Harris Complete Latin Grammar

Preface
As you open this web file, you may well be wondering to yourself: "Why one more book of Latin Grammar...?" which is altogether not an unlegitimate question. Let me try to answer succinctly: I have observed that in in our new global society there is a unfounded belief that if you describe each segment of a machine or a project or an operation in fine detail, the cumulation of many detailed statements will add up to an understanding of "the whole". I believe there is a logical error in this approach. The first sentence of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics emphasizes the importance (if not overall value) of the most general approach, which is something we often fail to recognize in our preference for the ultimate exactness in discrete analysis. Latin "grammarbooks" are constructed as series of lessons, each incorporating a well-defined, small area to be learned before going on. It is not surprising that students who have gone through all the "lessons" usually have no sense of the linguistic outline of the language as a working system. But at the other end of the spectrum a Manual like that of Allen & Greenough, ed. D'Ooge l906 (out of print!) or even better the large Hale with its excellent examples (also OP) , offers a mass of micro-articles on every aspect of Latin grammar, but no way to see the forest for the trees This Project has two purposes: a) To deliver an "architectonic view" of the Latin linguistic system, with a sense of what the parts mean and where they fit into a working linguistic whole. b) At the same time to present a rational explanation of the individual components as they are described (paradigms and all), in the belief that we know enough about practical linguistics at this time to revamp the Classical traditional-ese jargon and talk about Latin as a language-system which was quite satisfactory for well over a millennium of varied communications. Students need to know fact and detail, and at the same time where it is all going to fit in, what the whole will look like. This is a problem in many of the modern science studies, where micro-detail can lose the overall sense of pattern. It is in this spirit that the present project on the Latin Language is undertaken, with the hope that those who have gone through the first stage of learning the basic forms and configuration, will now be able to review what they have studied in an enlightening fashion, and receive some mentoring advice on how to proceed toward a fast and effective reading knowledge of Latin. Latinists have for centuries pored over paragraphs with Biblical devotion, we now need technique for reading ancient books as live literature, and to do this we need some new tooling. Perhaps this Project will offer some of these tools. *** The purpose of this monograph is to provide a clear and uncluttered description of the Latin language as it was used in ancient times. The author feels it is important to strip away as much of the descriptive technical jargon which has adhered to Latin as seems reasonable, and furthermore to describe every feature of the language simply, succinctly, and in plain English. Some amplification is necessary but the advancing student 1
will find reference grammar books on every library list. All the variants, rules and exceptions, and examples of syntactic usage are important later, but for the beginner we want to set forth the outlines clearly. Neither the jargon of the ancient grammarians, nor the involved terminology of modern structuralists seem suitable for our purposes, so we will go it alone with a new map in a very old and venerable territory. *** At the start, that important question: Why study Latin? Arguments pro and con are long and tedious, I shall try to dig down to bedrock as directly as possible? I believe there are only two real reasons for learning Latin. First, there is a certain number of wor1d-class Classical writers and thinkers who wrote works which are absolutely untranslatable. Robert Frost once said that "poetry is what is lost in translation", one of those short truths which is inescapable. In the last thirty years we have developed, probably as a survival technique in our college Classics departments, courses of Classics in English Translation, so that now hundreds read Vergil in English for every one who reads him in the original. Some of the translators have been gifted writers, indeed. But there lurks in this process an inherent lie: Vergil in Latin is the real Vergil, even if read slowly and painfully, while the English is quite another kind of book, and incidentally a much weaker one. Having taught Vergil in Latin for many years, I alternately laugh and sigh when I look (briefly) into the translations. Some things are simply not convertible to another form and format, and the high Art of writing is one of these. Second, there is another quite different reason: The social documentary approach. Terence said long ago that nothing human was uninteresting to him, and now that we have a in our historical studies a developed sense of social relevance, we find fascinating information about that elusive fellow --- Man --- in all ancient documents. The human condition two thousand years ago was similar to our world, but very different; and it is the varying formula for the degree of difference which makes social studies in ancient society fascinating. Everything from inscriptions on stone, Cicero's personal letters, the novelistic portrayal of Trimalchio at his insane dinner party, the rising of a new and very nervous Christian consciousness --- these are all fascinating parts of the rare material which comprises human history. Especially interesting now is the social history of the masses, the populus minutus as they were called by the Romans. Now, if high art and social studies are the two good reasons for the study of Latin, then what are the bad or questionable ones? "Latin teaches you English." It may do so, but if you want to study English, study English, and you will come out ahead. For sheer vocabulary Latin confers a lot, on the other hand wide reading in English and use of the dictionary teaches you English fast enough. "Latin is first rate exercise for the mind, is strengthens your brain." Studying anything hard and well improves your concentration and your mental track record, but recall that the brain is made up of nerve connections, not muscles, and it does not grow like the body-builder's arms, by the lifting of dead weights. "Latin is logical, and teaches you to think clearly." This was first proposed formally in the 16 th c. by the Spanish scholar Sanctius (Sanchez) in his book "Minerva, sive de Causis Linguae Latinae...." which belaboredly made its point by rewriting Latin grammar as a system of logic, and maintaining the argument by casuistic argumentation. Sanchez did a great deal of damage to Post Renaissance thought, and it was only with the coming of modern Linguistics in the last hundred years that we reclassified his work in our library
catalogs under the category of Curious Linguistic Rubbish. But as archaeologists know, rubbish often has a longer life than art, and some people still unknowingly follow Minerva's thread. "Latin is still basic learning, like the three R's, and in a day of applied studies, like cooking, driving, drug abuse awareness, and personality development, Latin as proven learning must be real and valuable." But this is just a reaction, a backward movement toward something less bad....and it is fortified by America's newest neurosis: NOSTALGIA. Nostalgia for old clothes, old trinkets, even old, poorly designed and made furniture, old anything for your closet of Collectibles. And you can put in good old Latin too, if it amuses you. None of these bad reasons for studying Latin is completely without point, the mind from seeing the two really important reasons for doing this serious and arduous course of study. Let me recap for emphasis the valid reasons, which I believe, are: l) The study of high art, carefully constructed prose and brilliant poetry from the ancient world. 2) The detailed study of Man and his thin web of recent history, on the personal rather than political level, in terms of the web of History. If you concentrate on these aspects of Latin study, you will find rich rewards, which I believe will remunerate you for the hard work you will have to put in to get a decent reading knowledge of the Latin language.
Background
1) Latin is of the Indo-European family of languages, a group which spread rapidly across Europe and south into India some time after the last glaciation, retreated some 15,000 years ago. Indic, Iranian, Greek, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavonic as the major groups, and a number of other branches such as Armenian and Hittite, stem from the original, now lost, parent speech which we call Indo-European. In Europe only Basque, Etruscan, Hungarian and Finnish are of non-Indo European origin. For a full statement of this remarkable linguistic/historical event, I recommend the article Indo-European in the 11 th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (this classic edition from l910 is found in almost any good library collection) which states the evidence in some detail and with reasonable accuracy overall. 2) Latin is one of the numerous Indo-European dialects which had penetrated into Italy before 1200 B.C. It attained widespread use slowly with the spread of Roman military supremacy, and by 250 B.C. was the dominant tongue in Italy; by the time of Christ it was the lingua franca of the Western part of Europe, while the Near East, Greece and southern Italy with Sicily retained Greek as the primary language. Latin continued as the common language of Feudal Europe, and became the scholarly means of communication for most purposes through the 18 th century, after which the various European tongues asserted themselves. Writing in Latin has a long range, from early plays of Roman Comedy in rustic style about 200 B.C., through the Augustan period's great Classical artists, into the Church Fathers of the 4/ 5 th c. A.D., on to becomeing the lingua franca of the Renaissance, and even into a curious academic dialect called "Modern Latinity" in the post-Renaissance world. By the 8 th c. A.D. Latin was becoming a "dead language", as the nascent forms of the Romanic (or Romance) Languages started to develop throughout Charlemagne's Empire. Latin remained then as the lingua franca for all legal, theological, scientific and international writing, and it was an important means of communication in written and spoken form for another thousand years, so the terms dead and alive don't seem particularly pertinent. In the 20 th. C. Latin is clearly "dead", but its literature in the original, and even in its weakened form in translation, is clearly alive and flourishing.
The Idea of Latin Grammar

Latin, in common with its Indo-European congeners, is an inflected language, which basically means that "roots" or basic units of form with standardized meaning are extended and further defined by grammatical syllables fused onto them for extended meaning. So a Latin word typically has these sections:
ROOT, which may be a noun, like "woman, patience, war" etc. and fused with this will be other elements, such as noun-endings, denoting "how many", or ideas like "of, to, from" and whether the concept is an active actor, or acted upon. VERB endings, denoting time of the action, whether it is now, in the future, or in various aspects of the past; as well as the number of people involved, and whether they are I/us, you/you-all, or he(she)/they. NOUNS generally denote things, verbs actions, but more important is the formal fact that they have specialized structure and endings, in short look and work entirely differently from verbs. Some verbs are fabricated from nouns, and vice versa, but the process of identification is simple and you will understand the differences between them when you see the variety of their actual forms, what the Linguist calls their "morphology".
Let us take a few examples: NOUNS: The word "amatoribus" originally starts with the verb root ama- meaning "love", but our starting point is the noun amator "lover"(the dictionary form). Fused to this is the ending -ibus, which has two connotations: a) plural, "they" b) "to, for" and also possibly "from". Reading the word amatoribus, we understand not only "lover", but more specifically "lovers" (plural), and also that something is being given to or taken away from these lovers (via the case ending). Most words in Latin have this kind of composite signification, which seems strange to users of languages which feature basic words with few modifiers, like English and Chinese. VERBS: The verb amabantur has the same root ama- but here it is used verbally, which I can tell immediately from the type of endings used. The syllable -ba- means "was doing it, used to..." (imperfect tense), the -nt- tells us that more than one persons did it, and also that it was a "they" concept, as against a "we" or "you-all" concept. And the -ur- at the end indicates that the action was being done to them, i.e. we are dealing with a grammatical passive form. Putting it all together, we can authentically state that "they were being loved", which tells us everything except the sex of the persons involved. Verbs usually do not note sex, nouns often do, but not always. Sex or gender is noted in other ways, to be sure, but not directly and formally in the Latin noun-verb structure.
We have thus noted the existence of the two major grammatical classifications of words, the NOUNS and the VERBS. Beside these are several other classes of words: ADJECTIVES are basically nouns in most of their forms, that is they look like nouns, but they accompany nouns and tell us something about the nouns they modify. So vir bonus means "a good man", actually "man.. good" and the second word is descriptive, hence an adjective. (Note that Latin does not use articles with its nouns, like the English word "the". Convenient as it seems to us, the Romans seemed to manage perfectly well without it). PRONOUNS include the group "he, she, it, they, that one, this one here" etc. They are an odd class in themselves, sometimes being written like nouns, sometimes by their own pattern (dating back to IndoEuropean times), They are often called irregular in the manuals, which means that they will be difficult to remember. But they are quite common in use, so one just has to learn them on their own terms. PARTICIPLES have noun-adjective endings grafted onto verb roots, sometimes used descriptively as adjectives. or sometimes as nouns. They correspond to the English words ending in "-ing" when used descriptively, as "running, dancing" etc. (But do not confuse these with the English nouns like "running", as in the phrase "Running is healthy", which is a Latin Gerund!) Participles compare with the "running nose" and the "overflowing cup". As an example: sequentes "following - plural - subject", as in "following the herd", but also in many cases the allied noun-idea of "followers". In short participles are verbal adjectives, sometimes used as verbal nouns. INFINITIVES are much like English "to love" "to hear" etc. They go along with verbs but often are used in special constructions to denote quoted or hearsay information (Indirect Discourse, which is complicated, of which more later). Infinitives can be used as nouns, as "to hear is good", although this use is not common, since there is a great plenty of abstract nouns which do the same thing more clearly. PREFIXES are like verbal endings, except they are fused onto the beginning of the root rather than the end. Typical are com- "with", in- "not", contra- "against" pro- "toward", and they often join permanently with verbs to make specialized standardized meanings, as con-iungere "join together, (hence) marry". Prefixes may also be used with nouns, either fused with the noun stem so as to become a compound, or standing as separate words in front of them, and requiring or "taking" a certain noun ending or "case". So in urbem "into the city" shows two separate words, but the second one, because of the nature of the prefix inmeaning "into", it is in the object or accusative case. In urbe "in the city" is different in meaning, with the second word turned into the in- or ablative case, denoting location. More of this when we get into the actual meanings of the cases. ADVERBS are fixed or non-inflected words which amplify or describe a verb, witness their name ad verbum "toward a verb". They often don't look like as a class, and you learn them generally as individual words, e.g. cras "tomorrow", mane "early in the morning". But fortiter and belle " bravely" and "prettily" show the two more common endings (-ter and -e), but there is no one ending for this odd class of words. Adverbs like primo "first" are in the Ablative Case, but frozen. Put in here also words like 0 "oh'.", eheu "alas", and the semi-meaningless markers of rhetoric and poetry (autem and enim), used much like the English conversational "Well..." and "Now...". We have now described in very rough outline a few of the basic types of the forms and features of the Latin language, next we will go back and describe each class in detail, noting all the usable forms as found in the 6
regular Classical authors. Remember that the Latin we have is the result of four centuries of "purification and standardization" by generations of schoolmamsters in the period of the Empire before 400 A.D.. In the Manuscripts and Inscriptions are hundreds of variants which stem from common usage, e.g. "davit" for dedit in a 4 th c. Inscr., or the list of "wrong forms" in the standardizing Appendix Probi. But the Latin we learn in school is the "standardized" version, just as our school French is authorized Acadmie Franaise French.
The Noun System

NOUNS, across the board, have three orientations, expressed, as we noted before, by fused-on endings. These functions are: 1. GENDER/SEX: (masculine, feminine and neuter), applies basically to men women and things, but is greatly extended into "grammatical sexuality", so that some classes of things fall quite arbitrarily into sex-classes. Most of these arbitrary sex-connections must simply be learned by experience, as in most other Indo-European and modern European languages. 2. NUMBER , or the distinction between singular and plural. (Some languages have a "dual" category, of which Latin has only vestiges, e.g. ambo, duo, where the long -o- is an Indo-European dual.) 3. CASE (the traditional term, and convenient) is actually syntactical relationship of the noun to other verbal elements in the sentence. The cases in Latin are six in the singular form, and an equal number in the plural. They are given here in the traditional order (so that you can use standard grammatical reference books): o a) SUBJECT (traditional Nominative so named by the old Roman schoolmasters in Latin). This means the word is the actor or doer in the sentence, and corresponds to the first of the regular three element sequence (subject-verb-object) which English adopted a thousand years ago after the loss of its inherited case-endings. So in the phrase "Henry kicks Fido", Henry is the subject in English by its position, in Latin by its subject case ending. (There are complications here, of which more later...) o b) POSSESSIVE or traditional Genitive. This is pretty much the same as English "of..."as in " Necessity is the mother of invention..." o c) DATIVE. The function of "to..for" are the old Dative (from Latin da- "give ....to", hence the Giving Case.. This form can be used as thhe Indirect Object (He gives it to him), or it may refer to some benefit or injury to a person. Intellectually it is best to think of this as the "to.. .for" case, or the old term Dative may be more useful. o d) DIRECT OBJECT or the old Accusative. Simple accusation is not involved (j'accuse....), but rather pointing the finger or directing some action at or toward someone or something. Again note "Henry kicks Fido" where poor old Fido is the object of the verb "kicks". Or more simply "he sees him, he loves her." This is the difference between the vestigial English "who" and "whom", "he" and "him". But it is implicit and more usable in English in the "third position placement" we all employ unconsciously: Subject...Verb... Object (Joe...sees.....Jane = Object). The idea is perfectly straightforward, it is just the difference between the way Latin and English go about representing it which is so confusing for us. o e) ABLATIVE. This case denotes "in, on" as well as "from" relationships, which seems semantically perverse since the meanings are so different. But so it is, the result of "Case Syncretism" or the fusing together of different concepts which origianly had different cases in the Indo-European mother-tongue. This case is partly Locative (place), but it can be Agent (by means of) and the old name Ablative (from ab-latus "carried away" describes only a third fused function (from). To complicate an already confounding situation, the concept "with" is 8
present when used with the preposition cum "with"! There is nothing straightforward about this case! *** In outline then, to make it a bit more clear, we have something like this: SINGULAR PLURAL Nominative Subject Subject Genitive Possessive Possessive Dative "to/for" "to/for" Accusative Object Object Ablative "from/by/in" "from/by/in" Vocative "hey there" Several things deserve one more word. The Vocative exists only in the singular of masculine Class II nouns which you will see below, so generally you will have five cases in the singular rather than six. And in the plural of all classes (see below) the Dative and Ablative plurals have one form, hence plurals will have only four case forms. Asymmetry in language is normal, although some languages like Turkish have crystalline regularity....For asymmetry, just consider hodge-podge English.' *** Now that we have outlined the CASES, we should list the five CLASSES or DECLENSIONS to which all the Latin nouns belong. A CLASS (which we number I II III IV V) is traditionally called a Declension (They were actually so named by Roman school masters because they descend or "decline" down the Roman schoolboy's tablet. The Romans believed in rote memorization, for centuries we enforced the notorious "amo amas amat..., a poor alternative to Inductive Reading.) Each Declension is structurally different in its forms (endings) from the others, and a word normally belongs to one class and one class only. Nouns do not switch classes, there is no reason to, since they all mean semantically the same thing in terms of Gender/Sex, Case and number. As you learn a new word, you automatically note its class, and sex (gender), since you will need this information for reading. Now we will describe the five classes of Latin nouns, and give a typical example of a word in each class
The First Declension

Here is an example of the First Declension, the Feminine Nouns:
CLASS: Noun I Declension, Fem. "girl" SINGULAR PLURAL puella puellae puellae puellarum puellae puellis puellam puellas puella. puellis CLASS: Noun I Declension, Masc.! . "sailor"
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
SINGULAR nauta nautae nautae nautam naut
PLURAL nautae nautarum nautis nautas nautis
See the exhaustive List of Masculine nouns in the First declension. A few words are conjugated as reflections of the Greek originals:
CLASS: Noun 1 Declension, Masc. SINGULAR Aeneas Aeneae Aeneae Aenean Aene
Two things to note: 1) Nauta is masculine, although the forms looks feminine, and an adjective will be masculine, e.g. bonus nauta. 2) I have marked the Ablative Singular with a dot after the final -a to indicate that it is "long" phonematically (more about this later). This is a particularly annoying form in reading, which is why I mention the matter here. See Particularites of the First Declension.
The Second Declension

The Second Declension has two types, here first are the Masculines:
CLASS: Noun II Declension, Masc. "slave" SINGULAR PLURAL servus servi servi servorum servo servis servum servos servo servis CLASS: Noun II Declension, Neut. "gift" SINGULAR PLURAL donum dona doni donorum dono donis donum dona dono donis
But there is a Neuter class, which similar in many forms to the Masculine:
In the Second Declension the Neuters are distinguished from the Masculines only in the NominativeAccusatives of Singular, and in the Nominative-Accusatives of the Plural. The other forms are identical with the Masculines. Note: there is no difference between the nominative and accusative singulars in the Neuters, or between the nominative and accusative plurals.
CLASS: Noun II Declension, Masc. "man"
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SINGULAR vir viri viro virum viro
PLURAL viri virorum viris viros viris
In some Decl. II nouns the nominative ends in -r, historically by loss of the vowel in a proto-form *vir-u-s , (cf. Lithuanian vyras) by consolidation of -rs- (not acceptable as a sound in Latin) as -r, giving vir "man"! But the other forms are normal, e.g. gen.sg. viri. See Particularities of the Second Declension.
The Third Declension

There are many stem-types in this third declension, some ending in -p-, others in a guttural as -g- or -c-, dentals in -t- or -d-. The Third Declension is in a sense a catch-all for various stem-types, and can be very confusing. It can have words of several genders. But it is the similarity of the endings which binds all these disparate words together. Remember a word belongs to a given Declension class, there are no differences in meaning other than appearance and gender in the five noun classes. Here are some typical examples in the Third Declension:
CLASS: Noun III Declension, Masc. "king" SINGULAR PLURAL rex reges regis regum regi (i- long) regibus regem reges/regis rege regibus CLASS: Noun III Declension, Masc. "soldier" SINGULAR PLURAL miles milites militis militum militi militibus militem milites milite militibus CLASS: Noun III Declension, Masc "leader" SINGULAR PLURAL dux duces ducis ducum duci ducibus ducem duces duce ducibus CLASS: Noun III Declension, Neut. "head" SINGULAR PLURAL caput capita capitis capitum capiti capitibus caput capita capite capitibus
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
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Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
CLASS: Noun III Declension, SINGULAR pater patris patri patrem patre CLASS: Noun III Declension, SINGULAR corpus corporis corpori corpus corpore CLASS: Noun III Declension, SINGULAR ignis ignis igni ignem igni/e CLASS: Noun lll Declension, SINGULAR urbs urbis urbi urbem urbe
Masc. "father" PLURAL patres patrum patribus patres patribus Neut. "body" PLURAL corpora corporum corporibus corpora corporibus Masc. "fire" (i-stem) PLURAL ignes ignium ignibus ignis/es ignibus Fem. "city" PLURAL urbes urbium urbibus urbis/es urbibus
In this Third Declension there are also many irregular paradigms. Let me note a few of the more common ones here. The best way to get the gist of these is to look up in your dictionary these nominative forms, and observe carefully the genitive which is always given. This genitive gives the clue to the formation of most of the other forms. Basically you have to learn these irregulars by experience and use:

bos : bovis; caro : caronis; domus : doms. iter : itineris; nix : nivis; os : ossis; senex : senis; sus : suis; vis : (pl. vires).
See more on the particularities of the 3rd declensiion.
The Fourth Declension

The Fourth Declension is quite regular, it is normally masculine. Note that the nominative singular has a short -u-, while the genitive singular and nominative and accusative plural are all identical with a long -u-.
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Confusing, but in texts the context almost always makes the use quite clear.(The circumflex accent over some vowels indicates that they are long, since this electronic format lacks the macron).
CLASS: Noun IV Declension, Masc. "lake" SINGULAR PLURAL lacus lacs lacs lacuum lacui lacubus lacum lacs lac lacubus CLASS: Noun IV Declension, Fem. "hand" SINGULAR PLURAL manus mans mans manuum manui/u manibus manum mans man manibus
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
The common word for "house" domus is Fem. and oscillates between the Second and Fourth Declensions, as follows:
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative CLASS: Noun II/IV Declension, Fem. "home" SINGULAR PLURAL domus doms doms/domi domuum/domorum domui/domo domibus domum domus/domos domu/domo domibus
NOTE: There is variation in the dative/ablatve plural forms, which alternate between ibus/ubus. Assume generally -ibus following the analogy of the Third Decl., but partus, tribus, artus and lacus retain -ubus, while portus and specus have have either. See Particularities of the Fourth Declension.
The Fifth Declension

The Fifth (last) Declension contains only a few dozen words, but all are quite common. Words in this group are Feminine (except dies and meri-dies which are Masc.). The genitive singular is listed here but generally avoided in Latin prose, oddly, even to the extent of writing "partem e facie" rather than "partem faciei". Again several case-forms have the same ending -ies, a common feature of Latin grammar, but one which does not cause problems in Latin texts. Authors generally are careful to make their meaning clear, despite grammatical ambiguities.
CLASS: Noun V Declension, Fem. "thing, matter" SINGULAR PLURAL res res rei rerum rei rebus rem res re rebus CLASS: Noun V Declension, Masc. "day" SINGULAR PLURAL dies dies
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative
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Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
diei diei diem die
dierum diebus dies diebus
See Particularities of the Declensions.
An Excursus on "Vowel Length"

This is a good point to discuss something which we have been avoiding, the fact that some vowels are "long" while others are "short". The long vowels are marked with a macron above in dictionaries and in highschool textbooks, but were never marked by the Romans in their manuscripts, no do we note them in printed Latin texts. In the old days students were drilled for knowledge of the longs and shorts, in Germany it was traditional to have the student make hand motions to indicate longs, but this was a poor substitute for proper pronunciation in the classroom. Curiously many Latin teacher don't like to read Latin aloud, thus missing the pleasure of hearing the nuances of poetry and also engraining the vocabulary in the students' minds. From a Linguistics point of view, sounds which "make a difference", that is sounds which can distinguish one word from another, are called "phonematic". Many of the long/short differences are NOT phonematic, so I am not going to burden you with them in this Guide. But a few are, for example the Nominative/Ablative of "puella", so I will place a . (period) after a long vowel when it does make a distinction. (We lack the macron in this website language...) But when you read poetry you suddenly find that you really have to know the lengths of the vowels in order to grasp the metrical cadences of the verse. However you only learn to read the Latin hexameter fluently by absorbing its sound and characteristic rhythmic, and if you know a few of the "longs" many of the rest will fall into place. But there is another complication here: Romans pronounced their prose in a different mode, by the "Law of the Antepenult", i.e. there is a stress-accent (not length) on the third syllable from the end, unless the second is long in which case the "accent" goes on it. I only mention these complications to warn you that there is a no-man's-land ahead, which I suggest you ignore for the present, learning only the basic forms as they stand. This will be enough to get you into reading basic Latin, the rest can come bit by bit later as you need it. There are many irregularities in Latin Grammar, which have no special reason for their being, so don't be surprised when you find them cropping up, as they surely will. Common words are often irregular, unfortunately. Why in the world should a sailor (nauta) be feminine in Class I, but have a Class II adjective? Or why should all trees ending in -us (ornus "ash tree") be masculine in form but take feminine adjectives. Forget the reasons and enjoy the ancient irrationality of what is generally a very rational language overall.
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The Adjective and Adverb

The Adjectives
Adjectives are descriptive words which attach themselves to nouns and tell us something more about their nature. All adjectives are in form really nouns, that is they have the same endings as nouns by and large, and they fall into two classes:
Class I: Adjectives based on Declensions I and II

FEMININE
CLASS: Adjective SINGULAR bona bonae bonae bonam bona. CLASS: Adjective SINGULAR bonus boni bono bonum bono CLASS: Adjective SINGULAR bonum . . bonum . 1I 1 Declension, Fem. "good" PLURAL bonae bonarum bonis bonas bonis
MASCULINE
Declension, Masc. "good" PLURAL boni bonorum bonis bonos bonis
NEUTER
II Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Declension, Neut. "good" PLURAL bona . . bona .
(The unlisted neuter forms are exactly the same as the Masc.)
Class II: Adjectives based on Declensions III

Many adjectives fall into this second adjective class, based on noun Class III. Since there is such a variance of stems and appearances, I will give a few examples:
CLASS: ADJECTIVE SINGULAR III Declension, "brave" PLURAL
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fortis (forte) fortis forti fortem (forte) forte
fortes (fortia) fortium fortibus fortes (fortia) fortibus
(The bracketed forms are neuters, the others are Masc.= Fem.)
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
CLASS: Adjective III Declension, "headlong..." SINGULAR PLURAL praeceps (praeceps) praecipites (-ia) praecipitis praecipitum praecipiti praecipitibus praecipitem (praeceps) praecipites )-ia) praecipite praecipitibus CLASS: Adjective III Declension, "old" SINGULAR PLURAL vetus (vetus) veteres (vetera) veteris veterum veteri veteribus veterem (vetus) veteres (vetera) vetere veteribus
You will note immediately that in Class III one form covers both masculine and feminine. Many of these forms also apply to the neuter, with the exception of the subject/object singular subject/object and plural, which have separate forms, just as in noun Class II b. And again Dative and Ablative plurals are always the same, and no vocatives exist anywhere here.
General Notions on the Adjectives

A few more things remain to be said about adjectives in general: They can precede their noun, or follow it, or be separated by a distance of many words, since tagged Latin words are generally easily identified aside from word order. Therefore we can say that Latin has a fairly free word order. This confers a freedom and beauty on the art of writing poetry, where inversions and artistic separations are pretty much a standard practice. A line of verse can have artistic form as well as artistic meaning. Any adjective, if used without a noun to attach itself to, can be considered a noun in its own right. So vir bonus or VB on Roman electioneering posters, "good man" a standard term in politics, can be reduced to bonus, which is now a noun. And fortis "brave", an adjective, by itself means "a brave man". This is not commonly found in English so you will have to watch carefully. But "the meek" (as a noun) may still inherit the earth! A cardinal rule which governs every Latin sentence, is that: Everything must agree with everything else in every possible way. This has no direct relevance to the structure of Roman society, although it certainly sounds that way. It might be more typically American ! Certainly language and society exhibit parallel features, as the American linguist Whorf noted thirty years ago. But back to grammatical agreement...: Rules for grammatical agreement: 16
1. An adjective must "agree" i.e. have parallel structure in its endings, with the noun it goes with, in respect to sex/gender (masc. fem. neut.) 2. An adjective must "agree" in Number, i.e. singular or plural. But this does not apply to the Noun Declension concinnity, they are all equals in terms of agreement. 3. An adjective must match in Case, as listed in the description of noun and adjective forms, i.e. subject, possessive, to-for (dative), Object, Ablative and the rare Vocative when it occurs. This sounds complicated but the idea is simple: If you are going to use tag endings to identify functions, you tag alike things which intellectually go together in the phrase or sentence. Hence bonorum consiliorum "of good counsels", Marce Tulli "Hey, Marcus Tullius", malae sententiae "evil thoughts" ----- these pairs make perfect sense. They are grammatically "matched pairs". (A sharp eye might notice that in the phrase Marce Tulli, something is wrong, because it might well have been Marce Tullie. A subrule states that masculine names in -ius have a Vocative ending simply in -i, probably as a condensation of a historical *Tulli-e which does not occur.) I mention the above example here to advise you that I am not going to note unusual exceptions and rare forms for you at this stage of our introduction. We are trying to get the general features firmly grasped, and you can learn the exceptions later. You will find a list of all the exceptions you are likely to find in a standard grammar (Allen & Greenough...). Remember that although Latin is by and large standardized (although it can seem irregular) there are many exceptions to rules which are in themselves the rule in early Latin, common parlance Latin , Vulgar Latin (which is not "vulgar"), Church Latin, Medieval Latin, Scholastic Latin, and even Renaissance Latin. It is no surprise to find the Perfect "davit" for dedit in a late Inscription.
The "Grades" of Adjectives

Adjectives have three grades (this scaling is called the Comparison of Adjectives traditionally), as follows: 1) The base or regular adjectival form, which we have been discussing above. 2) The "comparing" stage, which is similar to English "more" when there is something real or implied to compare the word to, i.e. "this tree is taller than that". But it is important to note that if no comparison is present, this form is like English "rather...", this "this tree is rather tall....". It is this second use (without comparison) which confuses the student most. In form this class follows class II Adjectives, with no distinction between masculine and feminine forms (on the left in the following examples), while neuter endings are in brackets. Note that the Acc. Pl. always ends in -es ( but Decl. III nouns have alternate forms: long -is/es).
CLASS: Comparative adj. "braver", SINGULAR PLURAL fortior (-ius) fortiores (-iora) fortioris fortiorum fortiori fortioribus fortiorem (-ius) fortiores (-iora) fortiore fortioribus
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In this case the comparative forms are based on the regular word-stem, fort- .
Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative CLASS: Comparative Adj. "good/better" bonus melior SINGULAR PLURAL melior (-ius) meliores (-iora) melioris meliorum meliori melioribus meliorem (-ius) meliores (-iora) meliore. melioribus
But in this case, as often in commonly used words, the comparative is based on entirely different stem, in fact it is a different word "suppleted" to go into that linguistic space. This should be no surprise to speakers of English who are well accustomed to "good/better", let along "go/went" and many other similar oddities. There is a group of quite common words which are irregular, and which you will have to learn by experience as you read. Who could ever guess that "good, better, best" would be in Latin bonus....melior....optimus...? (But look back at the English... good/better). A list of the most commonly seen comparatives (with the superlatives, discussed below) is:
bonus malus magnus parvus multus multi nequam (indecl.) frugi (indecl.) melior peior maior minor plus plures nequior frugior optimus pessimus maximus minimus plurimus plurimi (of persons) nequissimus frugissimus
A few words are found in Comparative and Superlative without a "positive", namely: ocior ocissimus "swift" and the common potior potissimus "powerful". 3) The "most" stage, somewhat gaudily titled the "superlative" in traditional-ese grammar, is much easier to deal with since it is quite regular in its forms: In form it regularly follows class I Fem. and II Masc/Neut. Adjectives: From "spissus" 'thick' we make up our "most" form by adding -issimus, and then derive up the rest of the grammatical forms according to Class I/II Adjectival procedure:
gratissimus etc gratissima etc gratissimum etc
There are, however, some phonetic changes which took place presumably for ease of pronunciation, and we have :
celer "quick" but celerrimus for *celerissimus
facilis "easy" but facillimus for *facilissimus Once you are aware of this change, you can probably recognize most of the altered forms, but again there are the real irregulars, which may even substitute a different root in this form.
bonus malus magnus melior peior maior optimus pessimus maximus
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parvus multus multi nequam (indecl.) frugi (indecl.)
minor plus plures nequior frugior
minimus plurimus plurimi (of persons) nequissimus frugissimus
The Adverbs
Adverbs are basically adjectival forms which are matched up with verbs, rather than nouns. They "modify", that is, they explain and further develop a verbal concept, hence they "go with" the verb and were so named by the Roman grammarians: pro + verbum "near or beside the verb", a neat term in fact. But adverbs do not grammatically agree with the verb they match, nor are they fused on so as to become one word with the verb. Adverbs have one, fixed form, hence they are easy to deal with for an English speaker, since they are analogous to English adverbs, which also have a single, fixed form. Adverbs are listed in the dictionaries as "undecl." or undeclined, fixed forms. 1) The most common class of adverbs ends in -e, and is derived from Decl. I/II Adjectival formation: Beside the Adjective bellus bella bellum "pretty" we have the Adv. belle "nicely, cutely" (This last word "bell-" is not the word for "war", which is identical. Latin has the same identity problems as every language, cf. English lead (the verb form: to lead etc.) as well as lead "plumbum, the metallic element". ) Beside bona bonus bonum we would expect bone, but we get bene, the vowel phonetically shifted by use. But the basic rule stands: Adjectives in "-us -a, -um" make an adverb in -e, and this includes the "most" m or Superlative grade in -issimus -a -um, which make adverbs by the same rule: -issime. "most....-ly" 2) Adjectives which normally occur in our Class II Adjectives (like Class III nouns) regularly take the ending -ter, which makes an adverb just as well, and with no difference in meaning from the above. So fortis "brave" gives fortiter "bravely". This class is common and pretty regular, no special problems 3) But if you want to make an adverb from a "more" (comparative) adjectival form, you don't use this -ter ending, but use instead the comparative neuter form just as it stands. So from the grade normal adj. tristis "sad", you make the "more" comparative up as tristior "sadder or rather sad", and then the adverb will be the same as the neuter singular in -ius: tristius "rather sadly, or more sadly". But this can also be a straight neuter adjectival form going with some neuter noun in the sentence, so in reading you might consider both options. Authors, then as now, are usually conscious of ambivalencies, and common sense usually cuts the Gordian knot. 4) Adjectives in the "most" or superlative grade will always be of the Class I /II Adjectives with -a -us -um endings, whether regular or irregular and so will use the simple and easily recognizable Adverb ending -e, used in the first group listed above. The root and the appearance of the word may change but the ending will just as you expect: -e. 19
5) Within the formal class of adverbs is a bagful of words which are just plain root-words with no formal tag ending. One might mention cras "tomorrow", mane "early in the AM", tot "so many", as well as the sentence connectors enim "indeed." quippe "to be sure (sarcastic)", autem "on the other hand" and many more. You look each up in a dictionary, each is a word with a meaning, and that's all there is to it.
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The Pronouns
The pronouns were so named by the Roman schoolmasters because they were in a way nouns, and yet they were not nouns, but stood "for nouns", hence were called in Latin: pro nomine "for a noun" . But the real difference is not really conceptual, it is totally practical. The pronouns have a bewildering array of odd forms, blind ends and complete non sequiturs. They are indeed another class of declension, a class unto themselves, and the best way I can introduce you to them is to ask you to read carefully the descriptions below and the examples. Look over the forms, try to see some order in their array, and then re-study my comments in this section. You can learn them by rote or by heart, but in fact you will see them so frequently as soon as you get to reading a real text, that you will find they are less of a problem than you might think at first sight. 1) The pronouns as a class cover a variety of concepts: a) The personal words, "I, you, he, she, they." These are very ancient forms and clearly go back to the Indo European stage of linguistic development. I could explain them to you in terms of Historical Linguistics, but the explanation would be more complicated than the phenomenon, which is complicated enough already. If you wonder why the word ego "me" switches root in the plural to nos "us", compare the English, and note that "we" can be either Inclusive or Exclusive, which really are very different ideas. In form we find unexpected and irregular Nominative Singulars, the Genitive Sing. in -ius, the Dative Singular in -i-, which formsoccur only here. The rest is pretty reasonable and follows the standard noun formations. (If interested in the historical background of the pronouns, consult C D Buck's Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin for a full treatment in terms of Historical Linguistics.)
CLASS: Personal Pronoun SINGULAR ego mei mihi me me ego PLURAL nos nostrum nobis nos nobis
Of course "we" is not really the "plural" of "me", despite Menander's "What is a friend? Another ME."! The concepts are really different and quite naturally the word-stems are also different.
CLASS: Personal Pronouns SINGULAR tu tui tibi te te tu PLURAL vos vestrum vobis vos vobis
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There is also a Reflexive Pronouns , se "...self" which is in common use:

CLASS: Noun Declension, SINGULAR (ipse ipsa ipsum) sui sibi se se PLURAL Same as sg. for plur.
b) The "who" words follow a different pattern. First you must note that qui "who...." is somewhat different from quis "who....?", since the second word is used in questions and the first is not. (If you want terms, qui is Relative Pronoun, while quis is InterrogativePronoun, but be sure you get the meanings differentiated before you resort to these terms.) Here the differences of form are in the subject singular with an unexpected -i-(Relative) beside -is (Interrogative) , the possessive singular in -ius, the neuter singular in -d (*quod/quid), and from there on it's clear sailing in the singular. In the plural only the form quae "which things" as a neuter plural is new as compared with the straight -a of all other neuter plurals in all noun and adjective classes. The "Relative" pronoun is like English "who..." without implying a question (your voice does not raise). There are three "genders", Masc. Fem. and Neut., which are given in that order in the tables below. A single entry indicates that all forms are the same:
CLASS: Relative Pronoun qui "who..." SINGULAR PLURAL qui quae quod qui quae quae cuius quorum cui quibus quem quam quod quos quas quae quo qua quo quibus
(One can almost hear the faint echoes of generations of schoolchildren reciting in unison their quaint ditty: "qui quae quod cuius cuius cuius cui cui cui...".) But in the Interrogative Pronoun ("who...?"), the Masc. and Fem. are the same, as in this table:
CLASS: Interrogative Pronouns quis "Who...?" SINGULAR PLURAL quid quid (as above forms) cuius cui quem quid quo
c) The numbers are not too odd , and perhaps all I should note is that there is no plural to unus, nor singular to duo, thereby depriving the teacher of one of the oldest jokes in the trade. (The parallel in the factory is telling the neophyte to go fetch a left-handed monkey wrench...) After the numeral tres = 3 they don't inflect except when turned into regular adjectives Class I.
CLASS: Numeral unus "one" SINGULAR unus
Nominative
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Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative
unius uni unum uno
d) There is a special set of words used for persons, usually called The Demonstrative Pronouns, since they point at (demonstrare) a person actively. They are:
is hic ille iste
Is (fem. ea, and the neuter id), "he/she/it" is rather colorless much like English "he, she, it". It merely refers and has no special emphasis. (Where only two forms are given below, they are Masc/Fem. respectively, and the Neuter is the same as the Masculine.)
CLASS: Demonstrative Pronouns (non-emphatic) SINGULAR PLURAL is ea id ei eae ea eius eorum earum ei eis eum eam id eos eas ea eo ea eo eis
Hic ( fem. haec, neuter hoc) however does have a special meaning, something like the sub-standard English usage of "this-here". It refers to a nearer object, the one nearer the speaker or viewer, and is regularly paired with ille (below) which refers to someone further away.
CLASS: Demonstrative Pronouns (nearer....) SINGULAR PLURAL hic haec hoc hi hae haec huius horum harum huic his hunc hanc hoc. hos has haec hoc hac his
And in turn ille (fem. illa, neut. illud), is approximately like English sub-standard: "that-there". These two words , hic and ille, are often used in matched pairs, when they refer to the near and then the farther person or thing. This is a useful distinction, and Latin makes full employment of it.
CLASS: Demonstrative Pronoun (farther...) SINGULAR PLURAL ille illa illud illi illae illa illius illorum illarum illi illis illum illam illud illos illas illa illo illa illis
(It should be noted that the forms of hic, which look unique as pronouns,are merely a contraction of an obsolete hi-ce, with a pointing-out (deictic) particle -ce fused on. So *hi-ce is "this here"in fact! The -c persists in the singular but is lost in the plural forms, except for the neuter plural haec . Older Latin can still have horunc for horum-ce (Gen. Pl.), and hosce (Acc. Plur.)
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e) A dozen additional words are made up from the qui, quis, quid base, and you you will find these in a standard grammar all listed together. They are quite specific in meaning ("anyone, whosoever, is there any?, any.. .you please, who in the world, anybody at all, whoever you wish, each one." Best learn these as you come across them in a text, rather than try to memorize them first. The problem is that these words all look pretty much alike, and it is difficult for the beginner to remember which is which. Only practice and extensive reading helps this quandary, although I would urge you to single out quisque "each one" as essentially different from the others in meaning, and absolutely unguessable unless you know it for sure. Quisque hoc sciat bene "let each person know this point well"....maybe memorize that. But the forms are merely quis + que, Gen Sg. cuius + que, etc. The forms are no trouble, it is the meaning that is so different from the rest of thse "who" words. The "reflexive" pronoun, ipse "himself, herself, itself...." follows the patterns of ille fairly closely, as does the common pronoun idem "the same.." which is shortened from an original *is-dem, so it follows that idem will have the forms of is ea id, with a final -dem tacked on.
CLASS: Pronoun ipse "..self" SINGULAR ipse ipsa ipsum ipsius ipsi ipsum ipsam ipsum ipso ipsa PLURAL ipsi ipsae ipsa ipsorum ipsarum ipsis ipsos ipsas ipsa ipsis
f) The pronoun root quis found in many other Latin words, e.g. quo (where / how), ubi, from *quo-bhi (where, when), qua (in what direction) . But with a different sense we have quam "than", which is used in comparisons much like the English "than". (This is an alternate to the regular way of making a comparison, using the "comparative" form of the adjective with the Ablative for the compared item.) Look these over carefully. Make special note of quam "than" as used with adjectival comparative forms, continuing the case of the compared pair: Hic est altior quam ille "he is taller than the other one", a very different use from the comparative joined with an "ablative of comparison" as in: ille est altior Marco "he is taller than Marcus". But the meanings of these two entirely different constructions are the same.
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Brief Review of the Noun, Adjective and Pronouns
At this point you should stop and try to picture in your mind what we have been discussing , since only what is ionstantly available in your memory-bank is going to be useful in reading. Sooner or later the following statements should become pellucidly apparent to you, on a moment's notice. The danger at this point is to adopt terminology for which the concepts are not completely clear, and there is that other danger of doubling all the data, the word itself and its parsing-terminology. Parsing or grammatical identification is a technique for when you get into trouble, but not for everyday reading use. There are words as a carrier of meaning, but for each word a set of grammatical (parsing) terms which define the word. However the word also has a meaning aside from the terminology. It was precisely on this ground that Aristotle faulted Plato's theory of ideas on the ground that it doubled all the entries: the thing, and the idea for the thing. One danger is clear: For centuries students have learn to parse and analyze Latin sentences, but not really to read them. Hence our ironclad rule: See and hear words; grasp root meaning and function simultaneously; try to dismiss or at least de-emphasize terminology as a step toward directness in reading. In fact you will want to know these formal terms too when you consult a reference-style Latin grammar, such as the five pound 600 page Lane Latin grammar or the standard Allen and Greenough, ed.. d'Ooge l906, both out of print! but copies turn up in used bookstores. Remember that there is a real use to such works, but at a much later point in your study. And behind this lie the massive German research-level handbooks for certain professional Classicists's uses. On still another level are historical analyses, such as Brugman's Kurze Vergleichende Grammatik.....usw.l904, but this becomes a different discipline in its own right as Linguistics. *** NOUNS have functions as follows:

Singular and Plural. Cases:
1) Subject; 2) Possessive; 3) To-for; 25
4) Object; 5) Ablative (from in with) ; 6) Vocative (vestigially). These cases can also be called: Subject, Possessive, Indirect Object, Direct Object, Ablative, and (when it occurs) Vocative. Or in traditional terms, to suit you or your conservative teacher or grammar book, we can call them: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, and Vocative *** ADJECTIVES have two up-staged or intensified forms: a) The "more" form (comparative always with -ior following noun Class III but with a neuter subj./obj. singular -ius. (There are irregular phenomena in this group, a word to the wise...) b) The "most" form (Superlative) in -issimus -a -um, or a phonetic simplification of this, following Adjective Class I (or noun Classes I II and III. *** ADVERBS are formed from adjectives either: a) Adding -~e" to a Class I adjective; b) Adding -ter to a Class II adjective; c) Going the way of all roots, and simply using a word without ending, which means for all purposes finding a dictionary item, not a form class. When adverbs are upstaged to the Comparative state, they do this: a) They use a form in -ius which is the neuter of the comparable stage of the adjective. E.g. tristius "mode sadly, rather sadly" b) They use the regular -e common to Class I adjectives stuck onto the -issimus of the "most" superlative grade, or whatever phonetic variant has seized upon it with deterioration of the -ss-. So fortissime, but acerrime. *** PRONOUN is a general term covering words for" you me him", as well as "we and they", and also "this one here, that one over there, who, who? and whoever" and vartious other words which are found in this heterogeneous class. Words in this group are very much used, and very irregular, but it is not as desperate as it seems. Constant use confers practice, and the irregularities seem to smooth out with experience. Consult a dictionary carefully for Nom. and Gen. sg. forms which outline the paradigm fairly well, but do not 26
expecting to "master" it all. Hold your breath until you get into reading some Latin prose, when the words in this class will crop up like dandelions in spring. You WILL recognize them.
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The Forms of the Latin Verb

Verbs are the heart of Latin stylistics. Latin uses verbs in a variety of ways, while English of the present time, especially in America and specifically in science and textbook writing, expresses itself largely in nounconcepts. One might well suspect that the only live verbs in English are those which join nouns to their modifiers, and this produces often a stiff and unyielding text-book style. Not so Latin, which understands the flow and motility of verbal ideas, and with a relatively full arsenal of verbal modifications, faces the world verbally...... actively, as it turns out. The clearest proof of this difference in the languages appears when you try to translate English into Latin, a revealing intellectual exercise. First, the nouns have to be quite literally translated into verbal processes, and then the sentences can be reconstructed into a Latin of the Classical Period. Medieval Latin is as noun-beset as modern English, and one suspects it would have been virtually un-understandable to an educated Roman of Cicero's period. Verbs can be formally distinguished from nouns by the fact that they have an entirely different set of endings from the Nouns. Reviewing the grammatical layout, we find these salient characteristics in the NOUN formations: NUMBER: Both singular and plural. ACTION: By means of the "case", reference to various functions: 1) Who is doing something to whom (subject) 2)..or if the thing is being done to him (object) 3) who he/ she/it belongs to (possessive) 4) to whom or for whom something is done (dative) 5) and finally where or from what place something is or originates (ablative). 6) In the rare Vocative a verbal message is being addressed to someone. In all these cases it is not the identity which is being considered, but the relationship of the person or thing to an action, which acts upon it, pushes it around, locates It, or removes it. In this sense we might well define nouns, in addition to their basic root meanings, as having certain basic kinds of functional relationships. VERBS ARE DIFFERENT. Their roots contain the seeds of functional actions , but three other things are built into almost every verb form: 1. They define time, and within the range of time sometimes extent or continuity of an action. The "ending" which confers this time sense fuses onto the root, but it is not necessarily the termination of the verb at all, since other endings will well fuse onto it. 2. They define several degrees of factualness, what we might call "the sense of possibility, or conditionality". The ancient Roman theorists on language called such forms "subjunctive" from the Latin subjunctus "sub-joined" because Roman schoolboys wrote these forms underneath (sub-juncta) the regular forms, which were called Indicative. This term Indicative is the name the Roman 28
schoolmasters gave them, presumably because they indicated something rather than implied it uncertainly. The terms Indicative and Subjunctive are used in grammars, however we should understand the Indicative as the factual base, but the Subjunctive as an indicator of conditionality changed from the base forms of the Indicative. This conditional/subjunctive split is not unlike the Conditional in Romance languages, although there are some differences in usage. Conditional states of action are not entirely familiar to English. For English speakers perhaps the only remaining in-use phrase might be: "if it were" beside the more common "if it was...', while the conditional "if it be..." disappeared early in this century. Behind this loss lies the undeniable fact of American pragmatism, which fails to distinguish between what really IS, and what might airily be supposed to be (somehow) possible. Far warier in their time, the Romans needed a conditional mode as part of their language and culture, just as the Greeks before them needed two conditional modes (subjunctive and optative) receding into levels of probability behind the world of sheer fact. Athabascan Indians have at least five levels of conditionality, as is necessary for a hunting society, where a shade of a degree of difference in fact can mean food for the people or starvation. Again, after the pioneer Linguist Whorf, language follows needs, and in turn moulds future generations' speech and social patterns. 3. Verbs are more specifically concerned with persons than nouns. They define automatically the following concepts: 1. NUMBER, whether singular or plural. 2. PERSON, quite specifically who the person is: whether it is "I, or You, or S/He", which translated into plurality comes out as "We, You /You-all, and They". 3. TIME FUNCTION. The above code-endings fuse onto the time-signal coded STEMS, to make what we normally call the TENSES of Latin. These are the conventional sequence: Present, Imperfect, Future, Perfect, Pluperfect and Future-Perfect. 4. ACTION TYPE can be Active (he does it) or Passive (it is done to him). Examples: occidit "he kills" vis-a-vis occiditur "he is killed". Note that this in turn is "fused" onto the TIME FUNCTION with addition of Active/Passive endings. 5. UNREALITY. Here again transmutations of the endings, usually by a change in the vowel before the Action Type ending, can change the meaning of the verb from the normal, factual level (Indicative) to an un-real Conditional (Subjunctive) meaning. *** Note that whereas the nouns note sex and grammatical gender very particularly, verbs take no note of sex, (except in compounded passive forms where one part of the verb is in fact an adjective/participle, with noun characteristics). The fact that "he / she" are not defined specifically by verbs surprises English and Arabic speakers, where the gender of the third person singular is specifically defined. But when we consider the social differences of various cultures, why should language differences surprise us? Pons asinorum..... *** Putting this all together, we see that Latin verbs are fairly complex structures , they tell some things about the person involved, nothing about the sex of the person, they define time rather subtly, indicate reality as against unreality or conditionality, and they mark the difference between active and passive.
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Technicalities on terminology, for when you need them: The time sequences are called Tenses. The active/passive differentiation is called Voice. The factual/conditional division is called Mode (specifically the Indicative mode vs. Subjunctive mode in the grammar manuals). The endings which tell who did the action are called Person. The terms Singular and Plural in their normal senses are formally called Number. Since there are three persons with two numbers, six active tenses and six passive tenses, along with four conditional active tenses and four passives, and furthermore the verbs are congregated into four basic Classes (Conjugations), you can see that there are many forms to be learned, in fact a veritable multitude. (Calculate the number yourself, you may be be shocked ...?) But there are many internal resemblances, many forms are generated quite automatically out of simple principles, and even the complex ones are often seen as developments of a few handfuls of ideas. (On the other hand there are irregular verbs, and quite a list of irrational pattern-changes, so the number of forms to be learned goes up again. On the other hand, your brain is more than adequate for recognizing myriad fact and detail.) Language is a universal human invention which works efficiently with the brain-capacity of a minimally functioning member of a society. So after all, in learning a new and complex language system, there is really little to fear!
Conjugations
In the verb the four main classes (Conjugations) show real similarities, with only a few striking differences. The examples of the four classes are all laid out in one "paradigm" below, so you can see similarities and differences at a glance. Learning the verb as a whole, you will see a fairly uniform system of expression, and since your task is recognition, not recall, learning the Latin verb is not as hard as it might seem. On the other hand, English speakers regularly get into trouble by grasping at the root, assuming a clear basic meaning as in English, and often they try to guess the complex additive structure of the endings (inflection) the verb by intuition. Remember this very important point: Words in Latin are compounded out of various meaningful components, and nowhere is this more essential to grasp than in the verbal system. *** At this point we are going to present you with a tableau of the Latin verb, listing one form for each function in all four classes (or Conjugations), starting with the basic Indicative or factual verb (in the active voice or mode) and in the present tense.
The Present Tense
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Present Tense, Active, Indicative I amo amas amat amamus amatis amant II moneo mones monet monemus monetis monent II duco ducis ducit ducitis ducitis ducunt IV audio audis audit audimus auditis audiunt
There are several important differences among these four Classes of Conjugations (classes) of the Latin verb: First, note the stems:
-a--e--
(The circumflex accent marks a as long, no macrons available!) Second, note the changes of vowel of the endings through the paradigms, which although not perfectly regular, tend to have an -o for 1 sg., and in 3 rd sg. Decl. III and IV the 3 Pl. is -u-nt. These are historical changes which took place in the development of the Latin language, there are no phonematic meanings involved.
The Imperfect Tense

We now proceed backwards in time to the Imperfect Tense, which refers specifically to things which used to happen, were happening, and are probably still going on. This continuing thread in the past is essential to understanding the Imperfect, and when you meet forms in this time sequence, you will have something a bit more complicated than just saying "was...".
I amabam amabas amabat amabamus amabatis amabant II monebam monebas monebat monebamus monebatis monebant III ducebam ducebas ducebat ducebamus ducebatis ducebant IV audiebam audiebas audiebat audiebamus audiebatis audiebant
As was noted above, many tenses are generated on a single principle, and the Imperfect is a fair example. Only one detail differentiates the four classes, which is the nature of the vowel which occurs right before the -ba- imperfect-marking syllable. Thus the root of the first class ends in -a-, the second in -e-, the third in -i- (which was originally -e- as you will see later), the fourth in -ie- (originally -i-). Call these four classes: I: root in -aII: root in -eIII: root in -eIV: root in -i-. These characteristic root vowels will appear later in other forms, which is why I mention them at this point as a matter of definition. 31
This is a convenient point to stop for a moment as try to make some general observations on what we have been watching in the Present and Imperfect tenses. First, we have a set of "personal endings" which are apparently thus-far fairly uniform as we proceed through the four classes. These endings also appear in both present and imperfect tense, hence are a good example of a Present type and a Past type conjugation:
Sg P1 1 1 -o/m -mus 2 -s 2 -tis 3 3 -t -nt
In the present classes only the vowel before the endings change; in fact that vowel "belongs" to the root and wont change at all. And the only difference in the ending-system between present and imperfect, again in all classes, is that the present 1 sg. is -o, while the Imperfect 1 sg. is -m. The sure sign of an imperfect tense in any class is -ba- inserted between the root and the ending. (Note that it is specifically -ba-, since there is another use reserved for -bi- in the Future tense....) With these six endings, you can follow four classes in two tenses, with 24 forms, but don't let your confidence swell, since there is a lot more to come.
The Future Tense

The Future tense is almost identical to the future in English in meaning, and offers no problems in that department. But you will notice immediately that Class I and II have one type of future with -bi-, whereas types III and IV have a different type with a short vowel. There is no differentiation of meaning here, it's just their form and the way the classes are constructed ( I and II with -b- but III and IV with a short vowel). This is one of the few cases of a real difference in construction among the verbal Conjugations.
I amabo amabis amabit amabimus amabitis amabunt II monebo monebis monebit monebimus monebitis monebunt III ducam duces ducet ducemus ducetis ducent IV audiam audies audiet audiemus audietis audient
Repeat: All you need to note is that the last two classes of verb form their future tense in an entirely different way than we would have expected from the first two. Looking at Class I and II, we note that the final -o of the present 1 sg. has returned, and there is a logic to this: The present and future have no part in the world of the past, hence they share here and there features which you will not find in the various past tenses (Imperfect, Perfect, and Pluperfect). The 3 p1. breaks the -i- habit, with its uncharacteristic -u-, which is an orthographic variant of the -o which was set up in the 1 sg., although no real logic is in evidence here. Remember -o and -u- as the beginning AND end of this group as a memory device, since these forms are atypical and may well confuse you later. About the -e- vowel future of Class III and IV, there is little one can say by way of explanation, without undue historico-linguistic complications, except as you learn to read Latin they will become quite normal. The first person singular is singular indeed, for it breaks the regular -e- feature which marks this tense. You
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can accept this as another irregularity, or think, as I do, that it is actually a present 1 sg. subjunctive (conditional) borrowed into this category because of the near-relationship of conditionality and futurity: audiam "I'd bear", audies "you'll hear" Note a similar vacillation in English "I shall" beside "you will". Teachers in grade school see all sorts of subtle differences in meaning, but the populace uses the forms both ways, apparently without much sense of difference.
The Perfect Tense

Now we approach the Past tenses as such, The Perfect System, so called after the Latin terminology "Perfect", since perfectum in Latin means "completely done, or finished". There is nothing perfect about this tense, sporting a handful of odd irregularities, which actually are traces of a more ancient stage of the language.
I amavi amavisti amavit amavimus amavistis amaverunt/-ere II monui monuisti monuit monuimus monuistis monuerunt/-ere III duxi duxisti duxi duximus duxistis duxerunt/-ere IV audivi audivisti audivit audivimus audivistis audiverunt/-ere
Here is a disconcerting situation in regard to the endings:

The familiar o/m 1 sg ending has been replaced by -i The -s- of the 2 sg has been extended somehow and is now -isti The -t remains, as does the -mus of the 1 st plural. But the old -tis of the 2 plural is converted to -istis (presumably by analogy with the isti- of the 2 sg. which seems strange, but is reasonable enough since language loves analogy) The 3 plural -erunt would give us a nice parallel with previous forms we have been seeing, but the alternate form -ere looks like nothing else belonging to the perfect. In fact, is is a look-alike for an infinitive, which you will be seeing soon enough, so note it well now. You will trip over this as soon as you begin to read, I am sure.
This one tense, the Perfect, is odd and irregular and it is ancient in origin, but fortunately no other tense in the verb system is like it. Probably best memorize it right off, know it cold, and try to recall in which way it is different from the other tenses.
The Pluperfect Tense

The next tense, going backwards in time still further, is the "More Than Perfect", which is precisely what the Pluperfect or 'plus quam perfectum 'actually means. Some English grammars use the term Past-Perfect, but this doesn't really say anything , so we might as well accede to the Traditionalists and call this tense the Pluperfect. Remember that it refers to past time before the Perfect, and is pretty much the same as English "he had loved, he had warned, he had led, he had heard". There should be no trouble with the meaning, and the forms are straightforward too:
I amaveram amaveras II monueram monueras III duxeram duxeras IV audiveram audiveras
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amaverat amaveramus amaveratis amaverant
monuerat monueramus monueratis monuerant
duxerat duxeramus duxeratis duxerant
audiverat audiveramus audiveratis audiverant
The endings of the Pluperfect obtain in all classes, nothing could be more direct. The signature syllable of this tense, right before the endings is always -era-, and there are no irregularities. Enough said, and we can pass on to the last tense in the active verb series, the Future-Perfect.
The Future Perfect Tense

The Future-Perfect is just what it says it is. It is a future tense grafted onto a past tense, and it translates pretty accurately into a somewhat stilted English "I will have done....(something)", "I will have loved", whatever that really means. It is not hard to follow the logic of this tense, but it is not clear why the Romans should ever have invented it in the first place. Actually it is not used a great deal in Latin, mainly in balanced Future/ Future-Perfect conditions, and sometimes in place of a pure Future. Its forms are:
I amavero amaveris amaverit amaverimus amaveritis amaverint II monuero monueris monuerit monuerimus monueritis monuerint III duxero duxeris duxerit duxerimus duxeritis duxerint IV audivero audiveris audiverit audiverimus audiveritis audiverint
Again as with the Pluperfect, this is a simple group, with only one basic characteristic, the syllable -eri-, and this has only one exception, the -o of the 1 sg. which certainly follows the pattern of the Future of Classes I and II (-bo, bis, bit....) This regular tense will give you little trouble, especially since you will probably not see it often. *** These are the forms of the Perfect, Pluperfect and Future perfect tenses, you will remember the odd endings of the Perfect, as against the regular endings of the Pluperfect and Future Perfect easily enough. But we have not said anything (on purpose) about what went before the endings, and if you noted something structural changing before your eyes, you were correct. Let's go into that in detail: When you enter the world of these three (Perfect System) tenses, you make a significant change in the stem: Class I verbs add to the stem -v Class II verbs add to the stem -u-. (Since -u- and -v- are phonetic variants of each other, they are vocalic and consonantal "allophones" of each other, and the variation depends on whether a vowel precedes (amavi), or a consonant (monui). Since Latin used one letter for both sounds, pronounced -w- without question, this footnote is totally unnecessary: Romans wrote in the uncial manuscripts AMAVI and MONVI, left it to the reader the select the right pronunciation.) We are in a less fortunate position with our protracted argumentation about "purist" or "Church" pronunciation of this letter.
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Class IlI can add -s- as sign of the Perfect, an ancient Indo-European practice, as seen in the -s- or sigmatic aorists in Greek . Many Indo-European languages go this path, while the -v- or -u- of the first two classes is probably a Latin invention. Note that -x- as in duxi is a graphemic representation of duc-si. But other words in this class make their perfects in others ways. Let take a few of the common types: iungo "join, yoke.." perf. iunxi This is nothing more than the -s- fused with the -g- of the stem, and written as the compound letter -x- which is g/k + s.
venio "come" (short -e-) facio "do" vni (long -e-) fci
Here we have a prime example of an ancient Indo European "ablaut" process (the German term is used in linguistics as more convenient than Vowel Gradation), a vowel-change system, which uses differentiation between long and short vowels to signal grammatical change. It can also change the vowel color as e/o, in the grammatical use of Ablaut shifting. But also note complex perfect formations like tundo "beat", with its perfect: tu-tudi This shows two features: First the "nasal infix" -n- of Present Imperfect and Future disappears, second the first syllable is repeated or "Reduplicated", a standard and ancient IE practice , for example, in the normal Greek perfect tense formation (te-the-ka "I ahve made"). The Reduplicating Perfect is used with half a dozen verbs in Latin and one may read hundreds of pages without seeing a reduplicator like spondeo / spopondi (spepondi) "marry" Another unexpected change can be seen in Present cresco "increase" beside the Perfect crevi. Here we are marking the perfect negatively, that is by removing something characteristic of the Present system, the "incohative" infix -sco. There are many verbs in this class, since the idea of growth and process is important as a linguistic and semantic notion. Class IV is normal Latin practice following Conj. I and II: we go back to the -v-, but here always consonantal, and it follows the long -i- which is part of the root. e.g. Pres. audio, Perf. audivi.
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The Infinitives
The Infinitives are a handful of fixed forms like English "to........" The Infinitive is a form of the verb which seems to have been stripped of almost everything that characterizes a verb: It lacks person identification, it lacks the singular/plural distinction, its time sequence is very restricted since it has only a present and a past form, but it does at least have a real active as well as a passive distinction. It knows nothing of being factual or conditional (subjunctive), in fact it is very a very poor excuse for a verb! (In its active forms, present and past, the infinitive was historically a dative singular in the noun group.) On the other hand the Infinitive is easy enough for an English speaker to understand, since in one of its most common uses it is translated as "to...." :
amare "to love" monere "to warn" ducere "to lead" audire "to hear".
When you see an infinitive first think or English "to...." and you will be started on the right track. But there are some differences too: In English we say "I want--to do-- something....", but this is not the infinitive in Latin, where you must, after ideas of wanting, wishing, desiring etc. say something like "I want that you should (conditional) do something", with ut + the Subjunctive. We are dealing with a purposive statement, and clauses of purpose are not infinitives (what they are we will get to soon enough...). After verbs which say something, think something, maintain and claim something, and others of similar mental/verbal character, an infinitive is used in the natural sequence of ideas, in a clause which we call Indirect Discourse: Clamat eum iniustum fuisse... is literally "he yells that he (someone else) was unjust", and immediately we note that we have dropped the prototypical "to..." (which I said above infinitives had), and we slipped in an inexplicable "that" for our English translation. In other words we turned our infinitive into a "that"introduced (subordinate) statement clause. Why did we have to do this? Well, the alternative in English would have been: "He yells him to have been unjust", which is pigeon English at best. So here again the seemingly similar English "to" is not always the equivalent of a Latin infinitive. "To do or to die...." ? In fact this is perfect Latin. Re-phrased the infinitive can be understood to be a noun in the subject case. Dulce et decorum pro patria mori, said Horace, meaning "Sweet and right to die for your country", a notion which is being questioned after Vietnam for the first time in our history.
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(MORI is an infinitive, it is the subject obviously, and it is considered neuter, as the two words dulce Class III neuter, and decorum Class II neuter, show.) So here is the infinitive in another guise: Neuter substitute for a subject case noun, which would be a very odd idea except for the fact that English does it too. The forms of the Infinitive as noted, are not many:
Pres. Perf. I amare amavisse II monere monuisse III ducere duxisse IV audire audivisse
That is pretty straightforward, the present forms have an ending -re in all classes, the past forms take whatever stem the verb had in its Perfect tense, and add the easily recognizable syllable -isse to it. Meaning is clear too: "To love" is the present, "to have loved" is the past. Example: Amavisse bene est, melius amare "It is good to have loved, better to be in love'. Note I translated bene "well" as "good" which is an adjective; adjectives amplifying an infinitive are always adverbs, because of the verbal core of the infinitive concept, a minor detail. Now these forms also exist in the Passive, which we have not shown you yet, but since it is convenient to put down the passive infinitives here on this page, here they are: (We will go back and to the rest of the verb in the passives after our excursus on infinitives and participles.)
Pres. Perf. I amari amatum esse II moneri monitus esse III duci ductus esse IV audiri auditus esse
The present passive infinitives thus have an ending -ri in three of the classes, but Class III duci is grammatically circumcised, and fails to show the infinitive-characteristic -r- sound. It doesn't look like a passive infinitive at all, so note it very carefully, because it will fool you time and again, especially since in this case it exactly resembles the to-for (dative) singular of a noun form, duci "to the leader", from dux "il Duce". Many irregular forms are puzzling, this one is like a chameleon. The past passive infinitives are new looking, but they are easy to spot. They use the present infinitive esse "to be" as a separate word joined with , or actually following the perfect passive participle of the verb. The two together make a "periphrastic" excuse for a past passive infinitive, which Latin did not originally have. We have a right to call this periphrastic, which in Greek means "round about talking" and is a quite accurate if obscure term for this form. Clumsy as a three barreled shotgun, these forms are actually much used, and one gets used to them, noting that they are passive infinitives, NOT past participles with a verb "to be" floating around in their wake.
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The Participles
Participles, are adjectives with regular noun/adjective endings in a pattern now familiar to you, except for the fact that they use as their stem not normal noun roots, but the root of a verb. They are verb roots with noun endings, and the Latin word for participle (parti-ceps "taking part, sharing") refers precisely to this. They correspond pretty much to the English participles in -ing: loving, warning, leading, hearing. The Latin word "participle", from partem and capio, means "taking part, sharing", and this is the term the Romans used for this class of words. It is quite logical as a description, since Participles do share the root of the verb and the endings of the noun. Another way of thinking about them would be to call them verbal noun/adjectives, and this is just about how they work. Examples: if we take the root ama-, from the verb amo, infinitive amare and put onto it a set of Class III specialized endings with a -t- suffix, we get:
The Present Active Participle

Sing. subj. poss. to-for obj. abl. subj. Poss. to-for obj. Masculine / Feminine amans amantis amanti amantem amante amantes amantum amantibus amantes Neuter amans amans amantia amantia
Plur.
With Class III nouns, masculine and feminine are not usually distinguished, and the neuters are separate only in the forms we have given (subj/obj), and they show no subject/object differentiation, although singular and plural are distinguished. Now if you have a careful eye, you may think to yourself that you have discovered an omission in the above tabulation... Where is the ablative plural? I left it out on purpose, to remind you that in all plurals of all noun classes, the to-for Datives and the Ablatives have exactly the same form. This may seem like pedagogic trickery at this point, but remember that when you are reading Latin texts, awareness of this identity must stay in some far corner of your mind:
amantibus can mean all of the following: "to the lovers, for the lovers, on the lovers, from the lovers".
Simplification now avoids complication later.... such is the nature of language. 38
You notice that in the above paragraph I translated amantibus as "lovers", whereas you expected the participle to mean "loving", as in an English participle. Again a special caution is in order: In Latin any adjective and equally any participle can be translated as an adjective, but if the situation requires, for example if no convenient noun is around for it to attach itself to, it not only can but will be translated as a noun. So Ovid's in-famous line: Omnis amans militat. . . which MUST be translated "every lover is a soldier", proceeding with arms and strategy to confrontation and in the end... seduction. (You could also translate the phrase "every loving one militates", which like many another academic phrase, would be correct but senseless.) The point here is that there are many overlaps between noun and adjective, as we saw before, and this applies also to participles. It may come as a surprise that participles can have forms working in a time sequence, since English has only a present participle (in -ing). Latin has three other forms, two straightforward and one elusive:
The Perfect Passive Participle

In the Perfect tense, there is a corresponding participle, which is found only in the passive. (A perfect active participle is conceivable, Greek actually has just such a form, but in Latin there is none....never ask why.) But we have in Latin a Perfect Passive Participle (so listed in the traditional grammars or PPP), which is much simpler than its regal sounding title implies: amatus is simply "loved (of a masculine)", amata "loved (of a feminine)" and so forth. There are no problems of semantics, and the forms are made up in a correspondingly simple manner:
I ama-tus II moni-tus III duc-tus IV audi-tus
In other words the present infinitive form without its characteristic -re can in a general way be considered the form on which the PPP (perfect passive participle), with regular endings -tus -ta -tum, will be grafted. Two exceptions: An older Class II monetus has been phonetically switched into monitus; and the Class III form duce-re get shortened to duc- before getting its PPP graft, (duc-tus) since the short -e of the third class is weak to begin with and often disappears.
The Future Active Participle

The next form, the Future ACTIVE Participle is easy to make up, you just take whatever you had in the above PPP class, and insert into it the syllable -ru-, as follows: PPP amatus gives, with this additional -ru- : amaturus, which is developed like the PPP (following Class I Adjectives). But when we turn to the meaning, two problems come up immediately: 39
1) Amaturus is a future participle, and there is nothing like it in English. We don't have a form or semantic category for the idea "about to love...", so there will be some puzzlement in translating. 2) Amaturus, which was so easily made up out of a passive perfect participle, participle, is not passive, but active. But it has a "passive look", which causes problems..! So what does it actually mean? Amaturus sum means "I am about to love", or possibly "being-going-tolove" if you can grasp that phrase. The fact is that it is used in Latin fairly often, you will probably first think it is a PPP, and when you do identify it (as future active participle) you will find you have no familiar linguistic niche in which to put it. Watch this one, it will deserve attention. One familiar example might help: Morituri te salutamus,"those about to die salute you..." the phrase called out by the gladiators to the emperor before entering the Coliseum arena. Remember the phrase and you remember the Future Active Participle; you can also recite to the the Prof. when the Final Exam begins. But I don't think you would figure out Petronius' phrase "ituris ad eloquentiam" "those about to go to eloquence", which really means students enrolled in a formal school of Roman rhetoric (in the dative plural, mind you...context says "not Ablative") Keep this one in your back pocket. I said above that there was no perfect active participle, but in a devious sort of a way there actually is. Some verbs (the Deponents, which we will come to later), have only passive forms (and we will come to this even sooner) and no active at all. But these "passive verbs" are translated with active meanings, and we call them "deponent" verbs in grammar (for no good reason at all ---depono means "lay down your arms, or make a legal asseveration...").Their PPP's are translated as active, that is all! Since these verbs are passive in looks but active in meaning, then their perfect passive participle must be translated as a perfect active participle, and we do have class of perfect "active" participles by default. Abutor means "abuse", its past participle is abusus -a -um, but this means (actively): "having abused" and incidentally this verb "takes" an ablative object. Note: The verbs which rake an ablative object are all deponents, and are: utor fruor fungor vescor and sometimes potior ... although this last can (imitating a construction in Greek!) sometimes take a genitive object. Just remember the idea now, when you look up the verb in a dictionary it will tell you about this Ablative Object situation. Hold for discussion the notion of the deponent verbs, which we must talk about later, but do remember that there is a form exactly like a PPP which should be passive, which IS active. This confuses people regularly, and here is the place to mention it.
The Gerundive
One more class of words completes our list in the participial class:
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This one refers not to time, as the others do, but to "oughtness", the kind of thing which one is bound to do, one should do, one has to do. In English we put such structures into the supplementary verb phrase: "You really SHOULD do this....', in Latin we have a preference for doing it the other way around with a specialized participial/adjectival ending: "This is a thing which (which) ought to be done...", is in Latin: hoc est gerundum. Since gero is Class III like duco, we take the root ger- and add the longish endings -undus (masc.) -unda Fem.) and -undum (neut) . Thus Gerundive is autogenetically named as an example based on the very word from which this example comes! So from amare Class I, we get amandum "something which is to be loved", amandus "a (masc.) to be loved;', and amanda, which is identical to the girl's name, the fond thought of a well-wishing parent. The forms are simple:
Masculine Feminine Neuter I amandus amanda amandum II monendus monenda monendum III ducendus ducenda ducendum IV audiendus audienda audiendum
The rest of the forms are perfectly regular Class l adjectives, I hardly need to list them here, since you can find them In the adjectival category. Several remarks are due at this point. 1) When I say "to be loved, or to be done " or something or this sort, I am only implying "oughtness", and you must not confuse this with the English translation of the Latin passive present infinitive amari "to be loved", which has an entirely different meaning. "He wants to be loved" is different in idea from "he ought to be loved, he MUST be loved.... (or else)". The English phrases overlap, the Latin ones are worlds apart in meaning and even more significantly, in use. Watch this detail. 2) When you say in Latin "this ought to be done by you", you might think that the "by you" will be in the ablative with preposition a- or ab-, its variant, since a/ab- normally marks agency. That is generally true, but in this one case, with our Gerundive form in -undus, the doer is in the dative (to-for), which always surprises the person learning to read Latin. Hoc gerundum est tibi (dative) means "this must be done by you", and we call this formally the dative of agent, rare because it is used only here. A better way of thinking of this Dative is to see it as "The Dative of the Person Concerned", a bad mouthful of verbiage but quite to the point, since it is the person who is concerned with the action who gets involved as agent for getting it done. Point to remember: With Gerundive use Dative for the ageny (actually the person involved, concerned). When you look up this class in the standard grammars, you will find it under the English title "gerundive". It is certainly eccentric to name a Class of words by an example taken from a single sample of its use, but that is the way it is, and you might as well get used to the term for later use. But always distinguish between this Gerundive and the Gerund which is entirely different.
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The Gerund
Now if the "gerundive" is a specialized verbal adjective implying "oughtness", the "gerund" will be a verbal noun, actually the neuter singular form of this class used as a noun. Occasionally you will find this neuter used as a noun, but very occasionally, as in Horace's poetical phrase "why will you persist in destroying this sweet young boy "amando?", that is by loving him. The gerund becomes a noun, in fact is an adjective in the neuter serving as an abstract noun, and amandum is not far different from the common noun amor, amoris "love". The only problem is that when you see this rarish form, you may think it is the more common gerundive, and since there is little distinction of form, you can be fooled. Keep it in the back of your mind.
The Supines
A few more very rare noun/verb forms exist, and I will dedicate just one sentence to each: 1) The Supine (a ridiculous term meaning flat on your back, perhaps from amazement at the rarity of the form) ending in -tum looks like a PPP, perfect passive participle, in the neuter singular, but it is an obsolete infinitive type historically, and used rarely.(Compare Sanskrit "gan-tum" = 'to go', or Latin's obsolete sisterlanguage Oscan "ezum" = esse.) 2) The Supine in -u- is found rarely and only in heightened poetical usage. This Supine in -u-, is derived as if it were the ablative of a Class IV noun formed on the stem-basis of a PPP. It is used only in phrases like "mirabile dictu " remarkable in the saying, "horribile visu" "awful in the beholding, i.e. " awful to behold" Translating as an English infinitive will do the trick once you are secure in your recognition of existence of the Supine in-u-. (I have for many years called it privately the "Soupbone in -u-", and as a result my students have never forgotten it even once.)
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The Imperative
This is the last group of minor verbal dependents, along with infinitives, and participles, which we must deal with. Imperare in Latin means "give an order", and Imperatives do just that. They look like this:
I ama amate II mone monete II duc ducite IV audi audite
Singular Plural
Thus the imperative singular can be defined as the infinitive, as it were, without its final -re, and this serves as the singular form in Classes I II and IV. But remember the disappearing vowel in the PPP ductus instead of *ducitus? It is just the same here, the imperative in Class III is a brutal duc "lead on!". The plurals have an ending -te which might remind you of the normal 2 plural active form -te, but it is different, and reserved for this imperative use. Venite venite ad Bethlehem is of course type IV, from the common and irregular verb venio (not from a *veno as if Class III like duco). There are passive forms for the imperative, but they are so rare and infrequent in use that I don't think I have to list them here. For practical purposes they don't exist.
The Passive of the Verb

Where are we now in the verb? We have gone through the six tenses of the active (as against passive), factual or "indicative" (as against conditional/subjunctive), and we have worked through the Infinitives, the Active and Passive Participles,the Active Future Participle and Gerundive. We have also looked at the Imperative Active (the passive can be noted as very rare) We have NOT done the Passive of the six tenses of the active indicative verb (although we have looked at passives in the auxiliary classes above). Now let us do a mirror image of the verb, as it were, and go back and work out the passives. We could have done the actives, then the passives, then the infinitives participles and imperative active and passive, it would have been logical . But I wanted to get you through active verb into infinitives and participles, which all work together in real-life Latin writing, so you could do more realistic practice in 43
reading, which is after all the crux of your learning Latin. So I held the passive back.... If you wondered, that's why, OK? 1t should be easy to define the passive as an active turned backwards, and sometimes that is exactly what it is. Catullus has a line about some young lovers --mutuis animis amant, amantur "with mutual minds they love (and) are loved." These plural present passive words are as simple and direct as the poet's perception in that lovely Catullan "sonnet" Poem #45. But in a second class of words, the Deponents (like reor "I think") the passive function is not clear. We are dealing with a middle leve actually a Middle Voicel between active and passive, whjich is not unlike Romanic language reflexive verbs, although there are differences. So we translate these Deponents as if they were active in meaning, despite the passive forms. In this class of the "Deponents", we have passive verbs which are exclusively passive, that is they show no forms which would be an active counterpart. We usually translate these verbs as actives, such as utor "use", fungor "make use of", fruor "enjoy", vescor "feed (of an animal, like German fressen)". But part of this is out own simplistic eagerness to do direct word for word translation. These verbs really have something of a middle function, and utor really means" I make for myself some use of....something", fruor " I take for myself pleasure in...", and if we take the trouble to see these deponents in this light, we see exactly why they take an ablative direct object rather than the usual object (accusative) case. Utor cultello means "I make for myself some use of something with (ablative) a pen-knife"., fruor is really "I take for myself some pleasure with ..." For simplicity's sake you may want to say with the traditionalists: Deponent verbs are passive in form, active in meaning ... and many take an ablative object (utor, fruor, fungor, vescor and sometimes potior) This is simple, automatic and easy to recall. Or you may go back to what I have written above, which is complex, not quite clear, but historically true: That Deponent employ a Middle Voice involving the do-er and his interests. Or as the Proverb goes, "suum cuique", "to each his own (way), Now to the forms. You will see immediately that the present, imperfect and future are similar to the basic active forms, but are for the most part extended by an -r- or some -r- based configuration, which is the note for passiveness. But the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect passive are made up in quite a different way: You take the past participle (PPP) and put after it (as separate word, not fused) a form of the verb esse "to be" actually the present of esse for the perfect passive, the imperfect "eram" for the pluperfect passive, and the future "ero" for the future perfect passive. It's simpler than the previous sentence implies, but you will have to know the forms of the irregular but terribly common verb "be". You have seen it already but, best memorize it firmly right now.
Sg. Pl. PRESENT sum es est sumus IMPERFECT eram eras erat eramus FUTURE ero eris erit erimus PERFECT fui fuisti fuit fuimmus
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estis sunt
eratis erant
eritis erunt
fuistis fuerunt/ere
Present Stem Passives in the Indicative

The Present Passive Indicative
Sg. Pl. I amor amaris amatur amamur amamini amantur II moneor moneris monetur monemur monemini monentur III ducor duceris ducitur ducimur ducimini ducuntur IV audior audieris auditur audimur audimini audiuntur
Note that the 2 sg forms in -ris have a commonly used by-form in -ere, which is especially confusing since it looks like an infinitive (or even the by-form of the 3 plural perfect.) Some things deserve special attention: First the ending -mini (2 plural) is most rare~, you might see it once in two blue moons, if then. And it is historically strange, in that it is really a plural in -i of a participle of a type unknown in Latin but found in Greek (-menoi), with an "understood" i.e. evaporated verb: estis "you are" which was once somehow intuited. Thus the meaning is "love-ed...you are). Perhaps forget this one until you see a strange form in -mini. Second, there are two forms listed for the 2 nd sg. passive, one is -ris which is easy to remember, but equally common is the by-form in -re. The problem is that amare "you are loved" looks like the present infinitive amare "to love" the very common Infinitive form, hence the two are constantly confused, with the infinitive coming out on top. Try to remember this because its a sure place for an bad mistake. And you might note that in Class III the infinitive is ducere with a short -e-, while the 2 sg. passive is ducere with a long -e-. It doesn't do you much good to tell you about longs and shorts at this stage, since they are never marked in printed texts other than in high school textbooks, which you will not be wanting to use after working through this book. By the time you get far enough along to begin reading poetry, and master some of the basic rhythmic schemes which form the basis of Roman poetry, you will see that some vowels must be pronounced long, and others short, to make the line come out right. Vice versa, if the meter is a regular one, and you know it, you will be able to tell which vowels are long and which short. But this is down the road, and he who travels light travels faster, so we are ignoring the long marks for the present.
The Imperfect Passive Indicative

The imperfect and future passive are regular enough, I think they need little comment, so I shall print them out as follows:
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Sg. Pl.
I amabar amabaris amabatur amabamur amabamini amabantur
II monebar monebaris monebatur monebamur monebamini monebantur
III ducebar ducebaris ducebatur ducebamur ducebamini ducebantur
IV audiebar audiebaris audiebatur audiebamur audiebamini audiebantur
The Future Passive Indicative

Sg. Pl. I amabor amaberis amabitur amabimur amabimini amabuntur II monebor moneberis monebitur monebimur monebimini monebuntur III ducar duceris ducetur ducemur ducemini ducentur IV audiar audieris audietur audiemur audiemini audientur
Comments: First you will note that the verb divides in the way it treats the future here exactly as in the active forms, i.e. the first two classes go with -b- forms, the last two favor the -e- vowel forms, with the exception of the 1 sg. which with it's -am is identical with the (soon to appear) present conditional (subjunctive). Also note that the 2 nd sg. passive of the third and fourth classes is indistinguishable from the corresponding 2 nd passive forms in the present . (Summary: In the fut. pass. of III and Iv the 1 sg. could be a conditional, the 2 nd sg. could be a present passive, but the rest are clearly future.)
Perfect Stem Passives in the Indicative

Now we come to the passives of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect, which as I said are indirectly (periphrastically) formed by combining form of sum/esse "to be" with the Perfect Passive Participle (PPP).
The Perfect Passive Indicative

Sg. Pl. I amatus sum amati sumus II monitus sum moniti sumus III ductus sum ducti sumus IV auditus sum auditi sumus
Obviously the PPP must match up with whatever or whoever is being talked about, so the appropriate case will always appear from the sentence construction, and forms will be masculine, feminine or neuter (amatus, amata, amatum). To save space I list just the masculine form since that is the form found in the dictionary, rather than from any latent machismo. Problem with this and the next two classes: You can translate the elements directly into English, and come out with "loved, he is" meaning "he is loved", since est is normally "is". Wrong, it is a past passive tense 46
(has been loved)! The only acceptable meaning is past: "he was loved, he has been loved". Please note this carefully: The right meaning is NOT just what the two words say. Just s o the next formthe Pluperfect Passive amatus erat is not "he was loved, but "he had been loved". And thge Futur Perfect Passive amatus erit not "he will be loved" but "he will have been loved". I am not quibbling, there is a difference, and the difference is real. N.B. or simply nota (imperative sg.!)
The Pluperfect Passive Indicative

Sg. Pl. I amatus eram amati eramus II monitus eram moniti eramus III ductus eram ducti eramus IV amatus eram auditi eramus
The Future Perfect Passive Indicative

Sg. Pl. I amatus ero amati erimus II III (as above.....) IV
Perhaps I should note in closing is that the future forms of esse "be" exhibits the same o/u back vowel in the 1 sg and 3 p1. (front vowel -i- in all the other forms) just as you have seen in amabo/amabunt, whereas the rest of the forms use the vowel -i-. This is hardly surprising after all. Now we have completed the regular indicative, basic verb, both active and passive, in all six tenses or time sequences. We have also outlined infinitives, active and passive, participles active and passive, and we pause before lunging ahead into the last distinctive feature of the regular verb: the Subjunctive or Conditional.
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The Active Subjunctive

From here on, I will use the traditional term Subjunctive, although I would prefer to call it a Conditional as used in most modern foreign languages. I want to impress on your mind the sense of these new forms rather than their formal traditional title. When I say Conditional, I am calling forth all the associations that go with unreality, possibility, potentiality, in the English words "may" and "might" and "could be" and " if it were...". These are in a different world from the world of fact, where things "are", where "is" can be counted upon to "be", where facts are facts when you get down to brass tacks. In short the Indicative is the world of Western Civilization and American practical hardheaded ability to take the world as fact. In contradistinction, what we are going to discuss is the shadowy world of the unknown, the unreal and the un-factual. It feels good to take a positive, factual view of the world, but no one can go very far into living without observing that there are various levels of reliability and truthfulness. On a scale of one to ten I could outline the following:
1 Engl.= is perhaps maybe just possibly might be might possibly be could possibly be 2 5 6 7 8 9 0
Put this scale into Latin terms and you get this series:
indicative fortasse + Indicative Pres. condit. Impf. condit. (Perf. condit.) off scale--- Plup. condit.
Greek has a parallel set of non-real situations, outlined thus:

Greek indic. Greek subjunctive Greek Optative
In English we do really have the nuances I am talking about, but we have to express them by conglomerates of words, that is they are not old, basic forms in the language, but necessities of the situation. In Latin they are built in, as in many languages, and form a more conspicuous part of the mental attitudes of the speakers toward "fact". Let us get the forms out on screen, so we have something finite to talk about.
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The Present Subjunctive

Sg. Pl. I amem ames amet amemus ametis ament II moneam mones moneat moneamus moneatis moneant III ducam ducas ducat ducamus ducatis ducant IV audiam audias audiat audiamus audiatis audiant
The pattern of the forms is not immediately apparent, but perhaps we can simplify it thus: In general the sign of the -present conditional is the vowel -a- where you would not normally have it. In Class III the vowel -a- is right after the root, in Classes II and IV it is added to the root vowel. But in Class I, which always has a root ending in the vowel -a- already, the vowel is changed to -e-. to show a difference. Thus:
I -eII e-aIII -aIV -i-a-
Perhaps the most basic way of recognizing a present Conditional is noting that it looks like a regular indicative present, but something went wrong with the last vowel ----a rule of thumb to be used only in cases of desperation--- but it works.
The Imperfect Subjunctive

The Imperfect is easier to recognize: Add to the infinitive the personal endings, and you get:
Sg. I amarem amares amaret amaremus amaretis amarent II monerem moneres moneret moneremus moneretis monerent III ducerem duceres duceret duceremus duceretis ducerent IV audirem audires audiret audiremus audiretis audirent
Pl.
This is possibly the easiest tense to grasp in the Latin verbal system, one rule for all classes and no variations. Note: There is no Future Subjunctive or Future Perfect Subjunctive, for a perfectly logical reason: The idea of the Future is part of a quasi-real set of parameters (Past Present Future), whereas the basic idea of the Subjunctive is vested in "Un-reality". In the realm of the Future the idea of Subjunctivity or un-reality simply does not fit!
The Perfect Subjunctive

I II III IV
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Sg.
amaverim amaveris amaverit amaverimus amaveritis amaverint
monuerim monueris monuerit monuerimus monueritis monuerint
duxerim duxeris duxerit duxerimus duxeritis duxerint
audiverim audiveris audiverit audiverimus audiveritis audiverint
Pl.
Compare this group with the Future Perfect Indicative...where most of the forms are identical! Since the Future Perfect Act. Ind. is not used a great deal, confusion will be rare.
The Pluperfect Subjunctive

Sg. I amavissem amavisses amavisset amavissemus amavissetis amavissent II monuissem monuisses monuisset monuissemus monuissetis monuissent III duxussem duxisses duxisset duxissemus duxissetis duxissent IV audivissem audivisses audivisset audivissemus audivissetis audivissent
Pl.
This Pluperfect Subjunctive is used very often, in fact is has a special meaning in conditions, which we rightly (if somewhat cumbersomely) call the Contrary-To-Fact-Condition. We will discuss this later under Syntax.
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The Passive Subjunctive

And of course there must exist a set of passive subjunctive- conditional forms, which we might as well face here:
The Present Passive Subjunctive

Sg. I amer ameris ametur amemur amemini amentur II monear monearis moneatur moneamur moneamini moneantur III ducar ducaris ducatur ducamur ducamini ducantur IV audiar audiaris audiatur audiamur audiamini audiantur
Pl.
The Imperfect Passive Subjunctive

Sg. I amarer ameris amaretur amaremur amaremini amarentur II monerer monereris moneretur moneremur moneremini monerentur III ducerer ducereris duceretur duceremur duceremini ducerentur IV audirer audireris audiretur audiremur audiremini audirentur
Pl.
Now again, recall that the Perfect conditional and pluperfect conditional will be compound forms, using the perfect passive participle or PPP, to be followed by the conditional of the verb "to be" , the very common and irregular child of an irregular parent. I think I should give you at this point just an outline of these Perfect Passive compound formations, which are simple, regular, and found a great deal in actual written Latin.
The Perfect Passive Subjunctive

Pf. Pass. Ppf. Pass. amatus sim... amatus essem...
These compound passive forms use the Subjunctive of esse, so I might as well give you these unusual forms here. They actually derive from an ancient Indo-European Optative, as retained in Greek and Sanskrit, and fossilized in the Subj. of the verb volo -- velim "I would wish". Rare!
PRESENT SUBJUNCTIVE OF esse "be" Sg. sim sis sit Pl. simus sitis sint
The Pluperfect Passive Subjunctive

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Compare here again the Perfect Passive Subjunctive and that of the Pluperfect:
Pf. Pass. Ppf. Pass. amatus sim... amatus essem...
This uses the Imperfect Subjunctive of esse as follows:

PRESENT SUBJUNCTIVE OF esse "be" Sg. essem esses esset Pl. essemus essetis essent
Note that the second element is a separate word, not fused on. The forms sim, sis, sit etc. are atypical as conditional, because they are obsolete forms left over from an old Indo- European optative, which perished in Latin except here and in a few other scattered forms (velim etc. from volo "I wish" for example). But essem, esses, esset is straight from the regular rule: Infinitive (esse) plus personal endings, just as it is supposed to be.
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Conditions with the Subjunctive

Now we can turn to something more interesting and difficult, the meaning and use of the Subjunctive in the realm of Conditionality and Un-reality. Since we are dealing with the meanings of a group of verbal forms which define various stages of un-reality, we must be prepared to stretch our mind a bit in grasping them, and I am not going to try to simplify the nature of the unreal, since this would be a very unreasonable kind of falsification, unattuned to conditionality as a thought process. First, the conditionals which have been listed above as tenses, or time-conditioned systems, are at heart something quite different. They are modes which refer to varying stage of reality or unreality, with a slight time-sense flavoring. Furthermore I should say that the conditional tenses, all four of them, are only stages (which we call the conditional mode) on a continuous line, which stretches from sheer fact ---to cancellation of truthfulness on the other side of conditionality. Consider some such continuum as this:
Present...Future...Pres. Cond...Impf Cond...(Pf. Cond..)...Ppf Cond. 1 2 3 4 5) 6
I have put numbers beneath both to show direction of the process, and also so we can speak of the various elements conveniently. Class #1 represents what in daily use, we consider incontrovertible fact, the fact that I am here, and the earth remains, and that the sky is blue, or that it is raining. Since there is not a great deal of room for dispute about these points, assuming for the moment a congregation of non-psychopathic, non-ecstatic, non drugged or brainwashed persons, we can assume that we are on sure ground in this area. Call this basic factuality. Class # 2 is grammatically just the future indicative tense in conventional terms, but it has moved into something we call "the Future", so it is a prediction more or less, and as such far less firm that #1. It seems reasonable to assume that if it rains, I will get wet; but if I have an umbrella or go indoors, I can evade the condition predicted by this future statement. Class 1 and 2 are pretty well concatenated, but there is nothing like identity of meaning. Also note that the future tense, which seems so natural to English speakers, is lacking in many languages, and apparently was not developed in a regular form in Indo- European, where we note historically that Greek has a form with -s-, Latin verb Class I and II with -b-, but Class III and IV with a short -e- vowel. (Such variations point to non-originality in the reconstructed parent language, and we might well wonder if IE had a future category at all. Note even in English the phrase "I am going down town", where the present is used to clearly indicate something that lies in the future, and only a non-native speaker will assume that the person is going down town at that very moment.) Section #3 is more difficult to grasp. It refers to the merest possibility of something being so, just pure possibility and the shadowing forth of an idea. "If the sky should fall down" thinks Chicken Little in the old story book......and it is a fanciful idea, no more. "If it should just happen to rain" says the little man in the 53
Arizona summer heat, "I suppose we would just stand here and break out laughing". The idea is possible, the occurrence of the fact is really not possible. We can think of it, that is the role of this present conditional, supposition, and pure supposition only. Turning to the next group, Class #4, the imperfect conditional (which again I remind you is not imperfect time-oriented), we find we have something a little more tangible. Often cause and effect enter, something like Engl. "If I should do this sort of thing, then I would not be surprised if the police picked me up." Actually no English speaker would say that, although he would know what the sentence means; he would say "If I did that, I guess the police would pick me up", the difference being the fact the English speakers prefer to state situations, even problematical ones, in terms of fact. Hence the indicative past tense "did" is more natural to mnodern English speakers , and the traditional present conditional "if I should do...", or the phrase "if it be true...", would seem a little pretentious or literary. Think of this class as having some elements of cause and possible effect, with ideas couchable in the words "should....would", or "should....might". Better define "might" as a bit more hypothetical (somehow) than "may" which is technically present tense, and more open-ended, hence Class #2. This is not easy to follow in English, but for a Latin speaker it was not only natural, but necessary. To confuse levels of possibility is to confuse everything important in life. I think we are not dealing with covert subleties of Latin as much as the deficiencies in out sense of conditionality, which we have come to accept as normal in English. The next class of the perfect conditional, #5, does not have as distinct a flavor or meaning of its own, and I really cannot put words on it at this point. It is still conditional, it expresses "shouldness" as well as the imperfect conditional but it rather fits into stylistic conditional structures as an automatic or mandatory element, rather than sporting a distinctive meaning of its own. I don't like to be so absolute about a form which concerns itself with the unreal, but I suggest that we let this class go for the moment, and study it later when we get into reading documents written by native Latin speakers, and see from performance what the core of meaning is (or better: may be...). In many cases, when dealing with language, only experience and time will tell. Reading a geuine text often makes the unclear grammatical statement more understandable, and I think that applies here. But with #6, the last class in our continuum, the so called pluperfect conditional, we have no qualms about being too direct. The meaning is clear as glass, and only a little strange in that is shoots right off the right side of the graph, and while looking conditional, tells us about something that could have, but most emphatically DIDN'T happen. The traditional terms for this conditional (The Contrary To Fact Condition) is cumbersome and perhaps oddly worded, but it is absolutely true in its meaning. "If it had rained" says the Arizonite still examining the desert floor, "we wouldn't have believed it....", and the inference is absolute: It didn't rain. We are talking about the potential or possibility which lies on the other side of provable fact, and the conditionality is in our minds alone. A statement of condition which uses two of these forms always allows us to add in English thought patterns: "but it didn't, but it wasn't so....". This is an odd category of thought, but not a difficult one to grasp, we learn about it early in life when we consider how nice it would have been if Mom had given us another piece of cake (but she didn't). The lesson is driven home by the sledge of disappointment.
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Let us try transforming a single phrase through the conditional classes as outlined, and since we are writing for an American audience, what better way to involve us all, than discuss money? 1)"If I have money, you have money (being my friend)." Simple statement of fact (regular indicative verb form), factuality level is stated as high, even if he has to renege later. 2)"If I get rich (clear future meaning), I'll for sure get out of this dump of a college." Future pure and simple, intent in time to come, that's all, hence still indicative and a future verb form. 3)"If it happened that there were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I would be delighted." The idea runs high as a tempting possibility, the factualness is very low, fantasy rules and only the IDEA is real. Hence Present conditional, meaning pure conditionality, and nothing more. Second example: A panhandler asks me in the street for a dollar (?) for a cup of coffee. Looking at him with a smile, my eyes wide open, my hands turn with palms out and up toward him, I say "if I had it, I'd give it to you". Pure supposition, but no attempt to verify by looking in my pocket, all of which with the smile, makes the fellow realize that I am not at the fooling-around or fantasizing stage, so he tells me where I can go and stomps off. He knows you can't make a living on suppositions. 4) He asks me for the monobuck, I purposefully my slip hands into pockets, saying "If I should have a dollar, I would give it to you". When we get to this stage of possibility, the imperfect conditional with its semi-"cause and effect" words "should" and "would", everything changes. (Again note that to translate in colloquial English, we have to condense "If I had it..." without the bookish should, but the meaning is the same. Behold the confrontation, I have my hand in my pants pockets, and am searching around; the panhandler is waiting, serious and intent, waiting for the cause to mature into effect ( $l.OO)....and the scene does a cinematic frame-freeze. We can't go further, there is nothing more to be said until I do something. This situation is all possibility but no fact at all! (I might as well let Class#5 pass by, it is furnished with with less character, no special tone of voice, and it operates in grammatically automatic functions mainly, in non-dramatic situations.) But when you search in the Latin grammars, under the heading "Conditional Sentences", you will find that they are talking about something that seems entirely different. It is not so much that their explanation is different, as that it is linguistically inside-out. Formalists have always maintained in treating Latin grammar, that the definition of an idea comes first, then rules were developed to inform the ancient authors exactly how to do it, and then examples from genuine writing of the Classical period prove that they did it just that way. Meaning is encapsulated in the definition, and the forms are automatically selected as justification. This mode of operating sounds strange, and it is indeed strange.
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It is just as wrongheaded as making a formulation of music of Eighteenth Century common Harmony, then defining all the rules and practices, and finally justifying the whole matter by citing Mozart's usage in detail to prove that the formulation was right. Truth is Mozart personally evolved a complex style, consciously and unconsciously that style evolved into his life work, which when analyzed a century later it served as the basis for an academic statement of Eighteenth Century Common Harmony. Only one element was suppressed: That is all came from the mind of a musical genius, who worked at a pace and level of complexity which in his time defied exact analysis. The analytical music study starts out at a later date--- out of his work, it couldn't be the other way around. Musical analysis and linguistic analysis (grammar) are historical statements of what evolved by itself as a living human occupation. The manuals do not write the rules for operation, the operation writes the rules! I belabor the point for a reason. It is very important how you approach something, and I want you to approach the Latin conditional sentence structures which can be very complex, as evidences of human meaning, not as a system of rules which are automatic and arbitrary, or so complex and regulatory as to defy comprehension. In practical terms, when you see a conditional form, translate it as some sort of condition in English, even if it makes the English rough and odd-looking. Use the concepts "may" and "might" and "should" and "would" and "would have" appropriately, whenever you see conditionals, and you will come out within a stone's throw of the sense of what you are reading. Later, when you have accrued some reasonable experience in reading Latin texts, it will be useful to examine the formal grammatical statements, which will then do you no harm. Just so it is not harmful to study Piston's or Sessions detailed books on Music Harmony, but only after you have heard a lot of music. But to read them first as preface to hearing Mozart's G minor Symphony is impossible and witless. A note on modern Linguistics: Since the beginning of this century new schools of Linguistics have evolved, which have revolutionized the way the world thinks about language. Modern language teaching methods have changed greatly in the last fifty years. The old methods of teaching Greek and Latin with fixed ideas about every detail which you are learning, assuming that they will be fixed clearly and permanently in your mind, are totally obsolete. When you learn to comprehend or read a language, you face chaos which must be reduced to some sort of linguistic order. In the case of an ancient language, you must read documents which come from ancient authors extensively, until you can begin to read them in the original, without translating. It is just the way you would proceed if you would hope to read French or Russian in the original. This is difficult, since removes in time and place and culture make the reading of the books from an older society more inaccessible. But Latin is a language, it must be read as a language, it is a web of meanings expressed in words and forms, and the sense must be taken just as the words occur, without saying any word of English to yourself even in the back of your mind. Unfortunately this is virtually the opposite of the way Latin is taught in this country, and the decline in the teaching of Latin may be in good part a result of wrong-headed and ineffectual teching methods. But whatever your approach. the major effort must come from yourself, since books and advice and teachers and dictionaries are only partial aids, when all is said and done. At a conference years ago the atomic physicist Isadore Rabi told a surprised academic audience that the most important thing for students was NOT to trust their teachers. Nowhere does this seem more pertinent advice than in the current state of Latin instruction.
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The Organization of Words

Up to this point we 'have been examining the basic and regular forms of Latin words, verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, infinitives, participles, and imperatives. These collectively forms a body which we may call the "works" of Latin, what the philologist calls the morphology. I have given you a basic set of ideas about their use, but there are larger structures in which the elements you have studied are combined according to pre-set standards, whether basic or stylistic. I am calling this broad class of information Organization. Organization corresponds to the traditional term Syntax (which is only the Greek schoolmaster's words syn-"together" and taxis, "placing", so it corresponds closely with the term organization, which I prefer as meaning something to you already. The term "syntax" always calls to my mind the remark of the pitcher of the Classic baseball world, Dizzy Dean, who asked, when he heard about syntax, whether they were really serious about putting a tax on that yet (sin tax). Latin has a style of its own. It tends to employ verb-concepts heavily, whereas in English especially in the present century we seem to favor nouns strongly. Often our textbooks are written in a style which uses only equationary verbs, and the formula of whole series of sentences can be no more involved than:
This........is ......... so and so (Predication) Joe ..and...Henry...and Mary went..and they did...(Strung on....)
The Romans did not talk like that because they do not think like that. Latin sentence structure is unusually varied, as it can well afford to be in a language where word-items are tagged as to function by "endings", and artistic mixing of the words in a complex sentence is considered a mark of intelligence and artistry, rather than confusion. English uses word order to determine grammatical function, as noted above, and the simplicity of our basic structure, which puts subject first, verb next, and object after that, is neat enough in its way, but by no means the only way humans think. English itself would not have gone this route if it had not lost its noun and verb endings a thousand years ago as the result of a heavy stress accent on the first syllable of every word. With its free style word order, as it appears to us, Latin is initially confusing, and the natural thing for an English speaker to do is scan through the sentence for subject, then locate the verb, identify the object, and finally round up all the straggling parts of speech and fit them in somehow all together. This is completely wrong, it not only prevents you from perceiving how Romans thought, but it actually prevents you from learning to read. If you are going to read, you must take the words as they come, since only in that order do they represent the author's mental processes, let alone style. There are some extremely complex sentence structures which the poets develop in the Augustan period. I am thinking of Horace's odes, Book I, #5, where the order of the words in the first stanza seem to be duplicating almost as if it were a painting, the positions of two lovers flounced on a bed of rose petals, mutually 57
entwined, the girl equipoised at the fulcrum of the sentence. This is a fine poem indeed, but a certain kind of high art which would probably have been incomprehensible to a Roman in the street. A sentence in a Ciceronian oration which rolls itself out self-consciously over a full page of small type may seem outlandish to one accustomed to the terse and stripped utterances of American presidential candidates for thirty years now. But an American a century ago would have had a good ear for the Congressional Record, which is Ciceronian almost to a fault. Times and tastes change, and we must try not to judge Romans by our current sense of stylistics. Not that all Romans were longwinded, just note Caesar's military Commentaries, which are intended as an antidote to the verbal cornucopia, and are as terse and crisp as any general's style could ever be. Only if you read him slowly with a grammatical pedant for a teacher by your side, will you think him tedious and boring. Caesar is the clearest example of Roman stylistic simplicity, and well worth looking into, once you have developed enough speed to read right along with the General. Latin has a relatively small vocabulary, with less that four thousand words in general, current use. Greek has three times that number, modern English prescribes 10,000 for a college student, 50,000 for a teacher, and there are half a million words available one way or another. One reason that Latin vocabulary is so small is the loss of probably ninety percent of written output (the French scholar Bardon has written a two volume work on just what we know to have been lost). Secondly, Latin was early standardized for school use through the Roman Empire, and the localisms were removed. But this small word-supply or pure words has problems: there are fewer words to learn, but each will have a variety of apparently thinly derived sub-meanings. Half an hour with the large Oxford Latin Dictionary and its multiple sub-meanings will make this quite clear, and reading Latin often is a matter of making choices as to whether something means this...or that. It slows down even an experienced reader. Romans read slowly as a historical fact, and furthermore always phonated when reading, to the extent of having to read in private rooms. They were apparently incapable of not reading out loud, and this certainly slowed their reading rates considerably. It is doubtful whether an educated Roman would read more than ten or fifteen pages in an hour, which compares oddly with the fifty pages hourly rate which a college student needs just to keep up with class assignments. Speed reading courses can get you up to over 125 pages an hour....for what its worth. You do skim off the meaning, often fairly accurately, but the sound and tone and form of the wording is winnowed off like wheat chaff in the Roman farmer's backyard. Since the Romans read slowly, they absorbed the sounds and rhythms as well as the meaning, they mulled and mused, and authors wrote in what seems to us an unusually dense and packed style. This denseness is one of the features of ancient writing, both Greek and Latin, and it is no idiosyncrasy, but the care, caution and polish with which all ancient authors prided themselves . No print-culture, no verbal overkill schematizing on blackboards, billboards, and television screen bothered their slow craftsmanship, they were attuned to the slow art of putting together the right words in a special way. This shows through even today, and you must not only read Latin sentences as they appear, you must read them as the Romans did....... which is very SLOWLY. Always read out loud. Not only will this open the doors of your ears to subtleties built into Latin writing, it often makes clear a meaning which on paper was not apparent. Reading a difficult phrase out loud once or twice has a strange way of telling you what it means, but you have to try this many times to be convinced. English has what has been called a "strung on" style of speaking and writing, an example of this might be: 58
George decided to go to the store, and put on his boots, adjusted his greatcoat, went down the stairs, and out into the street. He waited for the bus a while, and soon found himself traveling down Oak Street. He decided to get off at the shopping center and have a look at the new records. He bought one, and started for home again... The Roman, if he could have been induced to reproduce something so banal, would possibly have done it this way: George, having decided to go to the store, when he had put on his boots and adjusted his toga, having done down the stairs and proceeding into the street to await a public char, thought to himself while riding down Via Appia, whether he should inspect the bookstores, or go to the baths, which last having been done, he returned home. Both examples are somewhat overstated, but the general sense of a careful comparison will be that English runs things along one after the other, while Latin subordinates things to others with a variety of specialized clauses. These can be complex in structure, and at times hard to follow, but they do represent a way of thinking, a hierarchy of organized statements which stand in some sort of order of importance. This is a basic characteristic of Latin style, and you must go halfway to deal with it if you are going to read Latin intelligently. A people with the organizational talents of the Romans, (witness only the vast system of roads, the hospitals, the system of law, the military, and the table of organization of Diocletian which became fossilized in the present-day Catholic Church) ---- why should such a people not demonstrate order, organization, and a regular system of subordination in their spoken and written style? If the manners of a culture seem foreign, its written documents will be foreign equally. And recall that when we study Latin we are looking for the interesting differences, not the familiar threads which run through what we like to claim as our proprietary academic subject: Western Civilization.
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The Ablative Absolute

Let us proceed to some specific constructions. I will deal first with structures which, when you have read and comprehended the elements, often still defy explanation, and nothing could be better to start with than the Ablative Absolute. This is the traditional name, in fact 'absolutely' traditional, but its meaning is something more like Bracketed Independent Circumstance. The term Absolute (Latin ab-solutus "set apart from") is in Latin the core of the concept. English "absolute" has acquired entirely new meanings, which don't help us here. When dealing with Independent sub-clauses like the Ablative Absolute, we might well consider them to be in something like mathematical functions in algebraic brackets. That is, what goes on in the brackets must be taken as a whole, settled up within the brackets, and then entered into the whole of the main stream of the sentence which contains it. This is however made more difficult in the selection of the Ablative case for this structure, because of its various functions, which embrace notions as disparate as: "from, in, on, be means of, and with". But it is this last use "with", which dominates here, and for simplicity's sake I am going to name it anew as the "Bracketed Independent Clause in the Ablative". In my own mind, I think of the Ablative Absolute as a "Ablative of Concomitant Circumstance (!)" with a Participle, and mentally I always note that it means "with....", which makes terrible English. But since I read Latin and never translate, there is really no problem, and I offer this approach as a good way indeed to think about the terible "AA".. In simplest terms, this can be a noun and an adjective: duce mortuo "The leader being dead", which I think you might better approach saying: "with the leader dead". By saying to yourself "with", which is in keeping with the ablative case at least in part, you set up an accompanying statement, which is going to go along with something else, a basic requirement of the Ablative Absolute Rule: "The subject of an Ablative Absolute clause cannot ever be the subject of the sentence" That is an iron-clad rule in the grammar books. Why? Because the clause accompanies something else, and cannot be the subject of the main clause which it accompanies. In short it cannot accompany itself. Now try it with a present active participle: duce exercitum agente,.... "with the leader leading on the army....." In polished English we will be thinking of something more like this: 60
When the leader brought up his army, the enemy decided to cross the river. In short, we have converted our inconvenient Ablative Independent to a "when" clause. I should note that we have a variety of "when" clauses in Latin, and it would be better to keep straight the essential character of the Ablative Independent construction. The Ablative Absolute is automatically nipped in its grammatical exactness, that is it doesn't provide full information you woudl have if using a regular inflected verb form with personal endings for precision. So it really is encapsulated, it is a separate "aside-thought", which comes only somewhere inside the sentence proper. So for the Roman it has a special shorthand-like place, it is terse, not overly informative, it often requires a little guessing to tell who Is doing exactly what. Then this whole nipped bud or nascent idea "goes into" or is plugged into the sentence proper. Some more examples:

Eo audito, Caesar dimittit legiones. "With this heard, Caesar dismissed the legions." It could also be "this having been heard" but that is less true to the basic concept of this construction. His rebus perfectis, Caesar transivit flumen. "With these things done, Caesar crossed the river."
Traditional: "When these things had been done" does make better English. But we want to stick as closely to the Latin as possible, so follow the odd-sounding "with. ." clause. The nice thing about approaching the Ablative Independent this way is that on the one hand its origins are clear, and on the other hand the same phrase "with...." covers every kind of Abl. Abs. clause , although the English gets a little strained. All these ablatives are simple "Attending Ablatives", which amplify and accompany a particular circumstance.
Summary
The Ablative Absolute, as a tight, encapsulated inner-clause, is made up this way: A noun, or a pronoun, or sometimes a pronoun (even understood and not actually there ) . You can have just audito "with this heard", a stylistically terse turn in Tacitus to be sure, but perfectly clear in meaning. To this basic structure you add a noun, or an adjective, or a participle. Very common are nouns with present participles, which tell us something about something which is currently going on: omnibus pueris et puellis convenientibus "with all the girls and boys meeting, coming together " More common is use of a noun with the PPP or Perfect Passive Participle: eorum verbis auditis "with the words of those ones heard", i.e. the PPP of Class IV verb audio. This could be also considered to mean "after these things had been heard ". You can also make up a similar structure with a future active participle: Spartaco morituro "with Spartacus about to die", and remember again that some one else, not Spartacus, is about to do something when we are back in the main clause of the sentence. Such Independent Clipped Clauses are very common, especially with authors such as Julius Caesar who Is imitating a clipped military style characterized by terseness. You must have the idea of what this kind of structure really means, or you will find yourself analyzing a long sentence with half a dozen unexplained ablatives left over at the end.
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Indirect Discourse
The next important topic which we should discuss is something traditionally called Indirect Discourse, which may sound very odd, perhaps something like "Evasive Speech". In briefest definition, when you think or say something in the Latin language, and go on to tell about that subject, what is related is put into a special structure, in which the subject of that quoted statement is in the object case, the verb is an infinitive, and the object if there is one is in the object case also. This sounds impossibly confusing, so let's go back over it again: When I think or say or think something, and tell what I thought to someone else, that is not in the same class of reality as a Fact. This structure of Indirect Discourse, which is nothing more than quoted quotation, or something someone is said to have said or thought, distinguishes between Fact and Hearsay, a distinction which is still of prime importance in our present legal proceedings. But in Latin I can make a direct quotation too, such as: Dicit, non ibo "He say, I will not go". That is simple statement of fact, actually Direct Discourse,and not like what we are just talking about here, so it does not come within the grammatical purview of Indirect Discourse. In our indirect quotation structure, we can see it this way: Dicit se non abire "he says that he (himself, as signified by the se) isn't going away" Dicit eum non abire "he says that he (another one) is not going away. And naturally we can change tenses: Dicit eum non abisse "he says that he (the other one) did not go away". And all reasonable substitutions of persons and tenses can be made. The single most incomprehensible things about Indirect Discourse, which we are defining as the "The Quoted Quote", it that the subjects AND the object of this formula are both in the Accusative /Object case, e.g.: "Dixit iudici Marcum Julium occidisse "He told the judge that Marcus had killed Julius, or conversely Julius had killed Marcus." Don't be fooled into the first interpretation by your English word order, in Latin there is no way to tell. (Oracles used this for centuries in prophecy, for obvious reasons....Horace even uses it in one of his Satires humorously.)
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In quoted thought or speech coded information in Latin, we strip away a great deal of the detail of the stated material intentionally...failing to distinguish subject and object, reducing the huge inventory of verb forms to a mere infinitive with basically only present and past forms. And why do we go to all this trouble? Because, as the legally minded Roman knew even before be began creating the framework of the legal system of the Republic, there is a world of difference between a fact and a stated opinion of that fact. And the Roman insisted on noting that discrepancy in the structure of his language. In English we also use a "that.... " clause after verbs of saying and thinking, and it is typical that English speakers have difficulty separating fact from thought. "The New York Times says THAT a humanoid primate was recently discovered alive in a remote mountain district of China... ". We are left with one clue word to mark the indirectness of the quotation:"that", but the sentence has a factual ring to it to trick the unwary. Latin would have clipped the whole quoted clause down to bare essentials: "It is reported monkey like animals American scientists to have been discovered.. in remote China". You could never confuse this with a statement of real fact, which is precisely what the moulders of the Latin language wanted to convey. But on the other hand you have lost the distinction between the subject and the object. You assume the report says that American scientists have discovered monkeys, but it could equally well be the monkeys which have discovered American scientists. (Common sense prevails, of course.) Reading this construction, you cannot translate word for word, intelligibility demands that you fill something in and construct a subclause, for English usage. The subject of the indirect clause is not the subject of the original sentence unless specifically stated. Subject and object are both In the object case, which means that only common-sense can differentiate, and that is often about as helpful as intuition in the Paris subway system. The ancients used this structure In both Greek and Latin to make oracular reponses, which were always found to be one hundred percent correct, since they can be read in both directions. (Palindromes like "madam i m adam" off the same possibilities.)
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Subordination as Style
We now proceed to a variety of clauses, actually subordinate or dependent clauses, which function as capsules within the overall structure of the sentence. These are common, varied, and essential to the very nature of Latin prose style. As noted above English tends to string together subordinate ideas with the democratic glue of "and".... "and"...."and"... "and". Latin puts things in ranking, heirarchical order: "When he had done this, which he mentioned to you before, although he considered it contrary to his interests, noting those who would oppose him severely, he called plans into action." This sounds terrible in English, it is unthinkable; but in Latin it is less a travesty than an example. Socially, it denotes the Roman's preferences for ranked, orderly society, everyone in his place in a great variety of places. (Gaius' unique treatise on the legal positioning of all persons within the Roman Empire is witness to the Roman's love of this kind of order.... we have it on an erased "palimpsest" which was later written over, preserving underneath this legal treasure by pure accident). Under the general category of "subordinate statements" in clauses, we have a quick list including:
quod qul quae quod ut cum tum Cum...tum quando Si that, the fact that one who, a person who...../who would as/that, so that when/since (although) then when/ then (not only, but also) when if ("then"is implied in following clause)
There are many introductory words of this sort, with special grammatical structure which works with them, but the above will serve as a guide indicating the manner in which these clauses tend to operate. After developing a basic reading skill, it will be enlightening to go back to a detailed grammar exposition, such as the major work by Allen and Greenough, and the somewhat better Lane with its wonderful examples of usage, both not in print for many years now. There is a vast body of minute detail associated with the uses of the subordinate clauses in the grammar treatises, perhaps in some cases more than the Romans actually intended. But best leave that until you have picked up a reasonable reading speed, since the manual interpretations must be connected with actual examples to be meaningful. *** Now let us go back for some detail on Subordinate Clauses, first a clause of Fact: Praetereo quod non est verum "I pass over the fact that it is not true". The clause is clear factual, hence grammatically Indicative, the first verbal form in our above outline. 64
The pronouns qui quae quod can operate in the same way: "Ille est qui ad te venit heri" He is the one who came up to you yesterday. But with a conditional/subjunctive we shift into the realm of the un-factual: "Ille est qui frangeret patris cervicem"...... with the Imperfect Subj., " He is a man who would break his father's neck." In a slightly different but related vein, we find: "Ille fortis est qui in hostes curreret " ....." he is the brave sort who would rush upon the enemy", which Is English might come out as a statement of purpose: "He is brave enough to rush upon the enemy." A minor difference, same distinguishing word-order in Latin, but quite different in English translation. The introductory "ut" can also be used factually, so: "Narravit acta ut erant" "He retold the facts as they were." But if we have a conditional/subjunctive, as in : "Hoc fecit ut te occideret" He did this so that he might kill you.." ...the whole meaning changes with the use of the conditional. At this point we poise on the edge of the complex world of Latin Syntax, a complex web of ways of putting sentences together in order to express a wide range of conditions and ideas. A detailed grammar treatise will have as detailed a treatment of the Syntax as of the Morphology or forms of the Latin language. But since this material is the deduction from a distillation of written texts, I suggest deferring detailed study of Syntax until a reasonable reading speed has been achieved. Syntax is NOT a set of prescriptions indicating how Latin was originally written, it is a post facto set of very detailed observations about how it WAS written. In the time of John Donne and John Milton in the l7 th c. Latin was still written with care and art as a literary mode, and the observations of good ancient Latin provided an exemplar for writing it then. This largely disappeared by l800, but writing Latin Composition (as it was called) continued as a rather cumbersome school exercise well into the 20 th c. It does provide excellent practice and drill in Latin grammar and syntax, but is as articial and ultimately pointless as the exercises of the Music Conservatories which require scores to be constructed in four part canon. These are neither good examples of creative writing, or good music, and they have been quietly removed to the academic trash can.
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Some Thoughts on Syntax

1) The "rules" of Syntax are not rules but observations drawn from the common practice of Latin writings, there is much variation between the 3rd c. BC and the 4th c. AD, but the basic orientation is toward the Augustan and 1st c. AD timespan. Part of our sense of Latin grammar dates from the Roman schoolmasters and professors of the late Roman Empire, who devised systems suitable for their educational purposes. Much of their grammatical preferences lasted in the West until well into the 20th century, when modern Linguistics began to develop general systems of approach which would work with all languages. The current treatment of Latin grammar, morphology and syntax alike, is dreadfully out of date, and far inferior to methods used in teaching the modern languages in our schools and colleges. This is offered as a preliminary advice for a person learning Latin inductively, that is, by reading and confirming his notions about grammar from actual texts, aided by only a basic outline such as this. When approaching Allen and Greenough, be prepared for a shock, the astonishing detail in such a treatment can be overwhelming. Least of all think that memorizing parts of such treatises will equip you in your effort to learn to read Latin fluently. On the other hand, as reference much later after you have progressed in reading, such detail will be invaluable if tedious. 2) By Inductive Method, we mean taking a connected, authentic piece of Latin text and approaching it analytically, after a very brief skirmish with "grammar", then letting the text, as you read it in the original without translation, teach you the structure of Latin from the inside out as it were. This method has been tried many times in many places, it works very well with interested persons who have good natural language abilities. (Without interest and talent, nobody should be studying Latin at all, that is obvious.) If there are a few basic directions I can give you, they would be: a) Vocabulary is the persistant villain, so look up words efficiently in an electronic dictionary such as the one available from:
Centaur Systems Ltd Rob Latousek 407 N. Brearly St Madison WI 53703-1603 Phone: 608-255-6979 email: latousek@centaursystems.com
This dictionary by the present writer, covers all the words you will ever see in any Latin literary text, some 15000 words in all. It finds a word with a brief but complete definition, in about two seconds, and comes in a Mac and a PC version. Dictionary thumbing has been the bane of Latin since the Renaissance, at last there is a better way. Information about the Electronic Latin Dictionary is available from CentaurSystems.
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b) Don't translate after determining the meaning of a word. Read aloud, since the ear is a critical factor in language learning, and the Romans always read aloud themselves. Often meaning will appear on repeated vocal readings, and the sound of Latin is an important part of the experience. c) Read a lot, read fast, and don't be afraid of missing something. If you read enough, the errors will begins to be corrected automatically, just as you learned to read English literature without checking each grammatical structure and looking up all new words. Many people think Latin is to be puzzled out, many suspicious teachers think translation is the only way they can monitor the student's homework. Translating everything, reading slowly, and thinking in English rather than Latin is the sure way to get discouraged at your tortoise progress, and finally give it up. The Loeb Library from Harvard University Press is still probably the most practical series of texts, Latin and facing English translation. It was started early in this century as a venture to bring fast reading to adults who had studied Latin in school but failing to enjoy it then, were interested in going back to Latin later in life. There is a strong temptation to look too frequently at the translation, just as there is a temptation toward chocolate and alcohol, but much Latin reading does need some help, and the Loebs are handy, if fairly expensive nowadays. The OCT Oxford Classical Text series has a plain text with variant readings at the foot of each page, these are excellent editions but offer no commentary so they are really rough going for the beginner. On the other hand an OCT text of Vergil is something you can keep and use forever. OCT's were once cheap because Oxford published them at a loss since profits accrued from their Hymnals, but with the decline of religion in the UK, the OCT series became very expensive, although not out of line with new book prices in cloth binding. The BT or Bibliotheca Teubneriana has been around for morfe than a century, less good paper than the OCT but amazingly wide range of Greek and Latin text editions, these can often be found in used bookshops and are well worth buying, even hoarding for future use. After getting a good head start, what would be best to read? I feel the poets are the heart of Latin literature, Catullus is a good beginning and not too hard, Horace is harder but the poems are short and many are approachable, Ovid is great and much fun. But it is Vergil which is the center, the great master, the supreme artist with words, and Vergil is enough if you read nothing else, since there is a lifetime of lucubration in that one volume. History is a natural subject for many, Livy starts off well, Tacitus is wonderful but real hard, hold him till later. For a start, Eutropius is simple and sort of pathetic, but good reading for a beginner. I find Caesar great as a terse stylist, military mastermind, and grand politician on the large screen, but you have to read him fast or you lose the sense of those campaigns. (We treated the Native Americans just as he taught us in his treatment of the Gauls; he subjected, we went a step further intending genocide. Caesar was read by every American army man for two centuries...the result for the Native Americans is well known! There is an astonishing array of technical writers, whom the Classical scholars seem to ignore totally. Cato on agriculture is a genuine document from the early period, mean conservative S.O.B. as he was. Columella on agriculture backs up Virgil's Georgics with dirt-farming experience. Vitruvius' treatise De Architecture from 28 BC is detailed, comprehensive, and written in the ordinary Latin of an actual contractor. Discovered in the early Renaissance it had a remarkable afterlife in modern times as former of architectural taste for centuries. And then there are the medical writers, Scribonius Largus, and of course Celsus with special 67
interest in surgery. And what about Law, the discovered text of Gaius describing the whole framework of Roman society in legal aspect, let along the preserved later Jurists? Nobody should go without reading Petronius' Satyricon, fragmentary as it is, and for a more magical moment Apuleius' Golden Ass which is not fragmentary, a world of sheer mystery and magic. *** My best wishes to all of you who undertake the study of Latin. Whether you are an undergraduate who is heading to Law School, an artist who is looking for high artistic achievement in another era and area, or someone who once did some Latin back in the school-days and would like to renew the acquaintance now, less for nostalgia than for the opening of new doors -- the study of Latin or any language which has a vital literary tradition is more than worthwhile as an investment of time. It can be challenging, absorbing and intellectually rewarding. And at the same time it can be something we often forget about: It can be fun!
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Harris Complete Latin Grammar

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Harris Complete Latin Grammar

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Preface

The Idea of Latin Grammar

The Noun System

The First Declension

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

SINGULAR nauta nautae nautae nautam naut

PLURAL nautae nautarum nautis nautas nautis

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

The Second Declension

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

SINGULAR vir viri viro virum viro

PLURAL viri virorum viris viros viris

The Third Declension

See more on the particularities of the 3rd declensiion.

The Fourth Declension

The Fifth Declension

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative Nominative

Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

diei diei diem die

dierum diebus dies diebus

See Particularities of the Declensions.

An Excursus on "Vowel Length"

The Adjective and Adverb

Class I: Adjectives based on Declensions I and II

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Declension, Masc. "good" PLURAL boni bonorum bonis bonos bonis

Class II: Adjectives based on Declensions III

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

fortis (forte) fortis forti fortem (forte) forte

fortes (fortia) fortium fortibus fortes (fortia) fortibus

General Notions on the Adjectives

The "Grades" of Adjectives

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

parvus multus multi nequam (indecl.) frugi (indecl.)

minor plus plures nequior frugior

minimus plurimus plurimi (of persons) nequissimus frugissimus

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

There is also a Reflexive Pronouns , se "...self" which is in common use:

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

unius uni unum uno

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Ablative

Brief Review of the Noun, Adjective and Pronouns

Singular and Plural. Cases:

1) Subject; 2) Possessive; 3) To-for; 25

The Forms of the Latin Verb

The Present Tense

The Imperfect Tense

The Future Tense

The Perfect Tense

Here is a disconcerting situation in regard to the endings:

The Pluperfect Tense

amaverat amaveramus amaveratis amaverant

monuerat monueramus monueratis monuerant