Barr's volume of Cicero's Pro Cluentio covers the selections for 2023–2024 of the OCR A Level Latin Group 1 and 2 prose texts; further extracted by OCR from the Humfrey Grose-Hodge edition: Murder at Larinum published in 1931 and reprinted in 1992. This history is unremarkable but for the fact that this leads to considerable confusion with the numbering of sections between different editions of the text and a genuine challenge in locating the correct (Group 2) English section.
Certainly, Barr's edition is more modern than the reprinted Grose-Hodge edition, updating the somewhat alarming 1932 preface that states the text will ‘improve boy's style of prose composition, but it can be used with great profit even by girls and those not aiming to compose in Latin’. Instead, Barr states that the volume is ‘designed to guide any student who has mastered Latin up to GCSE level and wishes to read Cicero's text of Pro Cluentio in the original’.
The book's introduction is divided up, much like other volumes in this series, with a clear introduction to the life of Cicero, the nature of the trial in which the Pro Cluentio was given, and some background to the trial along with Oppianicus’ crimes. Given the truly astonishing obfuscation with which Cicero chooses to bewilder his jury, Barr elegantly and clearly sets out these elements, providing, in an additional section-by-section summary, a helpful aide memoire to teachers and students alike.
A didactic summary of Cicero's literary style follows, providing helpful hints in answering questions on style as well as a useful glossary of literary terms, and a handful of suggestions for further reading.
The text that follows is set out in the OCR/Bloomsbury house style. This means that the small print text is spaced so there is little room to annotate, but the corners of the pages indicate which sections relate to AS level and which to A level. It is certainly, as a teacher, always intensely reassuring to have to hand the text that you know will be the same as that used in the examination.
The commentary that follows is extremely helpful in clarifying less obvious grammatical quirks and I have rarely found myself without support when pondering over a meaning. The commentary also picks out relevant rhetorical techniques and gives relevant explanations for ideas, terms and events.
As is normal in these volumes, the vocabulary is set out with words in the OCR AS Defined Vocabulary List usefully marked with an asterisk.
The key disadvantage to these Bloomsbury/ OCR volumes is how short-lived they are. As an investment for a school this is expensive; particularly given that a student will usually need both a workbook where comments and additional vocabulary may be written, as well as vocabulary for each section. Further, the volumes do not include a translation of the sections that need to be studied in English for the A Level (Group 2) prescription. Because of the bitty nature of the exam board's selection, and the fact that the English sections are not provided, buying a class set would not make sense for subsequent years after the exam prescription has changed. This is, however, a very helpful book and I, and those of my students who have bought a copy, have been grateful for it.
Open access
