O Tempora! O Mores!: Cicero's Catilinarian Orations, A Student Edition with Historical Essays

Besides The orations, the historical essays really enhanced my understanding of their context.

It is great to see the 2nd and 4th Catiline being presented with notes and commentary. This is not only helpful for students, but for instructors in having items highlighted via the notes to focus on in aiding students toward better understanding at a glance without the need to keep looking things up. The notes are also useful in helping to create worksheets and identify constructions for students to parse and translate.If one is a student or self taught, this is an excellent text for making clear what seems difficult or not covered by the numerous artificial sentences of texts like Moreland and Flescher's Latin an Intensive Course or Wheelock's practice and review. The vocabulary in the back is quite complete as far as what an intermediate student might not have encountered yet or forgotten from earlier work.The only hangup is that the notes are in the back which requires a finger or book mark in two places, but it is a minor issue. Otherwise a very useful text both for understanding Cicero and for becoming familiar with Ciceronian constructions that appear in other more difficult works.

The extra readings, textual notes, and glossary were all extremely helpful and well done. Cicero's writing, of course, is also stunning. I used this for an undergraduate reading seminar, but I think it would be equally appropriate in and upper-level high school class.

This is a welcome tool for the teacher and student of Latin. I recently studied Cicero's Pro Archia and In Catalinam I for a class, and I wanted to read the other three over break. Shapiro's volume has been paydirt. Her historical essays are excellent - they would be quite appropriate to use in any classics or history course, besides being great background to the text itself.The Latin is presented by itself, with no grammar or vocabulary on the same page. The commentary comes at the end and there is a full glossary in the back. The commentary is primarily focused on syntax (how do chunks of words fit together) and also gives historical and cultural information where relevant (very helpful). The commentary glosses a few words occasionally, but far less than some will be accustomed to.I wasn't sure I liked not having on-page commentary and/or vocabulary at first (why not have at least difficult vocabulary glossed on the page to eliminate always flipping to the back?), but I have ended up liking it. Why? Because it absolutely forces the reader to stick in the Latin text. Over the long run, I found myself pausing longer to ponder Cicero's sometimes wandering (aka periodic) sentences before flipping to the back for assistance, or thinking twice about vocabulary I was uncertain of and trying to guess based on the etymology or context. This guesswork, combined with the ability to look it up either in the commentary or full vocabulary, ultimately makes one a better reader of Latin.I can heartily recommend this volume to anyone desiring an intermediate level text. It would be quite effective in either a classroom setting or independently.