AP Latin Unit 3 Cheatsheet: Required - Pliny's Letters: Ghosts and Apparitions, Letters to Trajan and Calpurnia

Core approach: Identify word meaning in context, then build translation.

• Ablative of description (quality): An ablative noun with an adjective describes a quality. vir animo bono = “a man with a good disposition” or “a man of good character.”
• Locative case: Shows location at a place. Romae = "in Rome." Use accusative without preposition for "to" (Romam); ablative without preposition for "from" (Romā).
• Genitive case: Shows possession. villa amici = “a friend’s house.”
• Genitive + causa/gratia (ablative): Both translate "for the sake of." Example: sapientiae causa = "for the sake of wisdom."
• Vocative case: Addresses a person or object directly. Musa, mihi causas memora (Vergil addressing the Muse).

Author context (61–c. 113 CE):

• Lawyer, magistrate, and prolific letter writer.
• Served under Emperor Trajan.
• Wrote hundreds of letters providing insight into daily life, the legal system, and Roman public administration in the first century CE.
• Letters were heavily revised between sending and publication—highly literary, not raw documents.

Governor of Bithynia-Pontus (110–113 CE): A province on the southern shore of the Black Sea (modern Turkey). Letters 10.37 and 10.90 were written from this post to Emperor Trajan; 10.5 and 10.6 are earlier letters to Trajan from Rome (the Harpocras citizenship request), and 10.7 is Trajan's reply.

Enslaved people:

• Considered property; few legal rights or protections.
• Often manual/domestic labor, but could be highly educated (bookkeepers, physicians).
• Many were war captives or piracy victims from across Europe and Mediterranean.
• Manumission: Freed person became client of former master, could gain citizenship and wealth, but barred from political office. Most never freed.

Patronage system: Mutually beneficial relationships between powerful patrons and less powerful clients. Patrons provided legal defense, gifts, assistance; clients offered political support and public presence. Example: Pliny–Trajan relationship; Vergil–Maecenas (Maecenas patronized Vergil and supported his poetry within the Augustan literary circle).