Australian National University

Bachelor of Arts (Latin)

Select from a diverse range of majors across the creative arts, humanities, and social sciences, taught by world-class scholars, to create a degree that is expressly yours with the ANU Bachelor of Arts.

You will have the flexibility to engage in hands-on projects, take your studies abroad, or undertake an internship. You will gain valuable analytical and research skills transferable to the global workplace while developing expertise in critical analysis, written and oral communication, and the ability to drive global and local change.

Latin Major
If you want to understand a culture, you need to understand its language. Latin was spoken by Romans drinking in the tavern, watching games in the arena, or debating politics in the senate house. It is the language of graffiti scrawled on walls in Pompeii, ribald love poetry, heroic epics, blistering courtroom speeches, and the fables of former slaves. In the centuries after the demise of the Roman Empire, Latin retained a central place as the language of European history, law, oratory, and science. At ANU, you will laugh, cry, cheer, and debate your way through Latin!

You will begin your Latin study with an introduction to the principles of language before moving on to detailed study of a wide variety of genres and authors from the Roman Republic to Late Antiquity. These will include writers such as the poets Virgil and Ovid, the orator Cicero, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, the Christian martyr Perpetua and the pilgrim Egeria, and a variety of texts and genres, from plays and poetry to histories and biographies. You will engage in close textual analysis and explore the literary, historical and cultural contexts in which Roman authors wrote. You will also explore the many different contexts in which Latin was used, from graffiti to funerary inscriptions, their accompanying styles and registers, and the manifestations of regional and chronological variation.