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John P. Piazza, M.A.
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Ad Usum Delphini, or In Usum Delphini:
allLatin editions of the Classics
This series of Latin classics was edited and first published under the
orders of the French royal family Dauphin, with the goal of giving their
heirs
(Louis XIV in particular) a proper education in the classics. Whatever
he faults of this series, textual or otherwise (many of the naughty parts
were expurgated, hence the pejorative meaning of “ad usum delphini” in
he Romance languages), the overall method is a good one. These
editions provide two types of assistance: commentary on the background
of the text, historical or otherwise; and it also provides a helpful
summary of the text. What is unique is that it is all entirely in Latin! So
f you come upon something you don’t understand in the text, you can
ook over to the simplified Latin paraphrase for a more comprehensible
version. Or if you don’t know who a certain character is, you can look to
commentary for the necessary background, again in Latin. Even
when you are “looking” things up, you never revert to your native
anguage, so you continue to improve your Latin, even when you are
having trouble. This is meant to imitate the tradition of classical
nstruction, which until very recently was conducted entirely in Latin.
Unfortunately, these books have been long out of print, and only one
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scholar to my knowledge has bothered to keep these editions alive in the
form of useful modern texts (Waldo Sweet’s edition of Aeneid 1 and 2,
reprinted by BolchazyCarducci). Luckily, these editions are now public
domain, and Google Books and others have made them available in
electronic format. There is no better edition of the Latin clasics for
cultivating reading profiiciency—and they’re free!
Links to Online Texts:
An extensive online library of ad usum delphini and similar editions
of all of the major classical Latin authors is now available through
Vivarium Novum. This page also provides a history of the series
and its editors (in Italian).
http://www.vivariumnovum.it/edizioni/
Complete volumes in pdf, taken mainly from Google Books
Here is a pdf of the edition of Catullus.
Horace. Edition of Ludovicus Desprez (pdf)
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy and other works (pdf)
Lucretius (pdf)
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
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Ovid’s Metamorphoses—text of Latin paraphrases only.
I have managed to transcribe a few of the paraphrases.
Virgil.
Eclogue 1
Eclogue 4
Horace.
Vita Horatii
Odes 1.1
Odes 2.14
Odes 3.1
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