Languages · Translate in a Year
Translate in a Year · Arma virumque cano
For a long time, Harvard expected every new student to read Virgil, Caesar and Cicero in Latin, and Xenophon and Homer in Greek. You can still read the same books, in the same public-domain editions, a short passage a day. Pick a work, write your own translation, then check it.
Virgil, Aeneid
AeneisAeneas escapes burning Troy and sails west to found a new home in Italy. The whole poem in a year at about 27 lines a day, or Books I–VI in half a year.
Start translating →Caesar, Gallic War I
De Bello Gallico I“All Gaul is divided into three parts.” Caesar’s own account of his first year in Gaul, 58 BC: plain, orderly prose and the traditional first Latin author.
Start translating →Cicero, In Catilinam I
In Catilinam I“How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” Cicero’s speech to the Senate in 63 BC, the short classic of Roman oratory.
Start translating →Xenophon, Anabasis I
Κύρου Ἀνάβασις ΑCyrus gathers an army of Greeks and marches inland against his brother, the king of Persia. Clear Attic prose and the traditional first classical Greek author.
Start translating →Homer, Iliad
Ἰλιάς“Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles.” Book I in a month at about 20 lines a day, or the whole poem as a big year at about 43 lines a day.
Start translating →The Gospel of John
Κατὰ Ἰωάννην“Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος.” The simplest Greek here, two or three verses a day, with every word also explained in the site’s Gospel Reader.
Start translating →The old Harvard list
What Harvard once asked of every new student in Latin and Greek, with the books from its own catalogues, and a suggested order for teaching yourself.
Read the history →How it works
Each work is cut into daily passages that always end at the end of a sentence. Read the passage, write your English in the box under it, then press Check your translation to compare it with a public-domain translation. Your work stays in this browser. You can print a day or save all your translations as a text file.
Want it in your calendar? The New Year’s resolution builder has Translate a Latin classic and Translate a Greek classic goals. It shares the work out over the days you choose and links each day straight to its lines. You can also add any of these as a track in the Life Planner.
How big is each one?
| Work | Length | The reader’s plan | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virgil, Aeneid, all 12 books | 9,896 lines | 365 days | 27 lines a day |
| Virgil, Aeneid, Books I–VI | 4,755 lines | 182 days | 26 lines a day |
| Caesar, Gallic War, Book I | 54 chapters, about 8,200 words | 120 days | 68 words a day |
| Cicero, First Oration against Catiline | 33 sections, about 3,350 words | 60 days | 56 words a day |
| Xenophon, Anabasis, Book I | 10 chapters, about 9,300 words | 180 days | 52 words a day |
| Homer, Iliad, Book I | 611 lines | 30 days | 20 lines a day |
| Homer, Iliad, all 24 books | 15,687 lines in this edition | 365 days | 43 lines a day |
| The Gospel of John | 21 chapters, 879 verses, about 15,600 words | 365 days | 43 words a day |
Each reader also has slower and faster plans.
Be honest with yourself about grammar
Translating the Aeneid in a year is a big goal. It is about 27 lines every day. For someone who has finished a first-year Latin course, that is often close to an hour a day, and slower in the first months. Virgil and Homer write poetry, with free word order and old forms, so they are hard places to start.
If you are new to Latin or Greek, spend this year on grammar and an easier text, and save the Aeneid or the Iliad for next year. The old Harvard list page has a suggested order. Good places to begin on this site:
- Latin: D’Ooge’s Latin for Beginners, with a step-by-step guide for each of its 79 lessons. Then Caesar.
- Greek: the Greek Alphabet lessons, then Machen’s New Testament Greek for Beginners and the Greek and Latin with Jerome study companion. They lead straight into the Gospel of John. Xenophon and Homer need more grammar after that. Smyth’s Greek Grammar (1920) is the standard reference, free online.
Are the original texts in the public domain?
Yes. The ancient works themselves have no copyright. A modern edition can be copyrighted, because an editor chooses between the manuscripts and writes the notes. So every text here comes from an edition printed long enough ago to be in the public domain in the United States, and every English translation too:
- Virgil: J. B. Greenough’s text (Ginn, 1881). English: Theodore C. Williams (1910).
- Caesar: T. Rice Holmes’s Oxford text (1914). English: McDevitte and Bohn (1869).
- Cicero: A. C. Clark’s Oxford text (1905, 1908 printing). English: C. D. Yonge (1856).
- Xenophon: E. C. Marchant’s Oxford text (1904). English: Carleton L. Brownson (Loeb, 1922).
- Homer: Monro and Allen’s Oxford text (3rd edition, 1920). English: A. T. Murray (Loeb, 1924–1925).
- John: Eberhard Nestle’s Greek New Testament (1904), the same text as the site’s Gospel Reader. English: the King James Version.
The Latin, Greek and English come from the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University, which shares its digital editions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Our daily-portion files are built from them and shared under the same license. The text is shown as the editors printed it. Greenough’s Virgil and these Greek texts have no long-vowel marks (macrons), so none are added here. Square brackets [ ] mark words or lines the editor doubted were by the author, and angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ mark words the editor added where the manuscripts have a gap.