(a) The scoring reality (what "15 segments" means for your prose style)
The reader's scoresheet divides the passage into ~15 chunks; each is scored INDEPENDENTLY for whether your English renders its essential elements (tense, voice, number, case-relations, vocabulary). Consequences:
- Ugly-but-exact beats elegant-but-loose. "Having-been-heard the price" is not English; "when the price had been heard" earns the audito pretio segment. Write the second — but never sacrifice a tense to make the sentence prettier.
- A blown segment doesn't bleed. Mistranslate segment 6 and segments 5 and 7 still score. So NEVER skip a chunk you find hard — guess grammatically (right construction, approximate vocabulary keeps partial credibility; blank earns zero).
- Glossed words are gifts with fuses: the gloss gives the lemma's meaning; YOUR job is its form (tense/case/number). Most Q2 losses on glossed words are form-losses.
- Idioms are segments too: manus dare, gratias agere, e vestigio — render the idiom's meaning, not its atoms.
(b) Worked demo — prose (Pliny 7.27.8, the vigil's first sounds)
Initio, quale ubique, silentium noctis; dein concuti ferrum, vincula moveri. Ille non tollere oculos, non remittere stilum, sed offirmare animum auribusque praetendere.
Segment table (one workable division — the reader's will be similar): | # | Latin | Earning translation | The trap | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Initio | At first | — | | 2 | quale ubique | such as (there is) everywhere | the verbless comparison — supply "there is" | | 3 | silentium noctis | the silence of night | — | | 4 | dein concuti ferrum | then iron (began) to be shaken | HISTORIC INFINITIVE + passive: "was shaken/being shaken" | | 5 | vincula moveri | chains to be moved / chains rattling | passive preserved | | 6 | Ille non tollere oculos | He did not raise his eyes | historic infin. again — render as past | | 7 | non remittere stilum | did not put down his stylus | remitto = "put down," not "send back" | | 8 | sed offirmare animum | but steadied his mind | | | 9 | auribusque praetendere | and held it as a screen before his ears | the hard segment: praetendere + dative — image must survive |
(Nine segments in two lines — the real Q2's fifteen will cover four to six lines.)
(c) 🎯 Timed practice — poetry (Aen. 2.213–219, the serpents take the priest; 15 minutes)
illi agmine certo Laocoonta petunt; et primum parva duorum corpora natorum serpens amplexus uterque implicat et miseros morsu depascitur artus; post ipsum auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem corripiunt spirisque ligant ingentibus; et iam bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum terga dati superant capite et cervicibus altis.
Glosses (exam-style): agmen, -inis n.: column, advance · Laocoonta: acc. sing. · serpens, -entis m/f.: snake · amplector, -i, amplexus: to embrace, coil around · depascor, -i: to feed on · spira, -ae f.: coil · squameus, -a, -um: scaly · circumdo, -are, -dedi, -datus: to place around
Translate as literally as possible. Segment FIRST (aim for 15), then translate, then audit tense-voice-number per segment (L9's three-clause audit).
(d) Answer key — model with segment-by-segment audit
"They, in an unswerving column, | make for Laocoön; | and first | each serpent, having coiled around | the small bodies of his two sons, | entwines (them) | and feeds upon their wretched limbs with its bite; | afterwards (they seize) the man himself | as he comes up to help | and carries weapons — | they snatch him | and bind (him) with their huge coils; | and now, twice having embraced his middle, | twice having placed their scaly backs around his neck, | they tower above (him) with head and lofty necks."
The audit, where points actually move: - agmine certo — "in fixed/unswerving column": both words earn; "certainly" for certo is the adverb-trap (it's the adjective with agmine). - Laocoonta — glossed as accusative: the gloss is TELLING you he's the object. Make him one. - amplexus … amplexi — deponent participles, ACTIVE sense, twice (L3's syllabus-four): "having embraced," never "having been embraced." This is the passage's biggest single point-cluster. - depascitur — deponent again, active: "feeds upon." Keep the present (vivid narrative present is consistent here; consistent past also accepted — what kills is MIXING). - subeuntem … ferentem — the two participles must stay attached to ipsum with their objects (auxilio "to help" — dative of purpose; tela "weapons"). - bis … bis — both rendered; the doubling is scored. - circum … dati — tmesis of circumdati (the gloss for circumdo is the exam's hint): "having been placed around" — HERE the participle IS passive (not deponent) — the reversal-trap after two deponents. - capite et cervicibus altis — ablatives of means/respect with superant: "with head and lofty necks." Singular capite, plural cervicibus — keep both numbers.
Score yourself: 13–15 clean segments = exam-ready · 10–12 = your losses are almost certainly deponents or mixed tenses; redo the audit column · <10 = rerun L9, then retranslate this cold in three days.
(e) The Q2 protocol (scripted)
- Read passage once for sense (60 sec) — you know this text; confirm WHERE you are in it.
- Slash segments lightly in the booklet (60 sec).
- Translate at speed, segment by segment (9–10 min) — ugly-exact register, no blank chunks.
- Audit pass: tense / voice / number ONLY (2–3 min) — the three clauses where readers' marks cluster (L9).
- Do NOT restyle the English. Every minute of polish is a minute stolen from Q3–Q5, and polish earns nothing on this rubric.
⭐ Exam strategy: the night before the exam, reread the deponent roster one final time — amplector, depascor, sequor, patior, fungor, fruor, potior, conor, moror, queror, cunctor, miror — because Q2's single most reliable harvest of wrong answers is passive-rendered deponents, and the syllabus passages are seeded with them. Ten minutes on twelve verbs protects more Q2 segments than any other ten minutes available to you.