APFIVE AP Latin Exam Info
Download PDFThe AP Latin Exam will test your understanding of the Latin literary concepts covered in the course units, as well as your ability to translate Latin texts into English.
This is a fully digital exam. You’ll complete multiple-choice and free-response questions in the Bluebook testing app, with all responses automatically submitted at the end of the exam.
AP Latin Exam
This is the regularly scheduled date for the AP Latin Exam.
Exam Components
Section 1: Multiple-Choice Questions
This section tests your understanding of the poetry and prose readings from the course syllabus, as well as your ability to read at sight.
Questions also require you to relate the Latin texts to Roman historical, cultural, and literary contexts.
You’ll see the following 4 types of questions:
- Discrete Questions: Sight Prose and Poetry (20 questions)
- Short Sets: Sight Prose and Poetry (3 questions each, 6 questions total)
- Short Sets: Syllabus Prose and Poetry (3 questions each, 6 questions total)
- Long Sets: Syllabus Prose and Poetry (10 questions each, 20 questions total)
Section 2: Free-Response Questions
The free-response section includes 5 types of questions:
- 1 short answer question: You’ll receive a passage from the syllabus and be asked to answer 6-8 questions about the passage.
- 1 translation question: You’ll be asked to literally translate a short passage from the syllabus.
- 1 short essay question: You’ll receive a short passage from the syllabus and be asked to respond to a short answer question and write a short essay interpreting the passage using specific supporting evidence.
- 2 short essay questions: You’ll receive 1 prose and 1 poetry passage from the course project passages and be asked to summarize and interpret the passages using specific supporting evidence.
Course Project: In-Class Checkpoints
2 In-class checkpoint tasks | 2% of free-response section score
You will examine four passages as part of the in-class course project and complete two checkpoint tasks prior to the exam. These checkpoints will be scored by your teacher.
- Checkpoint 1: You’ll be asked to write a summary of 1 of the 4 project passages.
- Checkpoint 2: You’ll be asked to create a product that presents an interpretation of 1 of the 4 project passages using evidence from the Latin text.
Skills You'll Learn
Reading and comprehending Latin poetry and prose
Describing the style and context of Latin poetry and prose
Analyzing Latin poetry and prose
Units
Unit 2 – Required – Pliny's Letters: Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
You’ll read two of Pliny the Younger’s letters about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE.
You’ll focus on:
- Continuing to build on your Latin reading and comprehension skills
- Using context to aid in your literal translation of Latin
- Beginning to engage with stylistic elements and contextual facts relevant to Latin prose and Pliny the Younger’s life and works
- Continuing to develop your analytical skills of Latin texts
- Beginning to develop your own interpretations of Latin texts
- Developing sight-reading skills
Unit 3 – Required – Pliny's Letters: Ghosts and Apparitions; Letters to Trajan
You’ll read several of Pliny’s letters on a variety of topics, including Romans’ ideas about the supernatural and divine, and different types of Roman professional and personal relationships.
You’ll focus on:
- Continuing to acquire relevant cultural knowledge
- Developing textual interpretations using supporting evidence
- Answering comprehension questions that require inference
- Consolidating and reviewing core vocabulary for Pliny’s Letters
Unit 4 – Required – Vergil's Aeneid: Excerpts From Books 1 and 2
You’ll be introduced to Latin poetry and to two key leaders in the Aeneid—Aeneas and Dido—as you read about the trials of the Trojans and the roles of other mortal and divine characters in this epic.
You’ll focus on:
- Reading and comprehending Latin poetry
- Identifying stylistic features in Latin poetry
- Identifying contextual, historical, and mythological facts
- Continuing to develop your analytical skills
- Developing your ability to scan poetry in dactylic hexameter
Unit 5 – Required – Vergil's Aeneid: Excerpts From Books 4, 6, 7, 11, and 12
You’ll read more about the doomed relationship between Queen Dido and Aeneas, Aeneas’s trip to the underworld with his father Anchises, and meet the characters Turnus and Camilla in the conclusion of the epic.
You’ll focus on:
- Refining your ability to read and comprehend Vergilian poetry
- Comprehending Latin texts and their implied meanings
- Learning additional stylistic devices, features of the epic genre, and contextual facts related to Vergil and the Aeneid
- Practicing your analytical and interpretive skills