Amo, Amas, Amat! Teenage AS-level pupils asked to comment on sexual intercourse scenes in Latin exam

Students aged 16 to 17 were marked on their 'personal response' to the erotic poems

Leading academic questions appropriateness of racy passages

Exam board defends inclusion of Ovid's The Amores



Even the most diligent of AS-level students may not have been fully prepared for one of the questions in their recent Latin exam.

Young classicists – usually aged between 16 and 17 – were asked to read and offer a ‘personal response’ to an ancient but explicit account of sexual intercourse.

The passage from The Amores - one of Ovid’s collection of erotic poetry - describes in the racy embrace of two lovers.

Erotic: An erotic scene from Ovid's The Amores, as painted by Adolphe William Bouguereau, caused controversy among academics after its inclusion in an AS-level exam

A version of the poem translates on passage as '... slip off your chemise without a blush and let him get his thigh well over yours.



'And let him thrust his tongue as far as it will go into your coral mouth and let passion prompt you to all manner of pretty devices.



'WITHOUT A BLUSH': A RACY PASSAGE FROM OVID'S AMORES

'... slip off your chemise without a blush and let him get his thigh well over yours.

'And let him thrust his tongue as far as it will go into your coral mouth and let passion prompt you to all manner of pretty devices.

'Talk lovingly. Say all sorts of naughty things, and let the bed creak and groan as you writhe with pleasure.'

Ovid Amores III.14, translation by J. Lewis May

'Talk lovingly. Say all sorts of naughty things, and let the bed creak and groan as you writhe with pleasure.'

The addition of the passage, which was part of a longer section of verse from Ovid's poems published in the 1st century BC, in the exam for children provoked consternation from one leading academic.



Professor John Ellis, a reader in physics at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and fellow at Gonville and Caius College, said the exam board was not in their 'right minds' to include the passage for children as young as 16.

He told the Times: 'How would a school react to such material distributed on their premises?



'Many teachers would have glossed over this extract, assuming no one in their right minds would set it in an exam.'

The text featured in an AS-level Latin paper on Tuesday set by the University of Cambridge OCR board.

Controversial: The inclusion of passages from explicit erotic poetry in AS-level exams - typically sat by pupils aged 16 and 17 - has been criticised by a leading academic. (file picture)

Students were awarded up to 10 marks out of a total of 100 on the paper for their answers. Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge, defended the inclusion of the text, telling the Times: 'Please, let's not go back to the days when kids were not supposed to read some poems of, say, Catullus, because some old codger had thought they might get corrupted.'

An OCR spokesman said not including the passages would be tantamount to 'censorship' and would deny students the opportunity to study some of the finest elegiac poems ever written.

The elegiac style is a poetic technique where each couplet usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.



The spokesman said: 'Ovid’s Amores poems are considered by professionals to be some of the finest examples of elegiac poetry that there are.



'To censor such material would only leave young adults with a false perception of their area of study. If such censorship were to be applied to English literature it would preclude coverage of the works of DH Lawrence, Chaucer and even Shakespeare.'



