The Vocabulary of High School Latin

Cicero, and Vergil, with the hope that by constant thumbing of the lexicon the student may gradually acquire the command of a certain vocabulary. In fact in many quarters any attempt to teach vocabulary itself has been frowned upon as a waste of mental energy. But experience has proven that most students taught after this fashion obtain very little actual ability in read ing Latin. The aim of the present book is to set forth the complete vocabulary of Caesar de bello Gallico, books I — V; Cicero, the six orations usually read in schools; and Vergil’s Eneid, books I — VI. Statistics are given of the number of times every word occurs, and a selection of 2000 words has been made, comprising with few exceptions the words of most frequent occurrence, arranged so that they can be taught at the rate of so many per year. The total number of words in this list is 4650. Of these 849 occur in all three authors, 368 are found in Caesar and Cicero only, 38 5 in Caesar and Vergil, 363 in Cicero and Vergil, while 508 belong wholly to Caesar, 546 to Cicero, to Vergil. 1347 words occur but once, divided thus: 261 in Caesar, 329 in Cicero, 757 in Vergil. 691 words occur twice, 97 in Caesar only, 120 in Cicero, 330 in Vergil, the remainder divided between two authors. 373 words occur three times, 277 four times; leaving 1954 words which occur five times or more. The total number of word occurrences is of which the words occurring less than five times (49 56) make up less than seven per cent.