Virgo Ardens: A Latin Novella

by Rachel Beth Cunning

Iphis loves caring for her family farm on Crete. She loves the smell of the ocean, olives, and grain carried by the wind, and she loves watching lambs race through their fields. Yet, she also feels the burden of her secret—a secret only her mom knows. Before she was born, her father said they could only afford to raise a boy, so her mother lied to protect her. Iphis is stuck between two parents who don’t see her as she is. She isn’t the perfect son to her sick father because she’s a young woman, and she’s certainly not the perfect daughter because she’d rather be searching for lost lambs in the twilight than spinning wool with her mother. If that pressure weren’t enough, her whole world is uprooted when another young woman joins her school, a young woman whose wit and passion for storytelling is rivaled only by Iphis’ burning desire to hear her tell such stories. Iphis finds herself aflame with love and trying to keep the woolen threads of her life from snarling, but all she can see is a hopeless tangle.Virgo Ardens is suitable for use for Latin IV students--and, hey, if you’re looking for some reading yourself, this could be up your alley too. It’s 16,500 words long, making for some significant sustained reading, and it uses 433 total words to encompass that length. There are 21 glossed words, 21 are proper nouns, and 73 additional words are words I consider to be clear cognates that are also used infrequently. (I do use other words that are cognates beyond those, but they are higher frequency in this novella.) Readers, then, need to have a rich, deep understanding of 318 words to read this novella. If you would like more information about this novella, please visit

192 pages, Paperback

Published February 8, 2021

Reviews

[Curtis Sheppard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very repetive, but the story is excellent. When I conferred with a colleague who teaches Latin, I found that this is an adaptation of a section of Metamorphoses which is interesting.

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Tre repetema, sed l'historio estas bonega. Kiam mi kunparolis kun kolegino, kiu instruas la latinan, eksciis, ke estas adaptaĵo de sekcio de Metamorphoses, kio estas interesa.

[Edragone · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 étoiles

Une histoire qui provient originellement d'une centaine de vers d'Ovide amplifiés et réécrits. L'histoire narre alors la vie d'une jeune fille, Iphis, alors que le père désirait un garçon (n'ayant pas assez d'argent pour la doter). Le père a cru et croit toujours qu'il s'agit d'un garçon même jusqu'au mariage... Le fait que ce soit une fille et non un garçon ne sera jamais révélé au père...
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