I am studying Catullus 101 in Latin. I have to learn the poem off by heart. I have done the scansion, but I'm not sure how that's supposed to help with the actual speaking it...

1 answer

Having the scansion done correctly should help you with the pronunciation -- stressing the right syllables, etc. (I've put the stressed syllables in CAPS below.)

MULtas per GENtes et MULta per AEquora VECtus
adVEnio has MIseras, FRAter, ad inFERias,
ut te posTREmo doNArem muNEre MORtis
et MUtam neQUIquam alLOquerer CInerem.


Try speaking the lines out loud, and remember that these are sentences. There's no reason to stop at the end of every line if there's no end punctuation there.

=)