, including selections from Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. The new required reading list, including revisions to the number of lines required from the Aeneid, is:

Vergil's Aeneid

Book 1: Lines 1-209, 418-440, 494-578
Book 2: Lines 40-56, 201-249, 268-297, 559-620
Book 4: Lines 160-218, 259-361, 659-705
Book 6: Lines 295-332, 384-425, 450-476, 847-899

Caesar's Gallic War

Book 1: Chapters 1-7
Book 4: Chapters 24-35 and the first sentence of Chapter 36 (Eodem die legati . . . venerunt.)
Book 5: Chapters 24-48
Book 6: Chapters 13-20

Also, there is a change to the required readings in English. The new list from the Aeneid is books 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12, instead of all twelve books, as was previously required. The new required reading list in English from the Gallic War is books 1, 6, and 7. Also in the revised curriculum there is also a newly placed emphasis on sight reading. The College Board announced that the exam will include Latin passages not on the required readings lists in an effort to enhance students' ability to read at sight. Recommended authors for prose include (inexhaustively): Nepos, Cicero (though not his letters), Livy, Pliny the Younger, and Seneca the Younger, rather than authors such as Tacitus or Sallust. For poetry, the College Board recommends authors (inexhaustively) as follows: Ovid, Martial, Tibullus, and Catullus, rather than poets such as Horace, Juvenal, or Lucan. For practice with sight reading in both poetry and prose, the College Board recommends additional Latin passages in the Aeneid and Gallic War that are not included in the required reading list.

Grade distribution
In the 2010 administration, 6,523 students took the exam. The mean score was 3.04, with a standard deviation of 1.40. Also, 4,114 of those who took the exam received a passing grade (3 or higher), or about 63.1%.