Damien Russell
Study Guide for Zoch, Chapters 1–3
Items and questions on this guide are likely to appear on your next quiz, during which you may
use the notes you have taken on the following. The use of another student’s notes will be treated
as academic dishonesty.
Ch. 1. A Linguistic Introduction
1. To what language family does Latin belong? What modern languages are direct descendants of
Latin? In what five major time periods did English gain its largely Latinate vocabulary?
Latin stems from Italic which stems from Proto-Indo-European.
Several languages stem from Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Provencal, French, Italian, and
Rumanian.
1) In 110 B.C. Romans fought wars with the Germanic tribes and established colonies in Germany;
they left a Latin influence on the Germanic languages.
2) 55 B.C. the Romans invaded England under Julius Caesar and by 43 A.D., a century later, under
Emperor Claudius, England became a Roman province. The language of the Roman government in
England was Latin and it influenced the Celtic languages there.
3) 597 A.D. missionaries began to travel to England to convert natives to Christianity. The language of
the Catholic Church was Latin so Latin became as much of a part of people’s lives as their worship.
Ch. 2. Rome’s Origins according to the Ancients
2. Who was Aeneas and what did ancient writers, both Greek and Roman, find in this figure?
They found a noble ancestry for the Latin people and for Rome’s power in the figure of
Aeneas, a Trojan prince.
3. When was Troy sacked by the Greeks? How did Aeneas flee the burning Troy?
1200 B.C. Aenas fled with his son Ascanius, his father Anchises, and friends to found a
new troy.
4. Though Aeneas was not one of the outstanding heroes in Homer’s Iliad, what values does he show
that recommend him as an ancestor to the poets writing about Rome’s past?
The few references to him attest to his pietas (Latin for “fulfillment of the obligations
placed upon a person by family, community, and gods”) and to his valor in war both of which are
very important to the Romans.
5. When was the Aeneid written and by whom? What does its story concern?
The Aeneid was written by a Latin poet named Vergil in 26 to 19 B.C. The Aeneid tells of
Aeneas’ wanderings after he fled troy. Vergil believes that Aeneas left Troy knowing that it
was his destiny to found a city from which a great empire would eventually arise. Aeneas
did not know where to found this great city, so he traveled through the Mediterranean
region in search of his destiny and Vergil tells of his travels.
6. What happened, according to Virgil, during Aeneas’ stop at Carthage in North Africa? What later
historical events are connected to this?
Thanks to Aeneas’ mother Venus the queen of Carthage, Dido, falls in love with Aeneas
and he with her. When he is reminded by Mercury of his destiny he leaves Africa breaking
Dido’s heart. She commits suicide cursing all of his descendents with her death saying, “I
beg our shores to be against theirs, our seas against theirs, swords against swords.”
Dido’s curse is proposed to explain the Punic Wars, in the third and second centuries B.C.
