Corōnis

Corōnis (Coronis) is a sheltered-vocabulary Latin novella published by Ethan Floyd in 2020. It tells the story of a love triangle between the god Apollo and two mortals, Coronis and Andromachus. It is notable for its high word count with no glosses, which is nevertheless comprehensible thanks to an average sentence length and repetitive, predictable syntax. Also notable is its clever reimagining of a lesser-known story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Available from Amazon.

Reading level

The intended level is unclear. The author’s introduction states that this novella was written “for an 8th-grade Latin class, with whom I had been working for almost half a year when I decided to create it.” As of this writing, it is not rated by Comprehensible Antiquity.

Diverse & Multicultural Identities

For information about how representation of multicultural and diverse identities is analyzed in LNDb, see here.

Parallel cultures

No depictions identified.

Gender

Features one cis female main character (Coronis) and one cis male main character (Andromachus). Features no transgender main characters.

Sexual identity

Features a depiction of heterosexual identity: Coronis, a woman, is romantically involved with Andromachus, a man, when Apollo, a male god, comes to flirt with her.

SES/class

No depictions identified.

Religion

No depictions identified.

Disability

No depictions identified.

Language Statistics

Vocabulary

Word counts may differ from the author's advertised figures. See here for information about how words are counted in LNDb.

Word List

A complete word list for Corōnis can be found here.

Glosses

This novella contains no glosses.

Glossary

This novella contains a Latin-English glossary, with words listed by headword only. The glossary is very incomplete. Of the 437 total words used in the story, only 45 of them are included in the glossary. Teachers including this book in their FVR libraries are encouraged to use the word list feature of LNDb to provide a complete word list to students.

Syntax

The ratio of compound sentences indicates what proportion of the total sentences are compound sentences, on average. A compound sentence is defined as a sentence with multiple T-units.
The ratio of complex sentences indicates what proportion of the total sentences are complex sentences, on average. A complex sentence is defined as a sentence with one or more subordinate clauses or verb phrases.
See here for more information.

Summary

The graph above shows the vocabulary and syntax of the novella relative to the other novellas studied. A higher position on the graph means that this novella scores higher than average in this criterion. These scores are not necessarily tied to reading level; this graph is descriptive of the novella's language rather than predictive of its difficulty.

Genre & Sources

This novella is in the genre of mythological (Classical).

It is an adaptation of the story of Coronis and Apollo, found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2.531–611). It also contains a brief retelling of the story of Proserpina's abduction by Pluto.

CONTAINS SPOILERS
Coronis is a beautiful girl who lives in Greece. She has a boyfriend named Andromachus, who always gives her gifts and treats her nicely. One day Coronis tells Andromachus that she wants blue pearls instead of the white ones she has, and she promises that if Andromachus brings her blue pearls, she will marry him. Andromachus goes out in search of the pearls, and his search takes him down to the underworld. Meanwhile, on a walk through the woods, Coronis is visited by Apollo, who flirts with her, and she says she has no man in her life. Apollo returns to Olympus, and his white crow tells him that Coronis has lied to him about this. In the underworld, Pluto agrees to give Andromachus the blue pearls, but only on the condition that Andromachus give up his soul in exchange. Meanwhile, Coronis has a dream where a despondent Andromachus laments her unfaithfulness to him. Coronis wakes up, and when Apollo offers her the blue pearls she so desires, she starts to cry and shuts the door on him. Coronis hears another knock on the door, but this time it is Andromachus holding the blue pearls. They go into the woods, where Coronis confesses that she loves Andromachus, not Apollo. Apollo sees this, and shoots two arrows at the couple, but due to the tears in his eyes he accidentally kills Coronis as well as Andromachus. Apollo in anger turns to the white crow who informed him of Coronis’s lie, and asks Jupiter to strike the crow with his lightning. Jupiter reluctantly agrees, and the crow is so scorched that it turns black.

First 100 Words

Underlined words are glossed in the text.

Corōnis pulchra puella est. Corōnis habitat in Graeciā. Corōnis habet amīcum. nōmen amīcō est Andromachus. Andromachus Corōnem amat. Andromachus cotīdiē Corōnem ōsculātur et complectitur. Corōnis autem Andromachum nōn amat.
Corōnis sīc putat: “Andromachus est fortis et Andromachus est pulcher. placent mihi fortitūdo et pulchritūdo. Androcmachus etiam pecūniam habet. placet mihi pecūnia!”
Corōnis putat Andromachum esse fortem et pulchrum. Corōnis Andromachum nōn amat. quamquam Corōnis Andromachum nōn amat, cotīdiē Andromachum ōsculātur et complectitur quia placent Corōnī fortitūdo, pulchritūdo, et pecūnia.
Andromachus pecūniōsus est et multa mūnera amīcae dat. Andromachus cotīdiē gemmās Corōnī dat. Corōnis igitur multās gemmās habet. Andromachus multās margarītās Corōnī dat. ...

Studies show that a reader should understand 98% of the words in a text in order to have a good chance of comprehending it. One rule of thumb is to read the first hundred words and count the number of unfamiliar words. If there are two or fewer unfamiliar words, it can be read without much difficulty. Three to five unfamiliar words is possible to read, but may be difficult. If there are six or more unfamiliar words, the text may be too difficult.

Supplementary Materials

If you have resources for Corōnis and would like to share them on LNDb, please contact me.

Presentation

Illustrations? no
Illustrator N/A
Macrons? yes
Font Calibri Light, 16 pt
Pages of story 45
Total pages 61
Chapters 10

Key Information

Publication date March 8, 2020
Publisher Independently published
ISBN 1661893287
ISBN-13 978-1661893286