Classics Teacher David Armstrong’s AP Latin class is a small group of students dedicated to learning this ancient language. Armstrong strives to bring Latin to life throughout the course, and this week, he took six students to Washington University with the goal of showing them what Classics look like in college as they plan for their own futures in higher education.
The class visited Professor Tom Keeline’s undergraduate class on The Aeneid, an epic poem written in Latin by the Roman poet Vergil. It tells the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas’ journey to Italy to found the Roman city. The 12-book poem chronicles his struggles, including shipwrecks, his tragic love affair with Queen Dido, and battles. Keeline has published books, articles, and reviews in the fields of Latin literature, lexicography, metrics, the history of classical scholarship and the classical tradition, textual criticism, commentary-writing, digital approaches to Classics, and language pedagogy. In the class our students visited, the collegiate scholars are reading books two and three of The Aeneid, in which Aeneas relates the fall of Troy and the strange series of events that lead him to Carthage and Dido. In addition to a close analysis of Vergil’s poetic practice in the context of the poem as a whole, they are considering ways in which he engages his epic forebear Homer.
“I found the AP Latin trip to Washington University to be an incredible experience,” said Narya Phatak ’26. “The classroom was a very intellectual space, and it was amazing to experience an environment where people shared in their passions. Mr. Armstrong sets up our high school classroom in a way that truly benefits our learning and mirrors a college-level course, and I am really excited to continue my journey with the classics!”