Sappho’ fresco from Pompeii, via Wikimedia Commons.
At the age of fourteen, a mere few weeks into my high school introductory class, I fell headlong in love with the Latin language, the grammar, the puzzles it had in store. Before the end of the first semester, I knew I wanted to learn it and teach it for the rest of my life. However, it was not always easy to love. As a female student, I found it frustrating to go through the curriculum reading only of ancient Greek and Roman men, of heroes and their great deeds, passed down in the words of male author after male author like Vergil and Ovid. Where were the women, beyond the victims and villains? Where were their voices? The answer, as it turned out: not in the materials geared toward intermediate to advanced high school Latin students. From this struggle came a dream: I wanted to write a Latin textbook, and I wanted it to be about women. But I was not ready yet. Not until I came to the University of New Hampshire (UNH), where I would soon begin a project that would launch me into the world of undergraduate research.
Early in my freshman year at UNH, I approached Professor R. Scott Smith with this ambition of mine, and he helped me narrow my focus on something that had not been done before and would combine our research interests: Roman women and travel. While Latin readers focusing on women have popped up over the years, special focus has not yet been given to the topic of female mobility and the literary sources that document women’s movement around the Mediterranean. The seed of a textbook took root, and for the first time, I felt like I could achieve something real.
Setting Sail
Encouraged and mentored by Professor Smith, I applied for, received, and successfully completed an exploratory research project via the January Research Opportunity Program, offered by the Global Racial and Social Inequality Lab, which gave this little textbook a name: Roman Women on the Move. During that January, I learned, among other valuable research skills, the process of writing translation guides (called commentaries) for Latin texts, which requires the making of a thorough Latin-to-English translation and notes to help others with translation. I first worked on a poem authored by Sulpicia (a female author of the first century BCE) and a funerary inscription for a woman named Aureliana, both involving female movement through space. After that, I was hooked.
Feeling the momentum, I continued writing commentaries (i.e., translation guides) for the remaining five of Sulpicia’s poems, fascinated also by her status as one of the only female Roman authors with extant work, surviving through a body of poetry chiefly authored by the more well-known—and male—Tibullus. Along the way, I shared and reviewed my work with Professor Smith. The Research Experience Apprenticeship Program (REAP) through the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research was the perfect next step in the textbook’s journey, and it was during the application period that we developed a true plan. Over the course of the summer, I would translate and produce commentaries for texts suggested by Professor Smith about Roman women and travel. These Latin texts come from a variety of authors and sources, ranging from inscriptions found on headstones to letters sent between friends. To contextualize my research, I would consult the scholarship on not only Roman female mobility but ancient travel more broadly.
Through REAP, I set out to create what ended up being twenty-nine pages’ worth of Latin commentary, all to be included in, and indeed form the basis of, this textbook-in-the-making.
The Straits
Now, what exactly goes into such a commentary? Students of Latin and ancient Greek are probably all too familiar with them, but beyond that, people do not usually run into them. In an intermediate commentary to a Latin text, students typically receive a chunk of the Latin, then below that, a selected Latin-to-English vocabulary, as well as notes explaining challenging grammar and references to culture, mythology, or history embedded in the text. In more advanced commentaries, which range in helpfulness, vocabulary help fades away, along with all other help save for explanations of the trickiest syntax, and commentary is more concentrated in scholarly asides about words, phrases, and references. [To see an example commentary on Sulpicia II, included in the textbook, click here]
The model of commentary I follow for this research project falls in the intermediate to early advanced range, which students normally reach in their third year of Latin study. Each commentary begins with an introduction to the text, a brief contextualizing summary incorporating and glossing lesser-known vocabulary found in the Latin to preemptively provide students with definitions. Then there is the block of Latin text, to which I add macrons (a mark over vowels indicating their length, which can provide clues about certain words’ syntactical function), which it is good practice to include in texts below the advanced level.
Below that, I provide grammar notes that highlight and assist with more advanced Latin grammatical concepts and constructions, as well as those that students simply tend to grow rusty on and forget, so that they can more easily translate the Latin into English.
This is both the hardest and most fun part of the commentary, because I must not only understand how to translate the text and know the function of every last word, but also anticipate points of difficulty for students at a different level from me, since I have been making an intensive study of the language for over five years. To make sure I am not leading students astray, I check my translations against others and go over my grammar notes with Professor Smith, sometimes needing help myself in uncovering the grammatical nuance of a sentence.
Below the grammar notes, I create a selected vocabulary by supplying and defining all the Latin words appearing in the text that do not occur in the Dickinson College Core Latin Vocabulary list, which essentially contains the first 500 or so most common Latin words that a student is likely to encounter in their study of the language, and therefore provides a good estimate of words intermediate-advanced students will already know. Farther below that, I include a literal translation for teachers and students to check their work against.
But writing commentaries was not all grammatical fun and translation; I also had to read. Writing commentaries surrounding a topic I knew little about, namely ancient travel, required me to consult some existing scholarship, such as a lengthy book aptly titled Travel in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson. Readings such as this one gave me the context and confidence to consider the situations of the women featured in my commentaries more deeply. Occasionally, I even came across an unexpected inscription or passage to add to the project’s “to-include” list, the running and growing brainstorm of texts with potentially suitable content that I keep for future commentaries I wish to write beyond those I completed for the REAP.
The Journey Continues
At eighteen commentaries, I still have a long way to go before Roman Women on the Move is anywhere near complete; this textbook is still at the beginning of its own journey. With a growing list of texts to add and a potentially widening scope, I am excited to see how the project evolves, and I look forward to continuing my research on women and travel. Already, I have sent my commentaries for Sulpicia’s poems to my high school Latin teacher, who taught them with a positive response from the students.
As I delve deeper into my exploration of Roman women’s mobility, both physical and potentially social, I hope to pilot my work beyond Sulpicia and show those beginning in classics how the lives of women extended beyond the household through the publication of a complete textbook. In its digital form, this textbook would be freely accessible through Dickinson College Commentaries, the online home of a growing abundance of Latin resources. Moreover, such a conduit for my research aligns with the motivations lying at the heart of my work: to show that the ancient world, and by extension the classics, is for everyone, not just those with privilege of gender or class—and that there is a world beyond what is explicitly crafted for us by our ancient male authors that is well worth exploring.
I would like to thank the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research and particularly my donors, Mr. Dana Hamel and the Patricia M. Flowers ’45 Scholarship Fund, for making this project possible through their generosity. I also thank the Global Racial and Social Inequality Lab for first granting me the opportunity to do research. Last, but certainly not least, I give maximās grātiās to my mentor, Professor R. Scott Smith, for his endless support and guidance.
Author and Mentor Bios
A classics: classical languages and literatures major from Derry, New Hampshire, Jillienne Robinson-Warren will graduate in spring 2026 with a bachelor of arts degree. She is a member of the University Honors Program and the Eta Sigma Phi Classical Honors Society. Her classics research was funded by the January Research Opportunity Program through the Global Racial and Social Inequality Lab at UNH and by the Research Experience and Apprenticeship Program through the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research. Jillienne was drawn to this project by her love for Latin grammar and literature, as well as encouragement from her faculty mentor, Dr. R. Scott Smith. Through these experiences, she gained insight into the collaborative nature of classics research and developed analytical skills, such as how to approach translation, that will aid in her future academics and career. Her translations were recently piloted in her high school Latin program, and she is thrilled to have created a resource with concrete use for educators. Jillienne decided to submit her work to Inquiry in the hopes that it will inspire other undergraduates to follow their own independent research goals at UNH. After graduation, she plans to earn a doctorate in classical philology, then pursue her passion for sharing the language with others by becoming a high school or collegiate Latin teacher.
Dr. R. Scott Smith is professor of classics and chair of the Department of Classics, Humanities, and Italian Studies at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 2000. His major field of study is ancient myth and mythography, with special focus on the intersection of mythography, space, and geography. He is co-director of a digital database of Greek myth, MANTO, and produces the podcast The Greek Myth Files. He is also undertaking a related student-supported project to translate mythographical narratives in ancient texts. Hot off the presses is his publication of Mythographical Narratives (historiai) in the D Scholia to Homer’s Iliad, which is a major translation of previously untranslated stories. In addition, Dr. Smith has been interested in Latin pedagogy and best practices in teaching the language. He has supervised more than ten undergraduate students with research opportunities through the Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research, and is proud of his students’ research, including the Latin textbook that is the subject of this article. Writing for Inquiry, Dr. Smith believes, is vitally important in helping students find ways to take their detailed and narrow work and translate it into forms accessible to the masses.
Copyright 2024 © Jillienne Robinson-Warren
