Excerpt from The Gate to Caesar
Caesar is a difficult author. Some parts of his Gallic War are as hard, or nearly as hard, as any prose Latin that has come down to us. Yet it has somehow strangely enough become the fashion to read that work first In a Latin course. My own conviction is that for young learners a year's read ing in easier Latin is not too much before taking up the less difficult books of the Gallic War. Even then the transition to Caesar comes with something of a shock; for the learner is soon and Often brought face to face with sentences that seem to him of most bewildering intricacy, however they may, as commentators sometimes remark, beautifully illustrate most important principles of Latin order and construction. There is a sentence in the second book, by no means the most difficult one to be found, that extends through' eighteen lines, - that is, something more than half a page, - containing twenty-one distinct ideas, and havmg the verb separated from its subject by ninety four words.