Help for Reading Latin: Online texts and aids Part IV: Dickinson College Commentaries

If your students are reading Caesar's De Bello Gallico (the AP Selections), Ovid's Amores Book 1, Cornelius Nepos' Life of Hannibal, Sulpicius Severus' Life of Saint Martin of Tours, or Lucian's True Histories Book 1, you are in for a treat!  This website, hosted by Dickinson College, has commentaries, running vocabulary, and even some videos about these texts.  There is also an Aeneid online commentary in the works.  This website has been incredibly useful for my students. I even used this website in lieu of a textbook for a very mature AP Latin class as they were reading through Caesar. There are also lists of the most common words in Latin and Greek that can be grouped by declension, conjugation, semantically, etc., which my students found very helpful.  There are audio files for all of De Bello Gallico, which some of my auditory learners have found useful.  Additionally, there are links to Greek and Latin grammars. There is also a list of electronic older textbooks with sight passages, which I found helpful for AP review and review with my more advanced students.

Link: http://dcc.dickinson.edu/

Help for Reading Latin: Online texts and aids Part III: Perseus

I've always thought of Perseus as the original technology tool for Classics.  This website, created by Gregory Crane at Tufts, has been around since I was in high school.  It has been reworked since then, but continues to have a vast collection of texts in Latin and in Greek. There is a searchable library of Greek and Roman materials (as well as other materials, which I have not searched yet).  All the words of the texts have hyperlinks to dictionary and parsing entries, and many of the texts are linked to English translations (usually not completely literal, older but informative translations). Some texts even have linked commentaries.  I would recommend this for mature students because younger students may be tempted to copy the non literal translations as their own work.

Link: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

Online Dictionary Part II: Latin Lexicon

Another great online Latin dictionary is Numen, or Latin Lexicon. This particular dictionary has a great word study tool which uses both Lewis Elementary and Lewis and Short.  The best features of this website are the word study tool and the English to Latin feature.  You can copy and paste large sections of the Latin text into a textbox, and then you can scroll through each definition.  My students love this feature.  I really liked using the English to Latin feature when I was doing spoken Latin programs.  If you register on this website, you can create flashcard decks of the words that you save when you look them up.  My students find this feature very handy.

Link: http://latinlexicon.org/

Online Latin Dictionary Part I: Whitaker Words

Whitaker Words in an old but a good resource.  Whitaker Words, hosted by the University of Notre Dame, is a helpful word study tool, especially for students who may not recognize the form of a word.  Possible grammatical forms are offered as well. There is also a more extensive version that can be downloaded.

Link: http://www.archives.nd.edu/words.html

Help for Reading Latin: Online texts and aids Part II: NoDictionaries.Com

My next post is similar to the first post.  A great, little known resource for texts and dictionaries is nodictionaries.com.  This website is right 90% of the time, and there are interlinear definitions of the words.  The only drawback is that the definitions for the Latin words are not always accurate, and there are some common forms and names that the dictionary does not recognize.  It also does not give any sort of parsing for the word. However, it is great for getting a sense of the text and for most vocabulary. Another great feature of this is registering and saving words directly from the text.  Some of my students use these word lists to study for exams or to keep a running total of words they need to learn.
(My advice to students is to put a pencil mark next to the word in the dictionary or write it down each time a student looks up a word.  If the same word is looked up three times, the student should memorize that word.)

Link: http://nodictionaries.com/

Help for Reading Latin: Online texts and aids Part I: Alpheios and the Latin Library

Two wonderful resources that I've used many times are thelatinlibrary.com and Alpheios add-on tools from Firefox, alpheios.net.  I use Latin Library to look for Latin tests in a clean copy of the Latin (with line numbers), and Alpheios (yes, named after the river god) for dictionary draws from other online databases, such as Perseus and Whitaker words, to create possible parsing forms and definitions.  The best part about Alpheios is that you can highlight a word and double click (or right single click on a Mac) and see the form. What a great resource!  Please feel free to e-mail me with questions on this or any other resource that I mention.

Link to the Latin Library: http://thelatinlibrary.com/

Link to Alpheios:  http://alpheios.net/