Erictho

13/12/24: We are happy to announce that our book, Erictho, Tartarorum Terror, is finally ready to ship! You can order it via Amazon. Currently available in US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA, AU (if having trouble ordering, please try your local Amazon website). We’re going to expand distribution to other markets via Ingram Spark. A PDF version will be available at a later date.

Order Erictho now!

Even the gods of the Underworld fear her

Erictho is perhaps the most fearsome witch of antiquity. She’s so abominable she cannot even enter into places of human habitation but must dwell in defiled and emptied tombs in remote cemeteries. Her breath itself is poisonous and magical. She can create zombies that can see the future. She can open fissures in the Earth to yell down into the Underworld. All of these are reasons we chose to make a reader focused on her. A compelling story is a highly effective tool for learning, and we believe Erictho to be a highly compelling character.

Erictho is featured in book VI of Lucan’s Dé Belló Cívílí, an epic poem about the conflict between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. Our reader, Ericthó, Tartarórum Terror, consists of selected lines from this poem that are rephrased in two different levels of Latin prose, furnished with illustrations and a detailed Latin-to-Latin glossary.

The contents of Erictho, Tartarorum Terror

  • 13,500 words of Latin and a spellbinding potrayal of Thessaly’s most terrifying and powerful witch, Erictho.
  • Gradus prímus: an intermediate-level prose retelling of Lucan’s verses aiming at maximum comprehension.
  • Gradus secundus: a more advanced prose retelling that is closer to the morphology, syntax and vocabulary of Lucan.
  • Versús Lúcání: the unadapted poetry of Lucan, numbering 222 select verses.
  • An intermediate-friendly Latin-Latin glossary so readers can spend more time thinking in Latin—and less time stuck in the dictionary!
  • Numerous illustrations providing visual reinforcement of important vocabulary.
  • A Latin introduction to pronunciation and metrics sufficient to read hexameter poetry, plus the necessary background information about the text and its author.
  • An English introduction detailing our approach to writing the book and offering methodological advice to teachers who wish to use it, as well as advanced hints for reading hexameter poetry.
Where to buy

Available for order on Amazon. Will be released on IngramSpark for those countries where Amazon doesn’t ship to, with a PDF option to follow at a later date.

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Helping to bridge a difficult transition

It’s difficult to provide learners with enough exposure or input to Latin so that they can become proficient readers of historical Latin texts. Input or exposure is not memorizing paradigms and vocabulary lists – we mean texts students can enjoy and understand! This gap in knowledge calls for a bridge. Tiered readers can help build this bridge by meeting students where they are. They are made up of tiers that increase in difficulty, building the reader up and preparing them to read the final tier which is the original Latin text.