BESTIARIA LATINA BLOG - Latin Via Fables - Zoo - Legenda

About the Legenda

The Legenda are annotated Latin stories and fables about animals for intermediate Latin students. The stories have been adapted for intermediate Latin students in a variety of ways. The spelling has been normalized throughout to conform, more or less, to classical Latin standards, with the letters "u" and "v" both being used (although the letter "j" is not used). In addition, the stories may be edited as follows:

• Verse: If the original story was in verse form, the text has not been altered but there is a prose version of the story provided. You should read the prose version first in order to get a sense of the meaning of the story, and then tackle the verse original, where the word order is usually much more difficult.
• Prose - single author. When a story is reported in prose form from a single author, there are often considerable changes that have been made to the story in order to simply the vocabulary or shorten the story. You can find the original text of the story online (usually at another website), so that after you have read the simplified version here at BestLatin.net, you can then see what it is like to read the original version.
• Prose - compiled. Often the stories at this website are compiled from a variety of different versions. In this case, sentences and phrases have been taken from different versions of the story and combined into a single version. You can find the original texts of each source story online (usually at another website), so that after you have read the compiled and simplified version here at BestLatin.net, you can then go read the original versions if you want.

Each Legenda page contains:

• an Introduction with references to other online resources that you might want to consult
• a Study Guide to help you work through the Latin story systematically
• the Segmented Text to help you better understand the grammar and syntax of the story
• link to a Discussion Board where you can ask questions and get help

The stories come from three different types of sources (for more information, visit the Sources section of the website):

• Latin bestiaries and natural history writers. Some of the stories are taken from the bestiary tradition (going back to the Physiologus), supplemented with information from ancient natural history writers, such as Pliny, and early modern natural history encyclopedias in Latin. Sometimes these bestiary stories are explicitly allegorical, containing a kind of sermon at the end of the story which explains the divine symbolism which is expressed in the animal's story

• Aesop's fables. Many of the stories are taken from Aesop's fables in Latin, both from ancient Latin sources (notably the Roman poet Phaedrus), and also from a wide range of medieval Latin sources in both prose and poetry. The Aesop's fables are referenced by their "Perry Number" which allows you to look up the fable at aesopica.net, where you can find many different Latin versions as well as English translations of the fable.

• Medieval animal stories. You will find several legends taken from other medieval authors, such as Odo of Cheriton, the various versions of the Kalila-wa-Dimna tradition translated into Latin, and other writers who collected and recorded animal stories in the Middle Ages.