Announcing a new classroom resource for the revised 2025-26 AP Latin Exam!

Contents include:

• Pliny’s love letters to his wife Calpurnia (Epistulae 6.4 and 6.7)

• The two letters to Tacitus detailing Pliny’s eyewitness account of the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder (Epistulae 6.16 and 6.20)

• Pliny’s letter concerning ghosts and marvels, containing his famous ghost story (Epistulae 7.27)

• Two Letters addressed to Trajan concerning Roman citizenship (and Trajan’s response) (Epistulae 10.5-10.7)

• And Pliny’s two famous letters concerning aqueducts (Epistulae 10.37 and 10.90

What’s more, this book is unique among AP Latin textbooks. Rather than presenting the letters in the traditional way (i.e. the original text, vocabulary, and grammatical/historical commentary), Darkness Over Pompeii is a tiered reader, meaning each Letter is divided up into four sections (or tiers): The first tier is a simplified version of the original, the second one is more complex, the third is a slightly modified version of the original with marginal glosses, and the final tier is the original text. 

Below is a sample from Letter 5 “Phantasmata” (Ep. 7.27):

Also, throughout summer 2025 and the following school year, I will release accompanying videos on the new Comprehensible Classics Youtube channel. My plan is eventually to have visual and audio materials covering the entire AP Latin syllabus.

Purchase Darkness Over Pompeii: Selections from Pliny the Younger’s Letters: A Tiered Latin Reader here.