(a) The long-set playbook
The two long sets (10 syllabus-prose Qs, 10 syllabus-poetry Qs) are the exam's biggest single blocks — and its best return on preparation, because the passages come from the 27 texts you own. The playbook:
- Identify the passage in 5 seconds (you will recognize it — you've read each text repeatedly). Place it: book, scene, speaker, what comes before/after. Half the questions reward placement alone.
- Re-read the Latin anyway — your memory of a passage is thematic; the questions are clausal. The finger-on-the-clause rule (L15) applies doubly when overconfidence is the risk.
- Expect the spread: a typical long set runs ~3 grammar/form, ~3 comprehension/translation, ~2 style/meter, ~2 context/placement. Budget 70–80 seconds per question.
- The order is textual — questions track the passage top to bottom. If you're lost on Q6, its answer lives AFTER Q5's lemma and BEFORE Q7's. Use the neighbors as bounds.
(b) 🎯 The set — Aeneid 4.305–319 (Dido's speech opens; you built this in L35)
'dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum posse nefas tacitusque mea decedere terra? nec te noster amor nec te data dextera quondam nec moritura tenet crudeli funere Dido? quin etiam hiberno moliri sidere classem et mediis properas Aquilonibus ire per altum, crudelis? quid, si non arva aliena domosque ignotas peteres, et Troia antiqua maneret, Troia per undosum peteretur classibus aequor? mene fugis? per ego has lacrimas dextramque tuam te (quando aliud mihi iam miserae nihil ipsa reliqui), per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos, si bene quid de te merui, fuit aut tibi quicquam dulce meum, miserere domus labentis et istam, oro, si quis adhuc precibus locus, exue mentem.
1. The speaker and addressee are: (a) Anna to Dido (b) Dido to Aeneas (c) Juno to Venus (d) Dido to the gods 2. dissimulare … sperasti … tantum posse nefas — Dido's opening charge is that Aeneas hoped to: (a) commit a small offense openly (b) conceal so great an outrage and slip away in silence (c) postpone his departure (d) deny that the fleet existed 3. sperasti (line 1) is a syncopated form of: (a) speravisti (b) speraverunt (c) speraris (d) speravisse 4. nec te noster amor nec te data dextera … nec moritura … Dido — the rhetorical figure structuring these lines is: (a) chiasmus (b) anaphora (c) aposiopesis (d) hendiadys 5. moritura (line 4) is best translated: (a) having died (b) about to die (c) in order to die (d) while dying 6. hiberno … sidere and mediis … Aquilonibus function in Dido's argument as: (a) proof that the gods favor the voyage (b) evidence that only flight from HER explains sailing in such conditions (c) a weather report for the fleet (d) reasons to delay until spring 7. quid, si non arva aliena … peteres, et Troia antiqua maneret, Troia … peteretur — the imperfect subjunctives mark the condition as: (a) past contrary-to-fact (b) future more vivid (c) present contrary-to-fact (d) a generalization 8. mene fugis? derives its force from the verb's implication that Aeneas is: (a) merely traveling (b) a fugitive — and she the thing fled (c) afraid of the sea (d) following fate 9. per ego has lacrimas dextramque tuam te — the unusual word order is best described as: (a) hyperbaton enacting the suppliant's clutching, scattering the oath-formula (b) a copyist's error (c) golden-line structure (d) tmesis 10. si quis adhuc precibus locus — quis here means: (a) who? (b) any (c) someone important (d) which of two
(c) Answer key — with anatomy
1. (b) — placement points: Book 4, the confrontation, her opening salvo (before his reply — if you placed it after, Q2's "charge" framing re-anchors you). 2. (b) — dissimulare … tacitusque decedere: concealment + silent departure; the crime is the COVER-UP (L35's thesis). (c) tempts via sperasti misread as "you waited." 3. (a) — syncope (L9's intonuere family, second-person edition). Free point for this course's students; a coin-flip for everyone else. 4. (b) — triple nec + repeated te: anaphora. (a) tempts because te…te frames noster amor — but the repetition-structure dominates; name the figure that organizes ALL three cola. 5. (b) — future active participle: "about to die / destined to die." (c) is the trap (purpose flavor) — the participle here is fate-stamped self-description, and the exam's answer is always the TENSE value first. 6. (b) — the a-fortiori machine (L35 e2): no destination justifies winter sailing; therefore the sailing is flight. (a) inverts her point; (d) reads her rhetoric as travel advice. 7. (c) — imperfect subjunctives both clauses: present unreal ("if you were not seeking… and old Troy still stood, would Troy be sought…"). (a) needs pluperfects. Mood-form → time-frame: mechanical, scoreable, drilled since L6. 8. (b) — fugere makes him runaway and her the feared object: two words carrying the speech's whole psychology (L35). The answer choices are four readings of one verb — the long set's signature question type. 9. (a) — the scattered oath (L35 e3): per … ego … has lacrimas … te, verb withheld. (c) is the trap for students who've learned the term "golden line" and want to spend it; structure ≠ that pattern here. 10. (b) — after si, quis = "any" (the si quas rule, L15/A2, third appearance — it appears on virtually every real exam).
Scoring: 9–10: long sets are your strongest block — protect the time-budget for sight material · 7–8: the misses are form-questions (3/5/7/10)? Drill the syncope/participle/condition tables this week · <7: reread L35 tonight; the set rewards exactly the preparation you've already done once.
(d) Building your own long sets (the self-drill that compounds)
Between now and May, build ONE ten-question set per week from a syllabus passage, on this template: 1 placement, 2 syncopated-or-unusual forms, 1 figure-naming, 2 construction-IDs (mood/case/participle), 2 sense/argument questions, 1 word-order/style, 1 si-quis-class idiom. Writing distractors teaches more than answering them — every wrong option you invent is a misreading you'll never commit. (Trade sets with a study partner if you have one; grading theirs is the second-best drill.)
⭐ Exam strategy: on long sets, your prepared knowledge is a BIAS as well as an asset — you "remember" the passage saying what it means, and a stem quoting it slightly out of context can ride that memory to a wrong answer. The fix is mechanical: for every long-set question, re-read the two lines around the lemma BEFORE choosing. Twenty seconds spent re-reading beats the 70 spent debating answer choices — the Latin always settles what the memory debates.