Sources, Style and the Whole-Theme Answer
This final lesson on Heroes and Villains pulls together three skills tested on the literature and sources paper: reading the picture sources, analysing literary style in the prescribed Latin, and building a longer evaluative answer that ranges across the whole theme. The paper is open-book, so you will have a clean copy of the resource booklet in front of you — the skill being tested is not memorising translations, but knowing the material well enough to select the right evidence quickly.
The theme paper always uses one or more of six prescribed picture sources — coins, a statue, a relief and a painting — alongside the seven prescribed passages of Latin literature. Questions may ask you to analyse either type of evidence, or to combine them.
The Six Picture Sources
Each picture source connects to the theme’s three big ideas: what makes a Roman hero, whether women can be heroes, and what a Roman anti-hero looks like. When you analyse a source, describe exactly what you can see, then say what specific fact or idea it illustrates — a vague description does not show the detailed knowledge the question is asking for, while a precise one does.
Source 1 is a Roman coin showing Aeneas — the legendary ancestor of the Roman people — leaving burning Troy, leading his son Ascanius by the hand while carrying his elderly father, Anchises, on his back. Anchises himself holds the household gods, the penates, meaning the family’s protective spirits travel with them into exile.
Source 2, the Capitoline Wolf, shows the she-wolf suckling the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus after they were left by the river Tiber on the orders of their great-uncle, Amulius, who feared they might one day challenge his throne.
Source 3 is the Prima Porta statue of the emperor Augustus, found at his wife Livia’s villa. His breastplate shows the return of Roman military standards that had been captured by the Parthians years earlier — presented as proof that the gods favoured Augustus and Rome.
Source 4 is a bas-relief showing Tullia driving her chariot over the body of her own father, King Servius Tullius, after his murder — an image used to present her as a villain who put ambition before family loyalty.
Source 5 is a nineteenth-century painting by Cesare Maccari showing the consul Cicero addressing the Senate while the conspirator Catiline sits apart from the other senators, isolated and ignored.
Source 6 is a coin minted by Brutus after the assassination of Julius Caesar. It shows a freedman’s cap between two daggers — the cap standing for liberty, the daggers standing for the weapons used to kill Caesar — presenting the murder as an act that restored freedom to Rome.
Reading a Source Like an Examiner
A weak answer to a source question describes what a source shows without linking that description to a specific factual point. Saying ‘the coin shows a man carrying someone’ is a description; saying ‘the coin shows Aeneas carrying his father Anchises, showing that Roman heroism involved family duty over personal safety’ is analysis. Always finish your point by explaining exactly what the detail proves about the hero or villain.
A strong source answer names a specific detail in the source and then connects it directly to a fact about the person or event it shows, rather than giving a general impression.
Literary Style: Name, Quote, Explain
Style questions ask you to analyse the effect of the Latin, using devices such as chiasmus, asyndeton and polysyndeton. Naming a device on its own does not show analysis. To analyse the effect you need to quote the Latin, give a short translation, and explain the effect it creates.
In Livy’s account of Horatius at the bridge, the historian writes that Horatius began nunc singulos provocare, nunc increpare omnes — ‘now to challenge them individually, now to rebuke them all’. The word order mirrors itself, balancing Horatius’s one-to-one defiance against his contempt for the whole enemy line in a single, tightly-constructed sentence.
Sallust piles up Sempronia’s crimes without a single connecting word: fidem prodiderat, creditum abiuraverat, caedis conscia fuerat — ‘she had betrayed trust, denied a debt on oath, been an accomplice in murder’. The lack of ‘and’ between the three clauses gives the list a rapid, breathless rhythm, piling up accusations one after another.
Virgil’s description of the citizens who finally turn on the tyrant Mezentius uses alliteration: fessi tandem cives infanda furentem — ‘his citizens, worn out at last, [surrounded] him raging unspeakably’. The repeated f sounds in fessi and furentem link the citizens’ exhaustion to the king’s fury, stressing how long they had endured him.
The same passage describes Mezentius joining living and dead bodies together: componens manibusque manus atque oribus ora — ‘joining hands to hands and faces to faces’. The repeated -que and atque (‘and’) slow the line down, forcing the reader to dwell on each gruesome pairing in turn.
Sallust describes Sempronia’s speech as vel modesto vel molli vel procaci — ‘either modest or tender or shameless’. The repeated vel and the matching vowel sounds in modesto and molli create a smooth, listing rhythm before the harsher final word, procaci, breaks the pattern to land on her more shocking side.
Virgil introduces Camilla mid-battle as an Amazon — a legendary warrior woman — in the line at medias inter caedes exsultat Amazon — ‘but right in the middle of the slaughter, the Amazon runs wild’. Calling her by this name before giving her own name creates an implied comparison, presenting Camilla as more than human before we even learn who she is.
A thorough style answer has three parts: the Latin quotation, an accurate short translation, and a specific explanation of the effect — never the device name on its own.
The Extended Evaluative Response: Evidence Across the Whole Theme
At least one question on the theme paper asks for an extended evaluative response — a longer, essay-style answer built around the theme’s three big ideas: the characteristics of a Roman hero, whether women can be heroes, and what makes a Roman anti-hero. This question always needs evidence gathered from across the whole theme, not from a single passage or source.
An answer that relies on only one text cannot meet the requirement to use evidence from across the whole theme. An answer that discusses only Horatius, for example, cannot show a sustained line of reasoning about heroism in general. Strong answers move between texts and sources — comparing Horatius’s physical courage with Cicero’s political courage, or setting Camilla’s battlefield heroism against Sempronia’s and Tullia’s villainy to build a genuine argument about whether gender changed how Roman writers judged behaviour.
For the question ‘Can women be heroes?’, a strong plan might use: Camilla (Virgil) as evidence that a woman could be shown as heroic in battle, fighting exactly like the male warriors around her; Sempronia (Sallust) as evidence that female daring was more often condemned than praised when it broke social convention; Tullia (Source 4) and Cleopatra (Propertius, described only as femina — ‘the woman’) as evidence that ambitious women were remembered as villains rather than heroes.
The final paragraph should reach a clear judgement — for example, that Roman writers were willing to admire female courage on the battlefield but far less willing to admire female ambition off it — supported by evidence drawn from at least three different texts or sources across the theme.