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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 uestion. Let me try to answer succinctly:
! ha"e obser"ed that in in our new global society there is a unfounded belief that if you describe each
segment of a machine or a pro#ect or an operation in fine detail, the cumulation of many detailed statements
will add up to an understanding of "the whole". ! belie"e there is a logical error in this approach. $he first
sentence of Aristotle%s &ichomachean 'thics emphasi(es the importance )if not o"erall "alue* of the most
general approach, which is something we often fail to recogni(e in our preference for the ultimate e+actness
in discrete analysis.
Latin "grammarbooks" are constructed as series of lessons, each incorporating a well,defined, small area to
be learned before going on. !t is not surprising that students who ha"e gone through all the "lessons" usually
ha"e no sense of the linguistic outline of the language as a working system. -ut at the other end of the
spectrum a .anual like that of Allen / Greenough, ed. 0%1oge l234 )out of print5* or e"en better the large
6ale with its e+cellent e+amples )also 17* , offers a mass of micro,articles on e"ery aspect of Latin
grammar, but no way to see the forest for the trees
$his 7ro#ect has two purposes:
a* $o deli"er an "architectonic "iew" 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 e+planation of the indi"idual components as they are described
)paradigms and all*, in the belief that we know enough about practical linguistics at this time to re"amp the
8lassical traditional,ese #argon and talk about Latin as a language,system which was uite satisfactory for
well o"er a millennium of "aried communications.
9tudents 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. $his is a problem in many of the modern science studies, where micro,detail can lose the o"erall
sense of pattern. !t is in this spirit that the present pro#ect on the Latin Language is undertaken, with the hope
that those who ha"e gone through the first stage of learning the basic forms and configuration, will now be
able to re"iew what they ha"e studied in an enlightening fashion, and recei"e some mentoring ad"ice on
how to proceed toward a fast and effecti"e reading knowledge of Latin. Latinists ha"e for centuries pored
o"er paragraphs with -iblical de"otion, we now need techniue for reading ancient books as li"e literature,
and to do this we need some new tooling. 7erhaps this 7ro#ect will offer some of these tools.
: : :
$he purpose of this monograph is to pro"ide a clear and uncluttered description of the Latin language as it
was used in ancient times. $he author feels it is important to strip away as much of the descripti"e technical
#argon which has adhered to Latin as seems reasonable, and furthermore to describe e"ery feature of the
language simply, succinctly, and in plain 'nglish. 9ome amplification is necessary but the ad"ancing student
;
will find reference grammar books on e"ery library list. All the "ariants, rules and e+ceptions, and e+amples
of syntactic usage are important later, but for the beginner we want to set forth the outlines clearly. &either
the #argon of the ancient grammarians, nor the in"ol"ed terminology of modern structuralists seem suitable
for our purposes, so we will go it alone with a new map in a "ery old and "enerable territory.
: : :
At the start, that important uestion: Why study Latin? Arguments pro and con are long and tedious, ! shall
try to dig down to bedrock as directly as possible?
! belie"e there are only two real reasons for learning Latin. <irst, there is a certain number of wor;d,class
8lassical writers and thinkers who wrote works which are absolutely untranslatable. =obert <rost once said
that "poetry is what is lost in translation", one of those short truths which is inescapable. !n the last thirty
years we ha"e de"eloped, probably as a sur"i"al techniue in our college 8lassics departments, courses of
8lassics in 'nglish $ranslation, so that now hundreds read >ergil in 'nglish for e"ery one who reads him in
the original. 9ome of the translators ha"e been gifted writers, indeed. -ut there lurks in this process an
inherent lie: >ergil in Latin is the real >ergil, e"en if read slowly and painfully, while the 'nglish is uite
another kind of book, and incidentally a much weaker one. 6a"ing taught >ergil in Latin for many years, !
alternately laugh and sigh when ! look )briefly* into the translations. 9ome things are simply not con"ertible
to another form and format, and the high Art of writing is one of these.
9econd, there is another uite different reason: $he social documentary approach. $erence said long ago that
nothing human was uninteresting to him, and now that we ha"e a in our historical studies a de"eloped sense
of social rele"ance, we find fascinating information about that elusi"e fellow ,,, .an ,,, in all ancient
documents. $he human condition two thousand years ago was similar to our world, but "ery different? and it
is the "arying formula for the degree of difference which makes social studies in ancient society fascinating.
'"erything from inscriptions on stone, 8icero%s personal letters, the no"elistic portrayal of $rimalchio at his
insane dinner party, the rising of a new and "ery ner"ous 8hristian consciousness ,,, these are all fascinating
parts of the rare material which comprises human history. 'specially interesting now is the social history of
the masses, the populus minutus as they were called by the =omans.
&ow, if high art and social studies are the two good reasons for the study of Latin, then what are the bad or
uestionable ones?
"Latin teaches you 'nglish." !t may do so, but if you want to study 'nglish, study 'nglish, and you will
come out ahead. <or sheer "ocabulary Latin confers a lot, on the other hand wide reading in 'nglish and use
of the dictionary teaches you 'nglish fast enough.
"Latin is first rate e+ercise for the mind, is strengthens your brain." 9tudying anything hard and well
impro"es your concentration and your mental track record, but recall that the brain is made up of ner"e
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." $his was first proposed formally in the ;4 th c. by the
9panish scholar 9anctius )9anche(* in his book ".iner"a, si"e de 8ausis Linguae Latinae...." which
belaboredly made its point by rewriting Latin grammar as a system of logic, and maintaining the argument
by casuistic argumentation. 9anche( did a great deal of damage to 7ost =enaissance thought, and it was only
with the coming of modern Linguistics in the last hundred years that we reclassified his work in our library
@
catalogs under the category of 8urious Linguistic =ubbish. -ut as archaeologists know, rubbish often has a
longer life than art, and some people still unknowingly follow .iner"a%s thread.
"Latin is still basic learning, like the three =%s, and in a day of applied studies, like cooking, dri"ing, drug
abuse awareness, and personality de"elopment, Latin as pro"en learning must be real and "aluable." -ut this
is #ust a reaction, a backward mo"ement toward something less bad....and it is fortified by America%s newest
neurosis: &19$ALG!A. &ostalgia for old clothes, old trinkets, e"en old, poorly designed and made
furniture, old anything for your closet of 8ollectibles. And you can put in good old Latin too, if it amuses
you.
&one 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 "alid reasons, which ! belie"e, are:
l* $he study of high art, carefully constructed prose and brilliant poetry from the ancient world.
@* $he detailed study of .an and his thin web of recent history, on the personal rather than political le"el, in
terms of the web of 6istory.
!f you concentrate on these aspects of Latin study, you will find rich rewards, which ! belie"e will
remunerate you for the hard work you will ha"e to put in to get a decent reading knowledge of the Latin
language.
A
Background

;* Latin is of the !ndo,'uropean family of languages, a group which spread rapidly across 'urope and south
into !ndia some time after the last glaciation, retreated some ;B,333 years ago. !ndic, !ranian, Greek, 8eltic,
Germanic, -altic and 9la"onic as the ma#or groups, and a number of other branches such as Armenian and
6ittite, stem from the original, now lost, parent speech which we call !ndo,'uropean. !n 'urope only
-asue, 'truscan, 6ungarian and <innish are of non,!ndo 'uropean origin. <or a full statement of this
remarkable linguisticChistorical e"ent, ! recommend the article !ndo,'uropean in the ;; th edition of the
'ncyclopedia -ritannica )this classic edition from l2;3 is found in almost any good library collection* which
states the e"idence in some detail and with reasonable accuracy o"erall.
@* Latin is one of the numerous !ndo,'uropean dialects which had penetrated into !taly before ;@33 -.8. !t
attained widespread use slowly with the spread of =oman military supremacy, and by @B3 -.8. was the
dominant tongue in !taly? by the time of 8hrist it was the lingua franca of the Western part of 'urope, while
the &ear 'ast, Greece and southern !taly with 9icily retained Greek as the primary language. Latin continued
as the common language of <eudal 'urope, and became the scholarly means of communication for most
purposes through the ;D th century, after which the "arious 'uropean tongues asserted themsel"es. Writing
in Latin has a long range, from early plays of =oman 8omedy in rustic style about @33 -.8., through the
Augustan period%s great 8lassical artists, into the 8hurch <athers of the EC B th c. A.0., on to becomeing the
lingua franca of the =enaissance, and e"en into a curious academic dialect called ".odern Latinity" in the
post,=enaissance world.
-y the D th c. A.0. Latin was becoming a "dead language", as the nascent forms of the =omanic )or
=omance* Languages started to de"elop throughout 8harlemagne%s 'mpire. 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 ali"e don%t
seem particularly pertinent. !n the @3 th. 8. Latin is clearly "dead", but its literature in the original, and e"en
in its weakened form in translation, is clearly ali"e and flourishing.
E
The Idea of Latin Grammar


Latin, in common with its !ndo,'uropean congeners, is an inflected language, which basically means that
"roots" or basic units of form with standardi(ed meaning are e+tended and further defined by grammatical
syllables fused onto them for e+tended meaning. 9o a Latin word typically has these sections:
=11$, 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 acti"e actor, or acted upon.
>'=- endings, denoting time of the action, whether it is now, in the future, or in "arious aspects of
the past? as well as the number of people in"ol"ed, and whether they are !Cus, youCyou,all, or
he)she*Cthey.
&1F&9 generally denote things, "erbs actions, but more important is the formal fact that they ha"e
speciali(ed structure and endings, in short look and work entirely differently from "erbs. 9ome "erbs
are fabricated from nouns, and "ice "ersa, but the process of identification is simple and you will
understand the differences between them when you see the "ariety of their actual forms, what the
Linguist calls their "morphology".
Let us take a few e+amples:
&1F&9: $he word "amatoribus" originally starts with the "erb root ama, meaning "lo"e", but our starting
point is the noun amator "lo"er")the dictionary form*. <used to this is the ending ,ibus, which has two
connotations:
a* plural, "they"
b* "to, for" and also possibly "from".
=eading the word amatoribus, we understand not only "lo"er", but more specifically "lo"ers" )plural*, and
also that something is being gi"en to or taken away from these lo"ers )"ia the case ending*. .ost words in
Latin ha"e this kind of composite signification, which seems strange to users of languages which feature
basic words with few modifiers, like 'nglish and 8hinese.
>'=-9: $he "erb amabantur has the same root ama, but here it is used "erbally, which ! can tell
immediately from the type of endings used. $he syllable ,ba, means "was doing it, used to..." )imperfect
tense*, the ,nt, tells us that more than one persons did it, and also that it was a "they" concept, as against a
"we" or "you,all" concept. And the ,ur, at the end indicates that the action was being done to them, i.e. we
are dealing with a grammatical passi"e form. 7utting it all together, we can authentically state that "they
were being lo"ed", which tells us e"erything e+cept the se+ of the persons in"ol"ed. >erbs usually do not
note se+, nouns often do, but not always. 9e+ or gender is noted in other ways, to be sure, but not directly
and formally in the Latin noun,"erb structure.
B
We ha"e thus noted the e+istence of the two ma#or grammatical classifications of words, the &1F&9 and
the >'=-9. -eside these are se"eral other classes of words:
A0G'8$!>'9 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. 9o "ir bonus means "a good man", actually "man..
good" and the second word is descripti"e, hence an ad#ecti"e. )&ote that Latin does not use articles with its
nouns, like the 'nglish word "the". 8on"enient as it seems to us, the =omans seemed to manage perfectly
well without it*.
7=1&1F&9 include the group "he, she, it, they, that one, this one here" etc. $hey are an odd class in
themsel"es, sometimes being written like nouns, sometimes by their own pattern )dating back to !ndo,
'uropean times*, $hey are often called irregular in the manuals, which means that they will be difficult to
remember. -ut they are uite common in use, so one #ust has to learn them on their own terms.
7A=$!8!7L'9 ha"e noun,ad#ecti"e endings grafted onto "erb roots, sometimes used descripti"ely as
ad#ecti"es. or sometimes as nouns. $hey correspond to the 'nglish words ending in ",ing" when used
descripti"ely, as "running, dancing" etc. )-ut do not confuse these with the 'nglish nouns like "running", as
in the phrase "=unning is healthy", which is a Latin Gerund5* 7articiples compare with the "running nose"
and the "o"erflowing cup". As an e+ample: seuentes "following , plural , sub#ect", as in "following the
herd", but also in many cases the allied noun,idea of "followers". !n short participles are "erbal ad#ecti"es,
sometimes used as "erbal nouns.
!&<!&!$!>'9 are much like 'nglish "to lo"e" "to hear" etc. $hey go along with "erbs but often are used in
special constructions to denote uoted or hearsay information )!ndirect 0iscourse, which is complicated, of
which more later*. !nfiniti"es 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.
7='<!H'9 are like "erbal endings, e+cept they are fused onto the beginning of the root rather than the end.
$ypical are com, "with", in, "not", contra, "against" pro, "toward", and they often #oin permanently with
"erbs to make speciali(ed standardi(ed meanings, as con,iungere "#oin together, )hence* marry".
7refi+es 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 reuiring or "taking" a certain noun ending or "case". 9o in
urbem "into the city" shows two separate words, but the second one, because of the nature of the prefi+ in,
meaning "into", it is in the ob#ect or accusati"e case. !n urbe "in the city" is different in meaning, with the
second word turned into the in, or ablati"e case, denoting location. .ore of this when we get into the actual
meanings of the cases.
A0>'=-9 are fi+ed or non,inflected words which amplify or describe a "erb, witness their name ad
"erbum "toward a "erb". $hey often don%t look like as a class, and you learn them generally as indi"idual
words, e.g. cras "tomorrow", mane "early in the morning". -ut fortiter and belle " bra"ely" and "prettily"
show the two more common endings ),ter and ,e*, but there is no one ending for this odd class of words.
Ad"erbs like primo "first" are in the Ablati"e 8ase, but fro(en. 7ut in here also words like 3 "oh%.", eheu
"alas", and the semi,meaningless markers of rhetoric and poetry )autem and enim*, used much like the
'nglish con"ersational "Well..." and "&ow...".
We ha"e now described in "ery rough outline a few of the basic types of the forms and features of the Latin
language, ne+t we will go back and describe each class in detail, noting all the usable forms as found in the
4
regular 8lassical authors. =emember that the Latin we ha"e is the result of four centuries of "purification
and standardi(ation" by generations of schoolmamsters in the period of the 'mpire before E33 A.0.. !n the
.anuscripts and !nscriptions are hundreds of "ariants which stem from common usage, e.g. "da"it" for dedit
in a E th c. !nscr., or the list of "wrong forms" in the standardi(ing Appendi+ 7robi. -ut the Latin we learn in
school is the "standardi(ed" "ersion, #ust as our school <rench is authori(ed AcadImie <ranJaise <rench.
K
The Noun System

&1F&9, across the board, ha"e three orientations, e+pressed, as we noted before, by fused,on endings.
$hese functions are:
;. G'&0'=C9'H: )masculine, feminine and neuter*, applies basically to men women and things, but is
greatly e+tended into "grammatical se+uality", so that some classes of things fall uite arbitrarily into
se+,classes. .ost of these arbitrary se+,connections must simply be learned by e+perience, as in
most other !ndo,'uropean and modern 'uropean languages.
@. &F.-'= , or the distinction between singular and plural. )9ome languages ha"e a "dual" category,
of which Latin has only "estiges, e.g. ambo, duo, where the long ,o, is an !ndo,'uropean dual.*
A. 8A9' )the traditional term, and con"enient* is actually syntactical relationship of the noun to other
"erbal elements in the sentence. $he cases in Latin are si+ in the singular form, and an eual number
in the plural. $hey are gi"en here in the traditional order )so that you can use standard grammatical
reference books*:
o a* 9F-G'8$ )traditional &ominati"e so named by the old =oman schoolmasters in Latin*.
$his means the word is the actor or doer in the sentence, and corresponds to the first of the
regular three element seuence )sub#ect,"erb,ob#ect* which 'nglish adopted a thousand years
ago after the loss of its inherited case,endings. 9o in the phrase "6enry kicks <ido", 6enry is
the sub#ect in 'nglish by its position, in Latin by its sub#ect case ending. )$here are
complications here, of which more later...*
o b* 7199'99!>' or traditional Geniti"e. $his is pretty much the same as 'nglish "of..."as in
" &ecessity is the mother of in"ention..."
o c* 0A$!>'. $he function of "to..for" are the old 0ati"e )from Latin da, "gi"e ....to", hence
the Gi"ing 8ase.. $his form can be used as thhe !ndirect 1b#ect )6e gi"es it to him*, or it
may refer to some benefit or in#ury to a person. !ntellectually it is best to think of this as the
"to.. .for" case, or the old term 0ati"e may be more useful.
o d* 0!='8$ 1-G'8$ or the old Accusati"e. 9imple accusation is not in"ol"ed )#%accuse....*,
but rather pointing the finger or directing some action at or toward someone or something.
Again note "6enry kicks <ido" where poor old <ido is the ob#ect of the "erb "kicks". 1r
more simply "he sees him, he lo"es her." $his is the difference between the "estigial 'nglish
"who" and "whom", "he" and "him". -ut it is implicit and more usable in 'nglish in the
"third position placement" we all employ unconsciously: 9ub#ect...>erb... 1b#ect
)Goe...sees.....Gane L 1b#ect*. $he idea is perfectly straightforward, it is #ust the difference
between the way Latin and 'nglish go about representing it which is so confusing for us.
o e* A-LA$!>'. $his case denotes "in, on" as well as "from" relationships, which seems
semantically per"erse since the meanings are so different. -ut so it is, the result of "8ase
9yncretism" or the fusing together of different concepts which origianly had different cases
in the !ndo,'uropean mother,tongue. $his case is partly Locati"e )place*, but it can be Agent
)by means of* and the old name Ablati"e )from ab,latus "carried away" describes only a third
fused function )from*. $o complicate an already confounding situation, the concept "with" is
D
present when used with the preposition cum "with"5 $here is nothing straightforward about
this case5
: : :
!n outline then, to make it a bit more clear, we ha"e something like this:

9!&GFLA= 7LF=AL
&ominati"e 9ub#ect 9ub#ect
Geniti"e 7ossessi"e 7ossessi"e
0ati"e "toCfor" "toCfor"
Accusati"e 1b#ect 1b#ect
Ablati"e "fromCbyCin" "fromCbyCin"
>ocati"e "hey there"
9e"eral things deser"e one more word. $he >ocati"e e+ists only in the singular of masculine 8lass !! nouns
which you will see below, so generally you will ha"e fi"e cases in the singular rather than si+. And in the
plural of all classes )see below* the 0ati"e and Ablati"e plurals ha"e one form, hence plurals will ha"e only
four case forms. Asymmetry in language is normal, although some languages like $urkish ha"e crystalline
regularity....<or asymmetry, #ust consider hodge,podge 'nglish.%
: : :
&ow that we ha"e outlined the 8A9'9, we should list the fi"e 8LA99'9 or 0'8L'&9!1&9 to which all
the Latin nouns belong.
A 8LA99 )which we number ! !! !!! !> >* is traditionally called a 0eclension )$hey were actually so named
by =oman school masters because they descend or "decline" down the =oman schoolboy%s tablet. $he
=omans belie"ed in rote memori(ation, for centuries we enforced the notorious "amo amas amat..., a poor
alternati"e to !nducti"e =eading.*
'ach 0eclension is structurally different in its forms )endings* from the others, and a word normally belongs
to one class and one class only. &ouns do not switch classes, there is no reason to, since they all mean
semantically the same thing in terms of GenderC9e+, 8ase and number. As you learn a new word, you
automatically note its class, and se+ )gender*, since you will need this information for reading.
&ow we will describe the fi"e classes of Latin nouns, and gi"e a typical e+ample of a word in each class

The First Declension
6ere is an e+ample of the <irst 0eclension, the <eminine &ouns:
CLASS: Noun I Declension, Fem. "girl"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative uella uellae
Genitive uellae uellarum
Dative uellae uellis
Accusative uellam uellas
A!lative uella. uellis
CLASS: Noun I Declension, "asc.# . "sailor"
2
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative nauta nautae
Genitive nautae nautarum
Dative nautae nautis
Accusative nautam nautas
A!lative naut$ nautis
See the exhaustive List of .asculine nouns in the <irst declension.
A few words are con#ugated as reflections of the Greek originals:
CLASS: Noun % Declension, "asc.
SINGULAR
Nominative Aeneas
Genitive Aeneae
Dative Aeneae
Accusative Aenean
A!lative Aene$
$wo things to note: ;* &auta is masculine, although the forms looks feminine, and an ad#ecti"e will be
masculine, e.g. bonus nauta. @* ! ha"e marked the Ablati"e 9ingular with a dot after the final ,a to indicate
that it is "long" phonematically )more about this later*. $his is a particularly annoying form in reading,
which is why ! mention the matter here.
See 7articularites of the <irst 0eclension.
The Second Declension
$he 9econd 0eclension has two types, here first are the .asculines:
CLASS: Noun II Declension, "asc. "slave"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative servus servi
Genitive servi servorum
Dative servo servis
Accusative servum servos
A!lative servo servis
-ut there is a &euter class, which similar in many forms to the .asculine:
CLASS: Noun II Declension, Neut. "gi&t"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative 'onum 'ona
Genitive 'oni 'onorum
Dative 'ono 'onis
Accusative 'onum 'ona
A!lative 'ono 'onis
!n the 9econd 0eclension the &euters are distinguished from the .asculines only in the &ominati"e,
Accusati"es of 9ingular, and in the &ominati"e,Accusati"es of the 7lural. $he other forms are identical with
the .asculines.
&ote: there is no difference between the nominati"e and accusati"e singulars in the &euters, or between the
nominati"e and accusati"e plurals.
CLASS: Noun II Declension, "asc. "man"
;3
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative vir viri
Genitive viri virorum
Dative viro viris
Accusative virum viros
A!lative viro viris
!n some 0ecl. !! nouns the nominati"e ends in ,r, historically by loss of the "owel in a proto,form :"ir,u,s ,
)cf. Lithuanian "yras* by consolidation of ,rs, )not acceptable as a sound in Latin* as ,r, gi"ing "ir "man"5
-ut the other forms are normal, e.g. gen.sg. "iri.
See 7articularities of the 9econd 0eclension.

The Third Declension
$here 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,. $he $hird 0eclension is in a sense a catch,all for "arious stem,types, and can be "ery
confusing. !t can ha"e words of se"eral genders. -ut it is the similarity of the endings which binds all these
disparate words together. =emember a word belongs to a gi"en 0eclension class, there are no differences in
meaning other than appearance and gender in the fi"e noun classes.
6ere are some typical e+amples in the $hird 0eclension:
CLASS: Noun III Declension, "asc. "(ing"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative re) reges
Genitive regis regum
Dative regi *i+ long, regi!us
Accusative regem reges-regis
A!lative rege regi!us
CLASS: Noun III Declension, "asc. "sol'ier"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative miles milites
Genitive militis militum
Dative militi militi!us
Accusative militem milites
A!lative milite militi!us
CLASS: Noun III Declension, "asc "lea'er"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative 'u) 'uces
Genitive 'ucis 'ucum
Dative 'uci 'uci!us
Accusative 'ucem 'uces
A!lative 'uce 'uci!us
CLASS: Noun III Declension, Neut. ".ea'"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative caut caita
Genitive caitis caitum
Dative caiti caiti!us
Accusative caut caita
A!lative caite caiti!us
;;
CLASS: Noun III Declension, "asc. "&at.er"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative ater atres
Genitive atris atrum
Dative atri atri!us
Accusative atrem atres
A!lative atre atri!us
CLASS: Noun III Declension, Neut. "!o'/"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative corus corora
Genitive cororis cororum
Dative corori corori!us
Accusative corus corora
A!lative corore corori!us
CLASS: Noun III Declension, "asc. "&ire" *i+stem,
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative ignis ignes
Genitive ignis ignium
Dative igni igni!us
Accusative ignem ignis-es
A!lative igni-e igni!us
CLASS: Noun lll Declension, Fem. "cit/"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative ur!s ur!es
Genitive ur!is ur!ium
Dative ur!i ur!i!us
Accusative ur!em ur!is-es
A!lative ur!e ur!i!us
!n this $hird 0eclension there are also many irregular paradigms. Let me note a few of the more common
ones here. $he best way to get the gist of these is to look up in your dictionary these nominati"e forms, and
obser"e carefully the geniti"e which is always gi"en. $his geniti"e gi"es the clue to the formation of most of
the other forms. -asically you ha"e to learn these irregulars by e+perience and use:
bos : bo"is?
caro : caronis?
domus : domMs.
iter : itineris?
ni+ : ni"is?
os : ossis?
sene+ : senis?
sus : suis?
"is : )pl. "ires*.
See more on the particularities of the Ard declensiion.

The Fourth Declension
$he <ourth 0eclension is uite regular, it is normally masculine. &ote that the nominati"e singular has a
short ,u,, while the geniti"e singular and nominati"e and accusati"e plural are all identical with a long ,u,.
;@
8onfusing, but in te+ts the conte+t almost always makes the use uite clear.)$he circumfle+ accent o"er
some "owels indicates that they are long, since this electronic format lacks the macron*.
CLASS: Noun I0 Declension, "asc. "la(e"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative lacus lac1s
Genitive lac1s lacuum
Dative lacui lacu!us
Accusative lacum lac1s
A!lative lac1 lacu!us
CLASS: Noun I0 Declension, Fem. ".an'"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative manus man1s
Genitive man1s manuum
Dative manui-u mani!us
Accusative manum man1s
A!lative man1 mani!us
$he common word for "house" domus is <em. and oscillates between the 9econd and <ourth 0eclensions, as
follows:
CLASS: Noun II-I0 Declension, Fem. ".ome"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative 'omus 'om1s
Genitive 'om1s-'omi 'omuum-'omorum
Dative 'omui-'omo 'omi!us
Accusative 'omum 'omus-'omos
A!lative 'omu-'omo 'omi!us
&1$': $here is "ariation in the dati"eCablat"e plural forms, which alternate between ibusCubus. Assume
generally ,ibus following the analogy of the $hird 0ecl., but partus, tribus, artus and lacus retain ,ubus,
while portus and specus ha"e ha"e either.
See 7articularities of the <ourth 0eclension.

The Fifth Declension
$he <ifth )last* 0eclension contains only a few do(en words, but all are uite common. Words in this group
are <eminine )e+cept dies and meri,dies which are .asc.*. $he geniti"e singular is listed here but generally
a"oided in Latin prose, oddly, e"en to the e+tent of writing "partem e facie" rather than "partem faciei".
Again se"eral case,forms ha"e the same ending ,ies, a common feature of Latin grammar, but one which
does not cause problems in Latin te+ts. Authors generally are careful to make their meaning clear, despite
grammatical ambiguities.
CLASS: Noun 0 Declension, Fem. "t.ing, matter"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative res res
Genitive rei rerum
Dative rei re!us
Accusative rem res
A!lative re re!us
CLASS: Noun 0 Declension, "asc. "'a/"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative 'ies 'ies
;A
Genitive 'iei 'ierum
Dative 'iei 'ie!us
Accusative 'iem 'ies
A!lative 'ie 'ie!us
See 7articularities of the 0eclensions.

An Ecursus on !"o#el Length!
$his is a good point to discuss something which we ha"e been a"oiding, the fact that some "owels are
"long" while others are "short".
$he long "owels are marked with a macron abo"e in dictionaries and in highschool te+tbooks, but were
ne"er marked by the =omans in their manuscripts, no do we note them in printed Latin te+ts. !n the old days
students were drilled for knowledge of the longs and shorts, in Germany it was traditional to ha"e the
student make hand motions to indicate longs, but this was a poor substitute for proper pronunciation in the
classroom. 8uriously many Latin teacher don%t like to read Latin aloud, thus missing the pleasure of hearing
the nuances of poetry and also engraining the "ocabulary in the students% minds.
<rom a Linguistics point of "iew, sounds which "make a difference", that is sounds which can distinguish
one word from another, are called "phonematic". .any of the longCshort differences are &1$ phonematic,
so ! am not going to burden you with them in this Guide. -ut a few are, for e+ample the
&ominati"eCAblati"e of "puella", so ! will place a . )period* after a long "owel when it does make a
distinction. )We lack the macron in this website language...*
-ut when you read poetry you suddenly find that you really ha"e to know the lengths of the "owels in order
to grasp the metrical cadences of the "erse. 6owe"er you only learn to read the Latin he+ameter 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. -ut there is another complication here: =omans 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. ! only mention these complications to warn
you that there is a no,man%s,land ahead, which ! suggest you ignore for the present, learning only the basic
forms as they stand. $his will be enough to get you into reading basic Latin, the rest can come bit by bit later
as you need it.
$here are many irregularities in Latin Grammar, which ha"e no special reason for their being, so don%t be
surprised when you find them cropping up, as they surely will. 8ommon words are often irregular,
unfortunately. Why in the world should a sailor )nauta* be feminine in 8lass !, but ha"e a 8lass !! ad#ecti"e?
1r why should all trees ending in ,us )ornus "ash tree"* be masculine in form but take feminine ad#ecti"es.
<orget the reasons and en#oy the ancient irrationality of what is generally a "ery rational language o"erall.
;E
The Ad$ecti%e and Ad%er&


The Ad$ecti%es
Ad#ecti"es are descripti"e words which attach themsel"es to nouns and tell us something more about their
nature. All ad#ecti"es are in form really nouns, that is they ha"e the same endings as nouns by and large, and
they fall into two classes:


'lass I( Ad$ecti%es &ased on Declensions I and II
FE)ININE
CLASS: A'2ective % Declension, Fem. "goo'"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative !ona !onae
Genitive !onae !onarum
Dative !onae !onis
Accusative !onam !onas
A!lative !ona. !onis
)AS'*LINE
CLASS: A'2ective %I Declension, "asc. "goo'"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative !onus !oni
Genitive !oni !onorum
Dative !ono !onis
Accusative !onum !onos
A!lative !ono !onis
NE*TE+
CLASS: A'2ective II Declension, Neut. "goo'"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative !onum !ona
Genitive . .
Dative . .
Accusative !onum !ona
A!lative . .
)$he unlisted neuter forms are e+actly the same as the .asc.*


'lass II( Ad$ecti%es &ased on Declensions III

.any ad#ecti"es fall into this second ad#ecti"e class, based on noun 8lass !!!. 9ince there is such a "ariance
of stems and appearances, ! will gi"e a few e+amples:
CLASS: AD34C5I04 III Declension, "!rave"
SINGULAR PLURAL
;B
Nominative &ortis *&orte, &ortes *&ortia,
Genitive &ortis &ortium
Dative &orti &orti!us
Accusative &ortem *&orte, &ortes *&ortia,
A!lative &orte &orti!us
)$he bracketed forms are neuters, the others are .asc.L <em.*
CLASS: A'2ective III Declension, ".ea'long..."
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative raeces *raeces, raeciites *+ia,
Genitive raeciitis raeciitum
Dative raeciiti raeciiti!us
Accusative raeciitem *raeces, raeciites ,+ia,
A!lative raeciite raeciiti!us
CLASS: A'2ective III Declension, "ol'"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative vetus *vetus, veteres *vetera,
Genitive veteris veterum
Dative veteri veteri!us
Accusative veterem *vetus, veteres *vetera,
A!lative vetere veteri!us
Nou will note immediately that in 8lass !!! one form co"ers both masculine and feminine. .any of these
forms also apply to the neuter, with the e+ception of the sub#ectCob#ect singular sub#ectCob#ect and plural,
which ha"e separate forms, #ust as in noun 8lass !! b. And again 0ati"e and Ablati"e plurals are always the
same, and no "ocati"es e+ist anywhere here.


General Notions on the Ad$ecti%es
A few more things remain to be said about ad#ecti"es in general:
$hey 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. $herefore we can say that Latin has a fairly free
word order. $his confers a freedom and beauty on the art of writing poetry, where in"ersions and artistic
separations are pretty much a standard practice. A line of "erse can ha"e artistic form as well as artistic
meaning.
Any ad#ecti"e, if used without a noun to attach itself to, can be considered a noun in its own right. 9o "ir
bonus or >- on =oman electioneering posters, "good man" a standard term in politics, can be reduced to
bonus, which is now a noun. And fortis "bra"e", an ad#ecti"e, by itself means "a bra"e man". $his is not
commonly found in 'nglish so you will ha"e to watch carefully. -ut "the meek" )as a noun* may still inherit
the earth5
A cardinal rule which go"erns e"ery Latin sentence, is that:
Everything must agree with everything else in every possible way.
$his has no direct rele"ance to the structure of =oman society, although it certainly sounds that way. !t
might be more typically American 5 8ertainly language and society e+hibit parallel features, as the
American linguist Whorf noted thirty years ago. -ut back to grammatical agreement...:
=ules for grammatical agreement:
;4
;. An ad#ecti"e must "agree" i.e. ha"e parallel structure in its endings, with the noun it goes with, in
respect to se+Cgender )masc. fem. neut.*
@. An ad#ecti"e must "agree" in &umber, i.e. singular or plural. -ut this does not apply to the &oun
0eclension concinnity, they are all euals in terms of agreement.
A. An ad#ecti"e must match in 8ase, as listed in the description of noun and ad#ecti"e forms, i.e.
sub#ect, possessi"e, to,for )dati"e*, 1b#ect, Ablati"e and the rare >ocati"e when it occurs.
$his sounds complicated but the idea is simple: !f you are going to use tag endings to identify functions, you
tag alike things which intellectually go together in the phrase or sentence. 6ence bonorum consiliorum "of
good counsels", .arce $ulli "6ey, .arcus $ullius", malae sententiae "e"il thoughts" ,,,,, these pairs make
perfect sense. $hey are grammatically "matched pairs".
)A sharp eye might notice that in the phrase .arce $ulli, something is wrong, because it might well ha"e
been .arce $ullie. A subrule states that masculine names in ,ius ha"e a >ocati"e ending simply in ,i,
probably as a condensation of a historical :$ulli,e which does not occur.*
! mention the abo"e e+ample here to ad"ise you that ! am not going to note unusual e+ceptions 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 e+ceptions later. Nou will find a list of all the e+ceptions you are likely to find in a
standard grammar )Allen / Greenough...*. =emember that although Latin is by and large standardi(ed
)although it can seem irregular* there are many e+ceptions to rules which are in themsel"es the rule in early
Latin, common parlance Latin , >ulgar Latin )which is not ""ulgar"*, 8hurch Latin, .edie"al Latin,
9cholastic Latin, and e"en =enaissance Latin. !t is no surprise to find the 7erfect "da"it" for dedit in a late
!nscription.


The !Grades! of Ad$ecti%es
Ad#ecti"es ha"e three grades )this scaling is called the 8omparison of Ad#ecti"es traditionally*, as follows:
;* $he base or regular ad#ecti"al form, which we ha"e been discussing abo"e.
@* $he "comparing" stage, which is similar to 'nglish "more" when there is something real or implied to
compare the word to, i.e. "this tree is taller than that". -ut it is important to note that if no comparison is
present, this form is like 'nglish "rather...", this "this tree is rather tall....". !t is this second use )without
comparison* which confuses the student most.
!n form this class follows class !! Ad#ecti"es, with no distinction between masculine and feminine forms )on
the left in the following e+amples*, while neuter endings are in brackets.
&ote that the Acc. 7l. always ends in ,es ) but 0ecl. !!! nouns ha"e alternate forms: long ,isCes*.
CLASS: Comarative a'2. "!raver",
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative &ortior *+ius, &ortiores *+iora,
Genitive &ortioris &ortiorum
Dative &ortiori &ortiori!us
Accusative &ortiorem *+ius, &ortiores *+iora,
A!lative &ortiore &ortiori!us
;K
!n this case the comparati"e forms are based on the regular word,stem, fort, .
CLASS: Comarative A'2. "goo'-!etter" !onus melior
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative melior *+ius, meliores *+iora,
Genitive melioris meliorum
Dative meliori meliori!us
Accusative meliorem *+ius, meliores *+iora,
A!lative meliore. meliori!us
-ut in this case, as often in commonly used words, the comparati"e is based on entirely different stem, in
fact it is a different word "suppleted" to go into that linguistic space. $his should be no surprise to speakers
of 'nglish who are well accustomed to "goodCbetter", let along "goCwent" and many other similar oddities.
$here is a group of uite common words which are irregular, and which you will ha"e to learn by e+perience
as you read. Who could e"er guess that "good, better, best" would be in Latin bonus....melior....optimus...?
)-ut look back at the 'nglish... goodCbetter*.
A list of the most commonly seen comparati"es )with the superlati"es, discussed below* is:
!onus melior otimus
malus eior essimus
magnus maior ma)imus
arvus minor minimus
multus lus lurimus
multi lures lurimi *o& ersons,
ne6uam *in'ecl., ne6uior ne6uissimus
&rugi *in'ecl., &rugior &rugissimus
A few words are found in 8omparati"e and 9uperlati"e without a "positi"e", namely:
ocior ocissimus "swift" and the common potior potissimus "powerful".
A* $he "most" stage, somewhat gaudily titled the "superlati"e" in traditional,ese grammar, is much easier to
deal with since it is uite regular in its forms:
!n form it regularly follows class ! <em. and !! .ascC&eut. Ad#ecti"es:
<rom "spissus" %thick% we make up our "most" form by adding ,issimus, and then deri"e up the rest of the
grammatical forms according to 8lass !C!! Ad#ecti"al procedure:
gratissimus gratissima gratissimum
etc etc etc
$here are, howe"er, some phonetic changes which took place presumably for ease of pronunciation, and we
ha"e :
celer "6uic(" !ut celerrimus &or 7celerissimus
facilis "easy" but facillimus for :facilissimus
1nce you are aware of this change, you can probably recogni(e most of the altered forms, but again there are
the real irregulars, which may e"en substitute a different root in this form.
!onus melior otimus
malus eior essimus
magnus maior ma)imus
;D
arvus minor minimus
multus lus lurimus
multi lures lurimi *o& ersons,
ne6uam *in'ecl., ne6uior ne6uissimus
&rugi *in'ecl., &rugior &rugissimus

The Ad%er&s
Ad"erbs are basically ad#ecti"al forms which are matched up with "erbs, rather than nouns. $hey "modify",
that is, they e+plain and further de"elop a "erbal concept, hence they "go with" the "erb and were so named
by the =oman grammarians: pro O "erbum "near or beside the "erb", a neat term in fact. -ut ad"erbs do not
grammatically agree with the "erb they match, nor are they fused on so as to become one word with the
"erb. Ad"erbs ha"e one, fi+ed form, hence they are easy to deal with for an 'nglish speaker, since they are
analogous to 'nglish ad"erbs, which also ha"e a single, fi+ed form. Ad"erbs are listed in the dictionaries as
"undecl." or undeclined, fi+ed forms.
;* $he most common class of ad"erbs ends in ,e, and is deri"ed from 0ecl. !C!! Ad#ecti"al formation:
-eside the Ad#ecti"e bellus bella bellum "pretty" we ha"e the Ad". belle "nicely, cutely"
)$his last word "bell," is not the word for "war", which is identical. Latin has the same identity problems as
e"ery language, cf. 'nglish lead )the "erb form: to lead etc.* as well as lead "plumbum, the metallic
element". *
-eside bona bonus bonum we would e+pect bone, but we get bene, the "owel phonetically shifted by use.
-ut the basic rule stands: Ad#ecti"es in ",us ,a, ,um" make an ad"erb in ,e, and this includes the "most" m or
9uperlati"e grade in ,issimus ,a ,um, which make ad"erbs by the same rule: ,issime. "most....,ly"
@* Ad#ecti"es which normally occur in our 8lass !! Ad#ecti"es )like 8lass !!! nouns* regularly take the
ending ,ter, which makes an ad"erb #ust as well, and with no difference in meaning from the abo"e.
9o fortis "bra"e" gi"es fortiter "bra"ely". $his class is common and pretty regular, no special problems
A* -ut if you want to make an ad"erb from a "more" )comparati"e* ad#ecti"al form, you don%t use this ,ter
ending, but use instead the comparati"e neuter form #ust as it stands.
9o from the grade normal ad#. tristis "sad", you make the "more" comparati"e up as tristior "sadder or rather
sad", and then the ad"erb will be the same as the neuter singular in ,ius:
tristius "rather sadly, or more sadly".
-ut this can also be a straight neuter ad#ecti"al 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 ambi"alencies, and
common sense usually cuts the Gordian knot.
E* Ad#ecti"es in the "most" or superlati"e grade will always be of the 8lass ! C!! Ad#ecti"es with ,a ,us ,um
endings, whether regular or irregular and so will use the simple and easily recogni(able Ad"erb ending ,e,
used in the first group listed abo"e. $he root and the appearance of the word may change but the ending will
#ust as you e+pect: ,e.
;2
B* Within the formal class of ad"erbs is a bagful of words which are #ust plain root,words with no formal tag
ending. 1ne might mention cras "tomorrow", mane "early in the A.", tot "so many", as well as the sentence
connectors enim "indeed." uippe "to be sure )sarcastic*", autem "on the other hand" and many more. Nou
look each up in a dictionary, each is a word with a meaning, and that%s all there is to it.
@3
The Pronouns

$he pronouns were so named by the =oman 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" . -ut the real
difference is not really conceptual, it is totally practical. $he pronouns ha"e a bewildering array of odd
forms, blind ends and complete non seuiturs. $hey are indeed another class of declension, a class unto
themsel"es, and the best way ! can introduce you to them is to ask you to read carefully the descriptions
below and the e+amples. Look o"er the forms, try to see some order in their array, and then re,study my
comments in this section. Nou can learn them by rote or by heart, but in fact you will see them so freuently
as soon as you get to reading a real te+t, that you will find they are less of a problem than you might think at
first sight.
;* $he pronouns as a class co"er a "ariety of concepts:
a* $he personal words, "!, you, he, she, they." $hese are "ery ancient forms and clearly go back to the !ndo
'uropean stage of linguistic de"elopment. ! could e+plain them to you in terms of 6istorical Linguistics, but
the e+planation would be more complicated than the phenomenon, which is complicated enough already. !f
you wonder why the word ego "me" switches root in the plural to nos "us", compare the 'nglish, and note
that "we" can be either !nclusi"e or '+clusi"e, which really are "ery different ideas.
!n form we find une+pected and irregular &ominati"e 9ingulars, the Geniti"e 9ing. in ,ius, the 0ati"e
9ingular in ,i,, which formsoccur only here. $he rest is pretty reasonable and follows the standard noun
formations. )!f interested in the historical background of the pronouns, consult 8 0 -uck%s 8omparati"e
Grammar of Greek and Latin for a full treatment in terms of 6istorical Linguistics.*
CLASS: Personal Pronoun ego
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative ego nos
Genitive mei nostrum
Dative mi.i no!is
Accusative me nos
A!lative me no!is
1f course "we" is not really the "plural" of "me", despite .enander%s "What is a friend? Another .'."5 $he
concepts are really different and uite naturally the word,stems are also different.
CLASS: Personal Pronouns tu
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative tu vos
Genitive tui vestrum
Dative ti!i vo!is
Accusative te vos
A!lative te vo!is
@;
$here is also a =efle+i"e 7ronouns , se "...self" which is in common use:
CLASS: Noun Declension,
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative *ise isa isum, Same as sg. &or lur.
Genitive sui
Dative si!i
Accusative se
A!lative se
b* $he "who" words follow a different pattern. <irst you must note that ui "who...." is somewhat different
from uis "who....?", since the second word is used in uestions and the first is not. )!f you want terms, ui is
=elati"e 7ronoun, while uis is !nterrogati"e7ronoun, but be sure you get the meanings differentiated before
you resort to these terms.*
6ere the differences of form are in the sub#ect singular with an une+pected ,i,)=elati"e* beside ,is
)!nterrogati"e* , the possessi"e singular in ,ius, the neuter singular in ,d ):uodCuid*, and from there on it%s
clear sailing in the singular. !n the plural only the form uae "which things" as a neuter plural is new as
compared with the straight ,a of all other neuter plurals in all noun and ad#ecti"e classes.
$he "=elati"e" pronoun is like 'nglish "who..." without implying a uestion )your "oice does not raise*.
$here are three "genders", .asc. <em. and &eut., which are gi"en in that order in the tables below. A single
entry indicates that all forms are the same:
CLASS: Relative Pronoun 6ui "8.o..."
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative 6ui 6uae 6uo' 6ui 6uae 6uae
Genitive cuius 6uorum
Dative cui 6ui!us
Accusative 6uem 6uam 6uo' 6uos 6uas 6uae
A!lative 6uo 6ua 6uo 6ui!us
)1ne can almost hear the faint echoes of generations of schoolchildren reciting in unison their uaint ditty:
"ui uae uod cuius cuius cuius cui cui cui...".*
-ut in the !nterrogati"e 7ronoun )"who...?"*, the .asc. and <em. are the same, as in this table:
CLASS: Interrogative Pronouns 6uis "9.o...:"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative 6ui' 6ui' *as a!ove &orms,
Genitive cuius
Dative cui
Accusative 6uem 6ui'
A!lative 6uo
c* $he numbers are not too odd , and perhaps all ! should note is that there is no plural to unus, nor singular
to duo, thereby depri"ing the teacher of one of the oldest #okes in the trade. )$he parallel in the factory is
telling the neophyte to go fetch a left,handed monkey wrench...* After the numeral tres L A they don%t inflect
e+cept when turned into regular ad#ecti"es 8lass !.
CLASS: Numeral unus "one"
SINGULAR
Nominative unus
@@
Genitive unius
Dative uni
Accusative unum
A!lative uno
d* $here is a special set of words used for persons, usually called $he 0emonstrati"e 7ronouns, since they
point at )demonstrare* a person acti"ely. $hey are:
is .ic ille iste
!s )fem. ea, and the neuter id*, "heCsheCit" is rather colorless much like 'nglish "he, she, it". !t merely refers
and has no special emphasis.
)Where only two forms are gi"en below, they are .ascC<em. respecti"ely, and the &euter is the same as the
.asculine.*
CLASS: Demonstrative Pronouns *non+em.atic,
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative is ea i' ei eae ea
Genitive eius eorum earum
Dative ei eis
Accusative eum eam i' eos eas ea
A!lative eo ea eo eis
6ic ) fem. haec, neuter hoc* howe"er does ha"e a special meaning, something like the sub,standard 'nglish
usage of "this,here". !t refers to a nearer ob#ect, the one nearer the speaker or "iewer, and is regularly paired
with ille )below* which refers to someone further away.
CLASS: Demonstrative Pronouns *nearer....,
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative .ic .aec .oc .i .ae .aec
Genitive .uius .orum .arum
Dative .uic .is
Accusative .unc .anc .oc. .os .as .aec
A!lative .oc .ac .is
And in turn ille )fem. illa, neut. illud*, is appro+imately like 'nglish sub,standard: "that,there". $hese two
words , hic and ille, are often used in matched pairs, when they refer to the near and then the farther person
or thing. $his is a useful distinction, and Latin makes full employment of it.
CLASS: Demonstrative Pronoun *&art.er...,
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative ille illa illu' illi illae illa
Genitive illius illorum illarum
Dative illi illis
Accusative illum illam illu' illos illas illa
A!lative illo illa illis
)!t should be noted that the forms of hic, which look uniue as pronouns,are merely a contraction of an
obsolete hi,ce, with a pointing,out )deictic* particle ,ce fused on. 9o :hi,ce is "this here"in fact5 $he ,c
persists in the singular but is lost in the plural forms, e+cept for the neuter plural haec . 1lder Latin can still
ha"e horunc for horum,ce )Gen. 7l.*, and hosce )Acc. 7lur.*
@A
e* A do(en additional words are made up from the ui, uis, uid base, and you you will find these in a
standard grammar all listed together. $hey are uite specific in meaning )"anyone, whosoe"er, is there any?,
any.. .you please, who in the world, anybody at all, whoe"er you wish, each one." -est learn these as you
come across them in a te+t, rather than try to memori(e them first.
$he problem is that these words all look pretty much alike, and it is difficult for the beginner to remember
which is which. 1nly practice and e+tensi"e reading helps this uandary, although ! would urge you to
single out uisue "each one" as essentially different from the others in meaning, and absolutely
unguessable unless you know it for sure. Puisue hoc sciat bene "let each person know this point
well"....maybe memori(e that. -ut the forms are merely uis O ue, Gen 9g. cuius O ue, etc. $he forms are
no trouble, it is the meaning that is so different from the rest of thse "who" words.
$he "refle+i"e" 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 ha"e the forms of is ea id, with a final ,dem tacked on.
CLASS: Pronoun ise "..sel&"
SINGULAR PLURAL
Nominative ise isa isum isi isae isa
Genitive isius isorum isarum
Dative isi isis
Accusative isum isam isum isos isas isa
A!lative iso isa isis
f* $he pronoun root u, is found in many other Latin words, e.g. uo )where C how*, ubi, from :uo,bhi
)where, when*, ua )in what direction* .
-ut with a different sense we ha"e uam "than", which is used in comparisons much like the 'nglish "than".
)$his is an alternate to the regular way of making a comparison, using the "comparati"e" form of the
ad#ecti"e with the Ablati"e for the compared item.* Look these o"er carefully.
.ake special note of uam "than" as used with ad#ecti"al comparati"e forms, continuing the case of the
compared pair:
6ic est altior uam ille "he is taller than the other one", a "ery different use from the comparati"e #oined
with an "ablati"e of comparison" as in:
ille est altior .arco "he is taller than .arcus".
-ut the meanings of these two entirely different constructions are the same.
@E

Brief +e%ie# of the Noun, Ad$ecti%e and Pronouns

At this point you should stop and try to picture in your mind what we ha"e been discussing , since only what
is ionstantly a"ailable in your memory,bank is going to be useful in reading. 9ooner or later the following
statements should become pellucidly apparent to you, on a moment%s notice.
$he 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. 7arsing or
grammatical identification is a techniue for when you get into trouble, but not for e"eryday reading use.
$here are words as a carrier of meaning, but for each word a set of grammatical )parsing* terms which
define the word. 6owe"er the word also has a meaning aside from the terminology. !t was precisely on this
ground that Aristotle faulted 7lato%s theory of ideas on the ground that it doubled all the entries: the thing,
and the idea for the thing.
1ne danger is clear: <or centuries students ha"e learn to parse and analy(e Latin sentences, but not really to
read them. 6ence our ironclad rule:
9ee and hear words? grasp root meaning and function simultaneously? try to dismiss or at least de,emphasi(e
terminology as a step toward directness in reading.
!n fact you will want to know these formal terms too when you consult a reference,style Latin grammar,
such as the fi"e pound 433 page Lane Latin grammar or the standard Allen and Greenough, ed.. d%1oge
l234, both out of print5 but copies turn up in used bookstores. =emember that there is a real use to such
works, but at a much later point in your study. And behind this lie the massi"e German research,le"el
handbooks for certain professional 8lassicists%s uses. 1n still another le"el are historical analyses, such as
-rugman%s Qur(e >ergleichende Grammatik.....usw.l23E, but this becomes a different discipline in its own
right as Linguistics.
: : :
&1F&9 ha"e functions as follows:
9ingular and 7lural.
8ases:
;* 9ub#ect?
@* 7ossessi"e?
A* $o,for?
@B
E* 1b#ect?
B* Ablati"e )from in with* ?
4* >ocati"e )"estigially*.
$hese cases can also be called:
9ub#ect, 7ossessi"e, !ndirect 1b#ect, 0irect 1b#ect, Ablati"e, and )when it occurs* >ocati"e.
1r in traditional terms, to suit you or your conser"ati"e teacher or grammar book, we can call them:
&ominati"e, Geniti"e, 0ati"e, Accusati"e, Ablati"e, and >ocati"e
: : :
A0G'8$!>'9 ha"e two up,staged or intensified forms:
a* $he "more" form )comparati"e always with ,ior following noun 8lass !!! but with a neuter sub#.Cob#.
singular ,ius. )$here are irregular phenomena in this group, a word to the wise...*
b* $he "most" form )9uperlati"e* in ,issimus ,a ,um, or a phonetic simplification of this, following
Ad#ecti"e 8lass ! )or noun 8lasses ! !! and !!!.
: : :
A0>'=-9 are formed from ad#ecti"es either:
a* Adding ,Re" to a 8lass ! ad#ecti"e?
b* Adding ,ter to a 8lass !! ad#ecti"e?
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 ad"erbs are upstaged to the 8omparati"e state, they do this:
a* $hey use a form in ,ius which is the neuter of the comparable stage of the ad#ecti"e. '.g. tristius "mode
sadly, rather sadly"
b* $hey use the regular ,e common to 8lass ! ad#ecti"es stuck onto the ,issimus of the "most" superlati"e
grade, or whate"er phonetic "ariant has sei(ed upon it with deterioration of the ,ss,. 9o fortissime, but
acerrime.
: : :
7=1&1F& is a general term co"ering words for" you me him", as well as "we and they", and also "this one
here, that one o"er there, who, who? and whoe"er" and "artious other words which are found in this
heterogeneous class. Words in this group are "ery much used, and "ery irregular, but it is not as desperate as
it seems. 8onstant use confers practice, and the irregularities seem to smooth out with e+perience. 8onsult a
dictionary carefully for &om. and Gen. sg. forms which outline the paradigm fairly well, but do not
@4
e+pecting to "master" it all. 6old your breath until you get into reading some Latin prose, when the words in
this class will crop up like dandelions in spring. Nou W!LL recogni(e them.
@K
The Forms of the Latin "er&


>erbs are the heart of Latin stylistics. Latin uses "erbs in a "ariety of ways, while 'nglish of the present
time, especially in America and specifically in science and te+tbook writing, e+presses itself largely in noun,
concepts. 1ne might well suspect that the only li"e "erbs in 'nglish are those which #oin nouns to their
modifiers, and this produces often a stiff and unyielding te+t,book style.
&ot so Latin, which understands the flow and motility of "erbal ideas, and with a relati"ely full arsenal of
"erbal modifications, faces the world "erbally...... acti"ely, as it turns out. $he clearest proof of this
difference in the languages appears when you try to translate 'nglish into Latin, a re"ealing intellectual
e+ercise. <irst, the nouns ha"e to be uite literally translated into "erbal processes, and then the sentences
can be reconstructed into a Latin of the 8lassical 7eriod. .edie"al Latin is as noun,beset as modern 'nglish,
and one suspects it would ha"e been "irtually un,understandable to an educated =oman of 8icero%s period.
>erbs can be formally distinguished from nouns by the fact that they ha"e an entirely different set of
endings from the &ouns. =e"iewing the grammatical layout, we find these salient characteristics in the
&1F& formations:
&F.-'=: -oth singular and plural.
A8$!1&: -y means of the "case", reference to "arious functions:
;* Who is doing something to whom )sub#ect*
@*..or if the thing is being done to him )ob#ect*
A* who heC sheCit belongs to )possessi"e*
E* to whom or for whom something is done )dati"e*
B* and finally where or from what place something is or originates )ablati"e*.
4* !n the rare >ocati"e a "erbal message is being addressed to someone.
!n 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 !t, or remo"es it. !n this sense we might well define
nouns, in addition to their basic root meanings, as ha"ing certain basic kinds of functional relationships.
>'=-9 A=' 0!<<'='&$. $heir roots contain the seeds of functional actions , but three other things are
built into almost e"ery "erb form:
;. $hey define time, and within the range of time sometimes e+tent or continuity of an action. $he
"ending" which confers this time sense fuses onto the root, but it is not necessarily the termination of
the "erb at all, since other endings will well fuse onto it.
@. $hey define se"eral degrees of factualness, what we might call "the sense of possibility, or
conditionality". $he ancient =oman theorists on language called such forms "sub#uncti"e" from the
Latin sub#unctus "sub,#oined" because =oman schoolboys wrote these forms underneath )sub,#uncta*
the regular forms, which were called !ndicati"e. $his term !ndicati"e is the name the =oman
@D
schoolmasters ga"e them, presumably because they indicated something rather than implied it
uncertainly. $he terms !ndicati"e and 9ub#uncti"e are used in grammars, howe"er we should
understand the !ndicati"e as the factual base, but the 9ub#uncti"e as an indicator of conditionality
changed from the base forms of the !ndicati"e.
$his conditionalCsub#uncti"e split is not unlike the 8onditional in =omance languages, although there are
some differences in usage. 8onditional states of action are not entirely familiar to 'nglish. <or 'nglish
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.
-ehind this loss lies the undeniable fact of American pragmatism, which fails to distinguish between what
really !9, and what might airily be supposed to be )somehow* possible. <ar warier in their time, the =omans
needed a conditional mode as part of their language and culture, #ust as the Greeks before them needed two
conditional modes )sub#uncti"e and optati"e* receding into le"els of probability behind the world of sheer
fact. Athabascan !ndians ha"e at least fi"e le"els 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 star"ation. Again, after the
pioneer Linguist Whorf, language follows needs, and in turn moulds future generations% speech and social
patterns.
A. >erbs are more specifically concerned with persons than nouns. $hey define automatically the
following concepts:
;. &F.-'=, whether singular or plural.
@. 7'=91&, uite specifically who the person is: whether it is "!, or Nou, or 9C6e", which
translated into plurality comes out as "We, Nou CNou,all, and $hey".
A. $!.' <F&8$!1&. $he abo"e code,endings fuse onto the time,signal coded 9$'.9, to
make what we normally call the $'&9'9 of Latin. $hese are the con"entional seuence:
7resent, !mperfect, <uture, 7erfect, 7luperfect and <uture,7erfect.
E. A8$!1& $N7' can be Acti"e )he does it* or 7assi"e )it is done to him*. '+amples: occidit
"he kills" "is,a,"is occiditur "he is killed". &ote that this in turn is "fused" onto the $!.'
<F&8$!1& with addition of Acti"eC7assi"e endings.
B. F&='AL!$N. 6ere again transmutations of the endings, usually by a change in the "owel
before the Action $ype ending, can change the meaning of the "erb from the normal, factual
le"el )!ndicati"e* to an un,real 8onditional )9ub#uncti"e* meaning.
: : :
&ote that whereas the nouns note se+ and grammatical gender "ery particularly, "erbs take no note of se+,
)e+cept in compounded passi"e forms where one part of the "erb is in fact an ad#ecti"eCparticiple, with noun
characteristics*. $he fact that "he C she" are not defined specifically by "erbs surprises 'nglish and Arabic
speakers, where the gender of the third person singular is specifically defined. -ut when we consider the
social differences of "arious cultures, why should language differences surprise us? 7ons asinorum.....
: : :
7utting this all together, we see that Latin "erbs are fairly comple+ structures , they tell some things about
the person in"ol"ed, nothing about the se+ of the person, they define time rather subtly, indicate reality as
against unreality or conditionality, and they mark the difference between acti"e and passi"e.
@2
$echnicalities on terminology, for when you need them:
$he time seuences are called $enses.
$he acti"eCpassi"e differentiation is called >oice.
$he factualCconditional di"ision is called .ode )specifically the !ndicati"e mode "s. 9ub#uncti"e mode in
the grammar manuals*.
$he endings which tell who did the action are called 7erson.
$he terms 9ingular and 7lural in their normal senses are formally called &umber.
9ince there are three persons with two numbers, si+ acti"e tenses and si+ passi"e tenses, along with four
conditional acti"e tenses and four passi"es, and furthermore the "erbs are congregated into four basic
8lasses )8on#ugations*, you can see that there are many forms to be learned, in fact a "eritable multitude.
)8alculate the number yourself, you may be be shocked ...?*
-ut there are many internal resemblances, many forms are generated uite automatically out of simple
principles, and e"en the comple+ ones are often seen as de"elopments of a few handfuls of ideas. )1n the
other hand there are irregular "erbs, and uite a list of irrational pattern,changes, so the number of forms to
be learned goes up again. 1n the other hand, your brain is more than adeuate for recogni(ing myriad fact
and detail.* Language is a uni"ersal human in"ention which works efficiently with the brain,capacity of a
minimally functioning member of a society. 9o after all, in learning a new and comple+ language system,
there is really little to fear5
'on$ugations
!n the "erb the four main classes )8on#ugations* show real similarities, with only a few striking differences.
$he e+amples of the four classes are all laid out in one "paradigm" below, so you can see similarities and
differences at a glance. Learning the "erb as a whole, you will see a fairly uniform system of e+pression, and
since your task is recognition, not recall, learning the Latin "erb is not as hard as it might seem.
1n the other hand, 'nglish speakers regularly get into trouble by grasping at the root, assuming a clear
basic meaning as in 'nglish, and often they try to guess the comple+ additi"e structure of the endings
)inflection* the "erb by intuition. =emember this "ery important point:
Words in Latin are compounded out of "arious meaningful components, and nowhere is this more essential
to grasp than in the "erbal system.
: : :
At this point we are going to present you with a tableau of the Latin "erb, listing one form for each function
in all four classes )or 8on#ugations*, starting with the basic !ndicati"e or factual "erb )in the acti"e "oice or
mode* and in the present tense.
The Present Tense
A3
Present 5ense, Active, In'icative
I II II I0
amo moneo 'uco au'io
amas mones 'ucis au'is
amat monet 'ucit au'it
amamus monemus 'ucitis au'imus
amatis monetis 'ucitis au'itis
amant monent 'ucunt au'iunt
$here are se"eral important differences among these four 8lasses of 8on#ugations )classes* of the Latin
"erb:
<irst, note the stems:
+a+ +;+ +e+ +<+
)$he circumfle+ accent marks a as long, no macrons a"ailable5*
9econd, note the changes of "owel of the endings through the paradigms, which although not perfectly
regular, tend to ha"e an ,o for ; sg., and in A rd sg. 0ecl. !!! and !> the A 7l. is ,u,nt. $hese are historical
changes which took place in the de"elopment of the Latin language, there are no phonematic meanings
in"ol"ed.
The Im-erfect Tense
We now proceed backwards in time to the !mperfect $ense, which refers specifically to things which used to
happen, were happening, and are probably still going on. $his continuing thread in the past is essential to
understanding the !mperfect, and when you meet forms in this time seuence, you will ha"e something a bit
more complicated than #ust saying "was...".
I II III I0
ama!am mone!am 'uce!am au'ie!am
ama!as mone!as 'uce!as au'ie!as
ama!at mone!at 'uce!at au'ie!at
ama!amus mone!amus 'uce!amus au'ie!amus
ama!atis mone!atis 'uce!atis au'ie!atis
ama!ant mone!ant 'uce!ant au'ie!ant
As was noted abo"e, many tenses are generated on a single principle, and the !mperfect is a fair e+ample.
1nly one detail differentiates the four classes, which is the nature of the "owel which occurs right before the
,ba, imperfect,marking syllable.
$hus 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,*. 8all these four classes:
!: root in ,a,
!!: root in ,e,
!!!: root in ,e,
!>: root in ,i,.
$hese characteristic root "owels will appear later in other forms, which is why ! mention them at this point
as a matter of definition.
A;
$his is a con"enient point to stop for a moment as try to make some general obser"ations on what we ha"e
been watching in the 7resent and !mperfect tenses.
<irst, we ha"e a set of "personal endings" which are apparently thus,far fairly uniform as we proceed
through the four classes. $hese endings also appear in both present and imperfect tense, hence are a good
e+ample of a 7resent type and a 7ast type con#ugation:
Sg % +o-m = +s > +t
P% % +mus = +tis > +nt
!n the present classes only the "owel before the endings change? in fact that "owel "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 ; sg. is ,o, while the !mperfect ; sg. is ,m.
$he sure sign of an imperfect tense in any class is ,ba, inserted between the root and the ending. )&ote that it
is specifically ,ba,, since there is another use reser"ed for ,bi, in the <uture tense....* With these si+ endings,
you can follow four classes in two tenses, with @E forms, but don%t let your confidence swell, since there is a
lot more to come.
The Future Tense
$he <uture tense is almost identical to the future in 'nglish in meaning, and offers no problems in that
department. -ut you will notice immediately that 8lass ! and !! ha"e one type of future with ,bi,, whereas
types !!! and !> ha"e a different type with a short "owel.
$here is no differentiation of meaning here, it%s #ust their form and the way the classes are constructed ) !
and !! with ,b, but !!! and !> with a short "owel*. $his is one of the few cases of a real difference in
construction among the "erbal 8on#ugations.

I II III I0
ama!o mone!o 'ucam au'iam
ama!is mone!is 'uces au'ies
ama!it mone!it 'ucet au'iet
ama!imus mone!imus 'ucemus au'iemus
ama!itis mone!itis 'ucetis au'ietis
ama!unt mone!unt 'ucent au'ient
=epeat: All you need to note is that the last two classes of "erb form their future tense in an entirely different
way than we would ha"e e+pected from the first two.
Looking at 8lass ! and !!, we note that the final ,o of the present ; sg. has returned, and there is a logic to
this: $he present and future ha"e no part in the world of the past, hence they share here and there features
which you will not find in the "arious past tenses )!mperfect, 7erfect, and 7luperfect*. $he A p;. breaks the
,i, habit, with its uncharacteristic ,u,, which is an orthographic "ariant of the ,o which was set up in the ;
sg., although no real logic is in e"idence here. =emember ,o and ,u, as the beginning A&0 end of this group
as a memory de"ice, since these forms are atypical and may well confuse you later.
About the ,e, "owel future of 8lass !!! and !>, there is little one can say by way of e+planation, without
undue historico,linguistic complications, e+cept as you learn to read Latin they will become uite normal.
$he first person singular is singular indeed, for it breaks the regular ,e, feature which marks this tense. Nou
A@
can accept this as another irregularity, or think, as ! do, that it is actually a present ; sg. sub#uncti"e
)conditional* borrowed into this category because of the near,relationship of conditionality and futurity:
audiam "!%d bear", audies "you%ll hear"
&ote a similar "acillation in 'nglish "! shall" beside "you will". $eachers 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
&ow we approach the 7ast tenses as such, $he 7erfect 9ystem, so called after the Latin terminology
"7erfect", since perfectum in Latin means "completely done, or finished". $here 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 II III I0
amavi monui 'u)i au'ivi
amavisti monuisti 'u)isti au'ivisti
amavit monuit 'u)i au'ivit
amavimus monuimus 'u)imus au'ivimus
amavistis monuistis 'u)istis au'ivistis
amaverunt-+ere monuerunt-+ere 'u)erunt-+ere au'iverunt-+ere
6ere is a disconcerting situation in regard to the endings:
$he familiar oCm ; sg ending has been replaced by ,i
$he ,s, of the @ sg has been e+tended somehow and is now ,isti
$he ,t remains, as does the ,mus of the ; st plural.
-ut the old ,tis of the @ plural is con"erted to ,istis )presumably by analogy with the isti, of the @ sg.
which seems strange, but is reasonable enough since language lo"es analogy*
$he A plural ,erunt would gi"e us a nice parallel with pre"ious forms we ha"e been seeing, but the
alternate form ,ere looks like nothing else belonging to the perfect. !n fact, is is a look,alike for an
infiniti"e, which you will be seeing soon enough, so note it well now. Nou will trip o"er this as soon
as you begin to read, ! am sure.
$his one tense, the 7erfect, is odd and irregular and it is ancient in origin, but fortunately no other tense in
the "erb system is like it. 7robably best memori(e it right off, know it cold, and try to recall in which way it
is different from the other tenses.
The Plu-erfect Tense
$he ne+t tense, going backwards in time still further, is the ".ore $han 7erfect", which is precisely what the
7luperfect or %plus uam perfectum %actually means. 9ome 'nglish grammars use the term 7ast,7erfect, but
this doesn%t really say anything , so we might as well accede to the $raditionalists and call this tense the
7luperfect. =emember that it refers to past time before the 7erfect, and is pretty much the same as 'nglish
"he had lo"ed, he had warned, he had led, he had heard". $here should be no trouble with the meaning, and
the forms are straightforward too:
I II III I0
amaveram monueram 'u)eram au'iveram
amaveras monueras 'u)eras au'iveras
AA
amaverat monuerat 'u)erat au'iverat
amaveramus monueramus 'u)eramus au'iveramus
amaveratis monueratis 'u)eratis au'iveratis
amaverant monuerant 'u)erant au'iverant
$he endings of the 7luperfect obtain in all classes, nothing could be more direct. $he signature syllable of
this tense, right before the endings is always ,era,, and there are no irregularities. 'nough said, and we can
pass on to the last tense in the acti"e "erb series, the <uture,7erfect.
The Future Perfect Tense
$he <uture,7erfect is #ust what it says it is. !t is a future tense grafted onto a past tense, and it translates
pretty accurately into a somewhat stilted 'nglish "! will ha"e done....)something*", "! will ha"e lo"ed",
whate"er that really means. !t is not hard to follow the logic of this tense, but it is not clear why the =omans
should e"er ha"e in"ented it in the first place. Actually it is not used a great deal in Latin, mainly in
balanced <utureC <uture,7erfect conditions, and sometimes in place of a pure <uture. !ts forms are:

I II III I0
amavero monuero 'u)ero au'ivero
amaveris monueris 'u)eris au'iveris
amaverit monuerit 'u)erit au'iverit
amaverimus monuerimus 'u)erimus au'iverimus
amaveritis monueritis 'u)eritis au'iveritis
amaverint monuerint 'u)erint au'iverint
Again as with the 7luperfect, this is a simple group, with only one basic characteristic, the syllable ,eri,, and
this has only one e+ception, the ,o of the ; sg. which certainly follows the pattern of the <uture of 8lasses !
and !! ),bo, bis, bit....* $his regular tense will gi"e you little trouble, especially since you will probably not
see it often.
: : :
$hese are the forms of the 7erfect, 7luperfect and <uture perfect tenses, you will remember the odd endings
of the 7erfect, as against the regular endings of the 7luperfect and <uture 7erfect easily enough. -ut we ha"e
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 )7erfect 9ystem* tenses, you make a significant change in the stem:
8lass ! "erbs add to the stem ," ,
8lass !! "erbs add to the stem ,u,.
)9ince ,u, and ,", are phonetic "ariants of each other, they are "ocalic and consonantal "allophones" of each
other, and the "ariation depends on whether a "owel precedes )ama"i*, or a consonant )monui*. 9ince Latin
used one letter for both sounds, pronounced ,w, without uestion, this footnote is totally unnecessary:
=omans wrote in the uncial manuscripts A.A>! and .1&>!, left it to the reader the select the right
pronunciation.* We are in a less fortunate position with our protracted argumentation about "purist" or
"8hurch" pronunciation of this letter.
AE
8lass !l! can add ,s, as sign of the 7erfect, an ancient !ndo,'uropean practice, as seen in the ,s, or sigmatic
aorists in Greek . .any !ndo,'uropean languages go this path, while the ,", or ,u, of the first two classes is
probably a Latin in"ention. &ote that ,+, as in du+i is a graphemic representation of duc,si.
-ut other words in this class make their perfects in others ways. Let take a few of the common types:
iungo "#oin, yoke.." perf. iun+i
$his is nothing more than the ,s, fused with the ,g, of the stem, and written as the compound letter ,+, which
is gCk O s.
venio "come" *s.ort +e+, v;ni *long +e+,
&acio "'o" &;ci
6ere we ha"e a prime e+ample of an ancient !ndo 'uropean "ablaut" process )the German term is used in
linguistics as more con"enient than >owel Gradation*, a "owel,change system, which uses differentiation
between long and short "owels to signal grammatical change. !t can also change the "owel color as eCo, in
the grammatical use of Ablaut shifting.
-ut also note comple+ perfect formations like tundo "beat", with its perfect: tu,tudi
$his shows two features: <irst the "nasal infi+" ,n, of 7resent !mperfect and <uture disappears, second the
first syllable is repeated or "=eduplicated", a standard and ancient !' practice , for e+ample, in the normal
Greek perfect tense formation )te,the,ka "! ah"e made"*. $he =eduplicating 7erfect is used with half a do(en
"erbs in Latin and one may read hundreds of pages without seeing a reduplicator like spondeo C spopondi
)spepondi* "marry"
Another une+pected change can be seen in 7resent cresco "increase" beside the 7erfect cre"i. 6ere we are
marking the perfect negati"ely, that is by remo"ing something characteristic of the 7resent system, the
"incohati"e" infi+ ,sco. $here are many "erbs in this class, since the idea of growth and process is important
as a linguistic and semantic notion.
8lass !> is normal Latin practice following 8on#. ! and !!: we go back to the ,",, but here always
consonantal, and it follows the long ,i, which is part of the root. e.g. 7res. audio, 7erf. audi"i.
AB
The Infiniti%es

$he !nfiniti"es are a handful of fi+ed forms like 'nglish "to........"
$he !nfiniti"e is a form of the "erb which seems to ha"e been stripped of almost e"erything that
characteri(es a "erb: !t lacks person identification, it lacks the singularCplural distinction, its time seuence is
"ery restricted since it has only a present and a past form, but it does at least ha"e a real acti"e as well as a
passi"e distinction. !t knows nothing of being factual or conditional )sub#uncti"e*, in fact it is "ery a "ery
poor e+cuse for a "erb5 )!n its acti"e forms, present and past, the infiniti"e was historically a dati"e singular
in the noun group.*
1n the other hand the !nfiniti"e is easy enough for an 'nglish speaker to understand, since in one of its most
common uses it is translated as "to...." :
amare "to love"
monere "to 8arn"
'ucere "to lea'"
au'ire "to .ear".
When you see an infiniti"e first think or 'nglish "to...." and you will be started on the right track. -ut there
are some differences too:
!n 'nglish we say "! want,,to do,, something....", but this is not the infiniti"e in Latin, where you must, after
ideas of wanting, wishing, desiring etc. say something like "! want that you should )conditional* do
something", with ut O the 9ub#uncti"e. We are dealing with a purposi"e statement, and clauses of purpose
are not infiniti"es )what they are we will get to soon enough...*.
After "erbs which say something, think something, maintain and claim something, and others of similar
mentalC"erbal character, an infiniti"e is used in the natural seuence of ideas, in a clause which we call
!ndirect 0iscourse:
8lamat eum iniustum fuisse... is literally "he yells that he )someone else* was un#ust", and immediately we
note that we ha"e dropped the prototypical "to..." )which ! said abo"e infiniti"es had*, and we slipped in an
ine+plicable "that" for our 'nglish translation. !n other words we turned our infiniti"e into a "that",
introduced )subordinate* statement clause. Why did we ha"e to do this?
Well, the alternati"e in 'nglish would ha"e been: "6e yells him to ha"e been un#ust", which is pigeon
'nglish at best. 9o here again the seemingly similar 'nglish "to" is not always the eui"alent of a Latin
infiniti"e.
"$o do or to die...." ? !n fact this is perfect Latin. =e,phrased the infiniti"e can be understood to be a noun in
the sub#ect case. 0ulce et decorum pro patria mori, said 6orace, meaning "9weet and right to die for your
country", a notion which is being uestioned after >ietnam for the first time in our history.
A4
).1=! is an infiniti"e, it is the sub#ect ob"iously, and it is considered neuter, as the two words dulce 8lass
!!! neuter, and decorum 8lass !! neuter, show.*
9o here is the infiniti"e in another guise: &euter substitute for a sub#ect case noun, which would be a "ery
odd idea e+cept for the fact that 'nglish does it too.
$he forms of the !nfiniti"e as noted, are not many:
I II III I0
Pres. amare monere 'ucere au'ire
Per&. amavisse monuisse 'u)isse au'ivisse
$hat is pretty straightforward, the present forms ha"e an ending ,re in all classes, the past forms take
whate"er stem the "erb had in its 7erfect tense, and add the easily recogni(able syllable ,isse to it. .eaning
is clear too: "$o lo"e" is the present, "to ha"e lo"ed" is the past.
Eam-le:
Ama"isse bene est, melius amare "!t is good to ha"e lo"ed, better to be in lo"e%.
&ote ! translated bene "well" as "good" which is an ad#ecti"e? ad#ecti"es amplifying an infiniti"e are always
ad"erbs, because of the "erbal core of the infiniti"e concept, a minor detail.
&ow these forms also e+ist in the 7assi"e, which we ha"e not shown you yet, but since it is con"enient to
put down the passi"e infiniti"es here on this page, here they are:
)We will go back and to the rest of the "erb in the passi"es after our e+cursus on infiniti"es and participles.*
I II III I0
Pres. amari moneri 'uci au'iri
Per&. amatum esse monitus esse 'uctus esse au'itus esse
$he present passi"e infiniti"es thus ha"e an ending ,ri in three of the classes, but 8lass !!! duci is
grammatically circumcised, and fails to show the infiniti"e,characteristic ,r, sound. !t doesn%t look like a
passi"e infiniti"e at all, so note it "ery carefully, because it will fool you time and again, especially since in
this case it e+actly resembles the to,for )dati"e* singular of a noun form, duci "to the leader", from du+ "il
0uce". .any irregular forms are pu((ling, this one is like a chameleon.
$he past passi"e infiniti"es are new looking, but they are easy to spot. $hey use the present infiniti"e esse
"to be" as a separate word #oined with , or actually following the perfect passi"e participle of the "erb. $he
two together make a "periphrastic" e+cuse for a past passi"e infiniti"e, which Latin did not originally ha"e.
We ha"e a right to call this periphrastic, which in Greek means "round about talking" and is a uite accurate
if obscure term for this form. 8lumsy as a three barreled shotgun, these forms are actually much used, and
one gets used to them, noting that they are passi"e infiniti"es, &1$ past participles with a "erb "to be"
floating around in their wake.
AK
The Partici-les

7articiples, are ad#ecti"es with regular nounCad#ecti"e endings in a pattern now familiar to you, e+cept for
the fact that they use as their stem not normal noun roots, but the root of a "erb. $hey are "erb roots with
noun endings, and the Latin word for participle )parti,ceps "taking part, sharing"* refers precisely to this.
$hey correspond pretty much to the 'nglish participles in ,ing: lo"ing, warning, leading, hearing.
$he Latin word "participle", from partem and capio, means "taking part, sharing", and this is the term the
=omans used for this class of words. !t is uite logical as a description, since 7articiples do share the root of
the "erb and the endings of the noun. Another way of thinking about them would be to call them "erbal
nounCad#ecti"es, and this is #ust about how they work.
'+amples: if we take the root ama,, from the "erb amo, infiniti"e amare and put onto it a set of 8lass !!!
speciali(ed endings with a ,t, suffi+, we get:

The Present Acti%e Partici-le
Masculine / Feminine Neuter
Sing. subj. amans amans
poss. amantis
to-for amanti
obj. amantem amans
abl. amante
Plur. subj. amantes amantia
Poss. amantum
to-for amanti!us
obj. amantes amantia
With 8lass !!! nouns, masculine and feminine are not usually distinguished, and the neuters are separate
only in the forms we ha"e gi"en )sub#Cob#*, and they show no sub#ectCob#ect differentiation, although
singular and plural are distinguished. &ow if you ha"e a careful eye, you may think to yourself that you ha"e
disco"ered an omission in the abo"e tabulation... Where is the ablati"e plural? ! left it out on purpose, to
remind you that in all plurals of all noun classes, the to,for 0ati"es and the Ablati"es ha"e e+actly the same
form. $his may seem like pedagogic trickery at this point, but remember that when you are reading Latin
te+ts, awareness of this identity must stay in some far corner of your mind:
amantibus can mean all of the following: "to the lo"ers, for the lo"ers, on the lo"ers, from the
lo"ers".
9implification now a"oids complication later.... such is the nature of language.
AD
Nou notice that in the abo"e paragraph ! translated amantibus as "lo"ers", whereas you e+pected the
participle to mean "lo"ing", as in an 'nglish participle. Again a special caution is in order:
!n Latin any ad#ecti"e and eually any participle can be translated as an ad#ecti"e, but if the situation
reuires, for e+ample if no con"enient noun is around for it to attach itself to, it not only can but will be
translated as a noun. 9o 1"id%s in,famous line: 1mnis amans militat. . . which .F9$ be translated "e"ery
lo"er is a soldier", proceeding with arms and strategy to confrontation and in the end... seduction. )Nou
could also translate the phrase "e"ery lo"ing one militates", which like many another academic phrase,
would be correct but senseless.*
$he point here is that there are many o"erlaps between noun and ad#ecti"e, as we saw before, and this
applies also to participles. !t may come as a surprise that participles can ha"e forms working in a time
seuence, since 'nglish has only a present participle )in ,ing*. Latin has three other forms, two
straightforward and one elusi"e:

The Perfect Passi%e Partici-le
!n the 7erfect tense, there is a corresponding participle, which is found only in the passi"e. )A perfect acti"e
participle is concei"able, Greek actually has #ust such a form, but in Latin there is none....ne"er ask why.*
-ut we ha"e in Latin a 7erfect 7assi"e 7articiple )so listed in the traditional grammars or 777*, which is
much simpler than its regal sounding title implies:
amatus is simply "lo"ed )of a masculine*",
amata "lo"ed )of a feminine*" and so forth.
$here are no problems of semantics, and the forms are made up in a correspondingly simple manner:
I II III I0
ama+tus moni+tus 'uc+tus au'i+tus
!n other words the present infiniti"e form without its characteristic ,re can in a general way be considered
the form on which the 777 )perfect passi"e participle*, with regular endings ,tus ,ta ,tum, will be grafted.
$wo e+ceptions:
An older 8lass !! monetus has been phonetically switched into monitus? and the 8lass !!! form duce,re get
shortened to duc, before getting its 777 graft, )duc,tus* since the short ,e of the third class is weak to begin
with and often disappears.

The Future Acti%e Partici-le
$he ne+t form, the <uture A8$!>' 7articiple is easy to make up, you #ust take whate"er you had in the
abo"e 777 class, and insert into it the syllable ,ru,, as follows:
777 amatus gi"es, with this additional ,ru, : amaturus, which is de"eloped like the 777 )following 8lass !
Ad#ecti"es*. -ut when we turn to the meaning, two problems come up immediately:
A2
;* Amaturus is a future participle, and there is nothing like it in 'nglish. We don%t ha"e a form or semantic
category for the idea "about to lo"e...", so there will be some pu((lement in translating.
@* Amaturus, which was so easily made up out of a passi"e perfect participle, participle, is not passi"e, but
acti"e. -ut it has a "passi"e look", which causes problems..5
9o what does it actually mean? Amaturus sum means "! am about to lo"e", or possibly "being,going,to,
lo"e" if you can grasp that phrase. $he fact is that it is used in Latin fairly often, you will probably first think
it is a 777, and when you do identify it )as future acti"e participle* you will find you ha"e no familiar
linguistic niche in which to put it. Watch this one, it will deser"e attention.
1ne familiar e+ample might help: .orituri te salutamus,"those about to die salute you..." the phrase called
out by the gladiators to the emperor before entering the 8oliseum arena. =emember the phrase and you
remember the <uture Acti"e 7articiple? you can also recite to the the 7rof. when the <inal '+am begins.
-ut ! don%t think you would figure out 7etronius% phrase "ituris ad elouentiam" "those about to go to
elouence", which really means students enrolled in a formal school of =oman rhetoric )in the dati"e plural,
mind you...conte+t says "not Ablati"e"* Qeep this one in your back pocket.
! said abo"e that there was no perfect acti"e participle, but in a de"ious sort of a way there actually is. 9ome
"erbs )the 0eponents, which we will come to later*, ha"e only passi"e forms )and we will come to this e"en
sooner* and no acti"e at all. -ut these "passi"e "erbs" are translated with acti"e meanings, and we call them
"deponent" "erbs in grammar )for no good reason at all ,,,depono means "lay down your arms, or make a
legal asse"eration..."*.$heir 777%s are translated as acti"e, that is all5
9ince these "erbs are passi"e in looks but acti"e in meaning, then their perfect passi"e participle must be
translated as a perfect acti"e participle, and we do ha"e class of perfect "acti"e" participles by default.
Abutor means "abuse", its past participle is abusus ,a ,um, but this means )acti"ely*: "ha"ing abused" and
incidentally this "erb "takes" an ablati"e ob#ect.
&ote: $he "erbs which rake an ablati"e ob#ect are all deponents, and are:
utor fruor fungor "escor and sometimes potior
... although this last can )imitating a construction in Greek5* sometimes take a geniti"e ob#ect. Gust remember
the idea now, when you look up the "erb in a dictionary it will tell you about this Ablati"e 1b#ect situation.
6old for discussion the notion of the deponent "erbs, which we must talk about later, but do remember that
there is a form e+actly like a 777 which should be passi"e, which !9 acti"e. $his confuses people regularly,
and here is the place to mention it.

The Gerundi%e
1ne more class of words completes our list in the participial class:
E3
$his one refers not to time, as the others do, but to "oughtness", the kind of thing which one is bound to do,
one should do, one has to do. !n 'nglish we put such structures into the supplementary "erb phrase: "Nou
really 961FL0 do this....%, in Latin we ha"e a preference for doing it the other way around with a
speciali(ed participialCad#ecti"al ending:
"$his is a thing which )which* ought to be done...", is in Latin:
hoc est gerundum.
9ince gero is 8lass !!! like duco, we take the root ger, and add the longish endings ,undus )masc.* ,unda
<em.* and ,undum )neut* . $hus Gerundi"e is autogenetically named as an e+ample based on the "ery word
from which this e+ample comes5
9o from amare 8lass !, we get amandum "something which is to be lo"ed", amandus "a )masc.* to be
lo"ed?%, and amanda, which is identical to the girl%s name, the fond thought of a well,wishing parent. $he
forms are simple:
I II III I0
Masculine aman'us monen'us 'ucen'us au'ien'us
Feminine aman'a monen'a 'ucen'a au'ien'a
Neuter aman'um monen'um 'ucen'um au'ien'um
$he rest of the forms are perfectly regular 8lass l ad#ecti"es, ! hardly need to list them here, since you can
find them !n the ad#ecti"al category.
9e"eral remarks are due at this point.
;* When ! say "to be lo"ed, or to be done " or something or this sort, ! am only implying "oughtness", and
you must not confuse this with the 'nglish translation of the Latin passi"e present infiniti"e amari "to be
lo"ed", which has an entirely different meaning. "6e wants to be lo"ed" is different in idea from "he ought
to be lo"ed, he .F9$ be lo"ed.... )or else*". $he 'nglish phrases o"erlap, the Latin ones are worlds apart in
meaning and e"en more significantly, in use. Watch this detail.
@* When you say in Latin "this ought to be done by you", you might think that the "by you" will be in the
ablati"e with preposition a, or ab,, its "ariant, since aCab, normally marks agency. $hat is generally true, but
in this one case, with our Gerundi"e form in ,undus, the doer is in the dati"e )to,for*, which always surprises
the person learning to read Latin. 6oc gerundum est tibi )dati"e* means "this must be done by you", and we
call this formally the dati"e of agent, rare because it is used only here.
A better way of thinking of this 0ati"e is to see it as "$he 0ati"e of the 7erson 8oncerned", a bad mouthful
of "erbiage but uite to the point, since it is the person who is concerned with the action who gets in"ol"ed
as agent for getting it done. 7oint to remember: With Gerundi"e use 0ati"e for the ageny )actually the
person in"ol"ed, concerned*.
When you look up this class in the standard grammars, you will find it under the 'nglish title "gerundi"e". !t
is certainly eccentric to name a 8lass of words by an e+ample 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. -ut always distinguish between this
Gerundi"e and the Gerund which is entirely different.

E;
The Gerund
&ow if the "gerundi"e" is a speciali(ed "erbal ad#ecti"e implying "oughtness", the "gerund" will be a "erbal
noun, actually the neuter singular form of this class used as a noun. 1ccasionally you will find this neuter
used as a noun, but "ery occasionally, as in 6orace%s poetical phrase "why will you persist in destroying this
sweet young boy "amando?", that is by lo"ing him. $he gerund becomes a noun, in fact is an ad#ecti"e in the
neuter ser"ing as an abstract noun, and amandum is not far different from the common noun amor, amoris
"lo"e". $he only problem is that when you see this rarish form, you may think it is the more common
gerundi"e, and since there is little distinction of form, you can be fooled. Qeep it in the back of your mind.

The Su-ines
A few more "ery rare nounC"erb forms e+ist, and ! will dedicate #ust one sentence to each:
;* $he 9upine )a ridiculous term meaning flat on your back, perhaps from ama(ement at the rarity of the
form* ending in ,tum looks like a 777, perfect passi"e participle, in the neuter singular, but it is an obsolete
infiniti"e type historically, and used rarely.)8ompare 9anskrit "gan,tum" L %to go%, or Latin%s obsolete sister,
language 1scan "e(um" L esse.*
@* $he 9upine in ,u, is found rarely and only in heightened poetical usage. $his 9upine in ,u,, is deri"ed as
if it were the ablati"e of a 8lass !> noun formed on the stem,basis of a 777. !t is used only in phrases like
"mirabile dictu " remarkable in the saying, "horribile "isu" "awful in the beholding, i.e. " awful to behold"
$ranslating as an 'nglish infiniti"e will do the trick once you are secure in your recognition of e+istence of
the 9upine in,u,. )! ha"e for many years called it pri"ately the "9oupbone in ,u,", and as a result my students
ha"e ne"er forgotten it e"en once.*
E@
The Im-erati%e
$his is the last group of minor "erbal dependents, along with infiniti"es, and participles, which we must deal
with. !mperare in Latin means "gi"e an order", and !mperati"es do #ust that. $hey look like this:

I II II IV
Singular ama mone 'uc au'i
Plural amate monete 'ucite au'ite
$hus the imperati"e singular can be defined as the infiniti"e, as it were, without its final ,re, and this ser"es
as the singular form in 8lasses ! !! and !>.
-ut remember the disappearing "owel in the 777 ductus instead of :ducitus? !t is #ust the same here, the
imperati"e in 8lass !!! is a brutal duc "lead on5".
$he plurals ha"e an ending ,te which might remind you of the normal @ plural acti"e form ,te, but it is
different, and reser"ed for this imperati"e use. >enite "enite ad -ethlehem is of course type !>, from the
common and irregular "erb "enio )not from a :"eno as if 8lass !!! like duco*.
$here are passi"e forms for the imperati"e, but they are so rare and infreuent in use that ! don%t think ! ha"e
to list them here. <or practical purposes they don%t e+ist.
The Passi%e of the "er&
Where are we now in the "erb?
We ha"e gone through the si+ tenses of the acti"e )as against passi"e*, factual or "indicati"e" )as against
conditionalCsub#uncti"e*, and we ha"e worked through the !nfiniti"es, the Acti"e and 7assi"e 7articiples,the
Acti"e <uture 7articiple and Gerundi"e. We ha"e also looked at the !mperati"e Acti"e )the passi"e can be
noted as "ery rare*
We ha"e &1$ done the 7assi"e of the si+ tenses of the acti"e indicati"e "erb )although we ha"e looked at
passi"es in the au+iliary classes abo"e*. &ow let us do a mirror image of the "erb, as it were, and go back
and work out the passi"es.
We could ha"e done the acti"es, then the passi"es, then the infiniti"es participles and imperati"e acti"e and
passi"e, it would ha"e been logical . -ut ! wanted to get you through acti"e "erb into infiniti"es and
participles, which all work together in real,life Latin writing, so you could do more realistic practice in
EA
reading, which is after all the cru+ of your learning Latin. 9o ! held the passi"e back.... !f you wondered,
that%s why, 1Q?
;t should be easy to define the passi"e as an acti"e turned backwards, and sometimes that is e+actly what it
is. 8atullus has a line about some young lo"ers ,,mutuis animis amant, amantur "with mutual minds they
lo"e )and* are lo"ed." $hese plural present passi"e words are as simple and direct as the poet%s perception in
that lo"ely 8atullan "sonnet" 7oem SEB.
-ut in a second class of words, the 0eponents )like reor "! think"* the passi"e function is not clear. We are
dealing with a middle le"e actually a .iddle >oicel between acti"e and passi"e, wh#ich is not unlike
=omanic language refle+i"e "erbs, although there are differences. 9o we translate these 0eponents as if they
were acti"e in meaning, despite the passi"e forms.
!n this class of the "0eponents", we ha"e passi"e "erbs which are e+clusi"ely passi"e, that is they show no
forms which would be an acti"e counterpart. We usually translate these "erbs as acti"es, such as utor "use",
fungor "make use of", fruor "en#oy", "escor "feed )of an animal, like German fressen*". -ut part of this is
out own simplistic eagerness to do direct word for word translation. $hese "erbs really ha"e something of a
middle function, and utor really means" ! make for myself some use of....something", fruor " ! take for
myself pleasure in...", and if we take the trouble to see these deponents in this light, we see e+actly why they
take an ablati"e direct ob#ect rather than the usual ob#ect )accusati"e* case. Ftor cultello means "! make for
myself some use of something with )ablati"e* a pen,knife"., fruor is really "! take for myself some pleasure
with ..."
<or simplicity%s sake you may want to say with the traditionalists:
0eponent "erbs are passi"e in form, acti"e in meaning
... and many take an ablati"e ob#ect )utor, fruor, fungor, "escor and sometimes potior*
$his is simple, automatic and easy to recall. 1r you may go back to what ! ha"e written abo"e, which is
comple+, not uite clear, but historically true: $hat 0eponent employ a .iddle >oice in"ol"ing the do,er
and his interests.
1r as the 7ro"erb goes, "suum cuiue", "to each his own )way*,
&ow to the forms. Nou will see immediately that the present, imperfect and future are similar to the basic
acti"e forms, but are for the most part e+tended by an ,r, or some ,r, based configuration, which is the note
for passi"eness. -ut the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect passi"e are made up in uite a different way:
Nou take the past participle )777* and put after it )as separate word, not fused* a form of the "erb esse "to
be" actually the present of esse for the perfect passi"e, the imperfect "eram" for the pluperfect passi"e, and
the future "ero" for the future perfect passi"e.
!t%s simpler than the pre"ious sentence implies, but you will ha"e to know the forms of the irregular but
terribly common "erb "be". Nou ha"e seen it already but, best memori(e it firmly right now.
PR4S4N5 I"P4RF4C5 FU5UR4 P4RF4C5
Sg. sum eram ero &ui
es eras eris &uisti
est erat erit &uit
Pl. sumus eramus erimus &uimmus
EE
estis eratis eritis &uistis
sunt erant erunt &uerunt-ere
Present Stem Passi%es in the Indicati%e
The Present Passi%e Indicati%e
I II III I0
Sg. amor moneor 'ucor au'ior
amaris moneris 'uceris au'ieris
amatur monetur 'ucitur au'itur
Pl. amamur monemur 'ucimur au'imur
amamini monemini 'ucimini au'imini
amantur monentur 'ucuntur au'iuntur
&ote that the @ sg forms in ,ris ha"e a commonly used by,form in ,ere, which is especially confusing since it
looks like an infiniti"e )or e"en the by,form of the A plural perfect.*
9ome things deser"e special attention:
<irst the ending ,mini )@ plural* is most rareR, 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. e"aporated "erb: estis "you are" which was once somehow
intuited. $hus the meaning is "lo"e,ed...you are*. 7erhaps forget this one until you see a strange form in
,mini.
9econd, there are two forms listed for the @ nd sg. passi"e, one is ,ris which is easy to remember, but eually
common is the by,form in ,re. $he problem is that amare "you are lo"ed" looks like the present infiniti"e
amare "to lo"e" the "ery common !nfiniti"e form, hence the two are constantly confused, with the infiniti"e
coming out on top. $ry to remember this because its a sure place for an bad mistake.
And you might note that in 8lass !!! the infiniti"e is ducere with a short ,e,, while the @ sg. passi"e is ducere
with a long ,e,.
!t doesn%t do you much good to tell you about longs and shorts at this stage, since they are ne"er marked in
printed te+ts other than in high school te+tbooks, which you will not be wanting to use after working
through this book. -y the time you get far enough along to begin reading poetry, and master some of the
basic rhythmic schemes which form the basis of =oman poetry, you will see that some "owels must be
pronounced long, and others short, to make the line come out right. >ice "ersa, if the meter is a regular one,
and you know it, you will be able to tell which "owels are long and which short. -ut this is down the road,
and he who tra"els light tra"els faster, so we are ignoring the long marks for the present.

The Im-erfect Passi%e Indicati%e
$he imperfect and future passi"e are regular enough, ! think they need little comment, so ! shall print them
out as follows:
EB
I II III I0
Sg. ama!ar mone!ar 'uce!ar au'ie!ar
ama!aris mone!aris 'uce!aris au'ie!aris
ama!atur mone!atur 'uce!atur au'ie!atur
Pl. ama!amur mone!amur 'uce!amur au'ie!amur
ama!amini mone!amini 'uce!amini au'ie!amini
ama!antur mone!antur 'uce!antur au'ie!antur
The Future Passi%e Indicati%e
I II III I0
Sg. ama!or mone!or 'ucar au'iar
ama!eris mone!eris 'uceris au'ieris
ama!itur mone!itur 'ucetur au'ietur
Pl. ama!imur mone!imur 'ucemur au'iemur
ama!imini mone!imini 'ucemini au'iemini
ama!untur mone!untur 'ucentur au'ientur
'omments(
<irst you will note that the "erb di"ides in the way it treats the future here e+actly as in the acti"e forms, i.e.
the first two classes go with ,b, forms, the last two fa"or the ,e, "owel forms, with the e+ception of the ; sg.
which with it%s ,am is identical with the )soon to appear* present conditional )sub#uncti"e*.
Also note that the @ nd sg. passi"e of the third and fourth classes is indistinguishable from the corresponding
@ nd passi"e forms in the present .
)9ummary: !n the fut. pass. of !!! and !" the ; sg. could be a conditional, the @ nd sg. could be a present
passi"e, but the rest are clearly future.*


Perfect Stem Passi%es in the Indicati%e
&ow we come to the passi"es of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect, which as ! said are indirectly
)periphrastically* formed by combining form of sumCesse "to be" with the 7erfect 7assi"e 7articiple )777*.

The Perfect Passi%e Indicati%e
I II III I0
Sg. amatus sum monitus sum 'uctus sum au'itus sum
Pl. amati sumus moniti sumus 'ucti sumus au'iti sumus
1b"iously the 777 must match up with whate"er or whoe"er 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*. $o sa"e space ! list #ust the masculine form since that is the form found in the dictionary,
rather than from any latent machismo.
7roblem with this and the ne+t two classes: Nou can translate the elements directly into 'nglish, and come
out with "lo"ed, he is" meaning "he is lo"ed", since est is normally "is". Wrong, it is a past passi"e tense
E4
)has been lo"ed*5 $he only acceptable meaning is past: "he was lo"ed, he has been lo"ed". 7lease note this
carefully: $he right meaning is &1$ #ust what the two words say.
Gust s o the ne+t formthe 7luperfect 7assi"e amatus erat is not "he was lo"ed, but "he had been lo"ed". And
thge <utur 7erfect 7assi"e amatus erit not "he will be lo"ed" but "he will ha"e been lo"ed". ! am not
uibbling, there is a difference, and the difference is real. &.-. or simply nota )imperati"e sg.5*

The Plu-erfect Passi%e Indicati%e
I II III I0
Sg. amatus eram monitus eram 'uctus eram amatus eram
Pl. amati eramus moniti eramus 'ucti eramus au'iti eramus
The Future Perfect Passi%e Indicati%e
I II III I0
Sg. amatus ero *as a!ove.....,
Pl. amati erimus
7erhaps ! should note in closing is that the future forms of esse "be" e+hibits the same oCu back "owel in the
; sg and A p;. )front "owel ,i, in all the other forms* #ust as you ha"e seen in amaboCamabunt, whereas the
rest of the forms use the "owel ,i,. $his is hardly surprising after all.
&ow we ha"e completed the regular indicati"e, basic "erb, both acti"e and passi"e, in all si+ tenses or time
seuences. We ha"e also outlined infiniti"es, acti"e and passi"e, participles acti"e and passi"e, and we
pause before lunging ahead into the last distincti"e feature of the regular "erb: the 9ub#uncti"e or
8onditional.
EK
The Acti%e Su&$uncti%e
<rom here on, ! will use the traditional term 9ub#uncti"e, although ! would prefer to call it a 8onditional as
used in most modern foreign languages. ! want to impress on your mind the sense of these new forms rather
than their formal traditional title. When ! say 8onditional, ! am calling forth all the associations that go with
unreality, possibility, potentiality, in the 'nglish words "may" and "might" and "could be" and " if it
were...". $hese 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.
!n short the !ndicati"e is the world of Western 8i"ili(ation and American practical hardheaded ability to take
the world as fact. !n contradistinction, what we are going to discuss is the shadowy world of the unknown,
the unreal and the un,factual.
!t feels good to take a positi"e, factual "iew of the world, but no one can go "ery far into li"ing without
obser"ing that there are "arious le"els of reliability and truthfulness. 1n a scale of one to ten ! could outline
the following:
% = ? @ A B C D
4ngl.E
is
er.as
ma/!e
2ust ossi!l/
mig.t !e
mig.t ossi!l/ !e
coul' ossi!l/ !e
7ut this scale into Latin terms and you get this series:
in'icative
&ortasse F In'icative
Pres. con'it.
Im&. con'it.
*Per&. con'it.,
o&& scale+++ Plu. con'it.
Greek has a parallel set of non,real situations, outlined thus:
Gree( in'ic. Gree( su!2unctive Gree( Gtative
!n 'nglish we do really ha"e the nuances ! am talking about, but we ha"e to e+press them by conglomerates
of words, that is they are not old, basic forms in the language, but necessities of the situation. !n 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 ha"e something finite to talk about.

ED
The Present Su&$uncti%e
I II III I0
Sg. amem moneam 'ucam au'iam
ames mones 'ucas au'ias
amet moneat 'ucat au'iat
Pl. amemus moneamus 'ucamus au'iamus
ametis moneatis 'ucatis au'iatis
ament moneant 'ucant au'iant
$he pattern of the forms is not immediately apparent, but perhaps we can simplify it thus:
!n general the sign of the ,present conditional is the "owel ,a, where you would not normally ha"e it.
!n 8lass !!! the "owel ,a, is right after the root, in 8lasses !! and !> it is added to the root "owel.
-ut in 8lass !, which always has a root ending in the "owel ,a, already, the "owel is changed to ,e,. to show
a difference. $hus:
I II III I0
+e+ e+a+ +a+ +i+a+
7erhaps the most basic way of recogni(ing a present 8onditional is noting that it looks like a regular
indicati"e present, but something went wrong with the last "owel ,,,,a rule of thumb to be used only in cases
of desperation,,, but it works.

The Im-erfect Su&$uncti%e
$he !mperfect is easier to recogni(e:
Add to the infiniti"e the personal endings, and you get:
I II III I0
Sg. amarem monerem 'ucerem au'irem
amares moneres 'uceres au'ires
amaret moneret 'uceret au'iret
Pl. amaremus moneremus 'uceremus au'iremus
amaretis moneretis 'uceretis au'iretis
amarent monerent 'ucerent au'irent
$his is possibly the easiest tense to grasp in the Latin "erbal system, one rule for all classes and no
"ariations.
&ote: $here is no <uture 9ub#uncti"e or <uture 7erfect 9ub#uncti"e, for a perfectly logical reason: $he idea
of the <uture is part of a uasi,real set of parameters )7ast 7resent <uture*, whereas the basic idea of the
9ub#uncti"e is "ested in "Fn,reality". !n the realm of the <uture the idea of 9ub#uncti"ity or un,reality
simply does not fit5

The Perfect Su&$uncti%e
I II III I0
E2
Sg. amaverim monuerim 'u)erim au'iverim
amaveris monueris 'u)eris au'iveris
amaverit monuerit 'u)erit au'iverit
Pl. amaverimus monuerimus 'u)erimus au'iverimus
amaveritis monueritis 'u)eritis au'iveritis
amaverint monuerint 'u)erint au'iverint
8ompare this group with the <uture 7erfect !ndicati"e...where most of the forms are identical5 9ince the
<uture 7erfect Act. !nd. is not used a great deal, confusion will be rare.

The Plu-erfect Su&$uncti%e
Sg. I II III I0
amavissem monuissem 'u)ussem au'ivissem
amavisses monuisses 'u)isses au'ivisses
amavisset monuisset 'u)isset au'ivisset
Pl. amavissemus monuissemus 'u)issemus au'ivissemus
amavissetis monuissetis 'u)issetis au'ivissetis
amavissent monuissent 'u)issent au'ivissent
$his 7luperfect 9ub#uncti"e is used "ery often, in fact is has a special meaning in conditions, which we
rightly )if somewhat cumbersomely* call the 8ontrary,$o,<act,8ondition. We will discuss this later under
9ynta+.
B3
The Passi%e Su&$uncti%e
And of course there must e+ist a set of passi"e sub#uncti"e, conditional forms, which we might as well face
here:

The Present Passi%e Su&$uncti%e
I II III I0
Sg. amer monear 'ucar au'iar
ameris monearis 'ucaris au'iaris
ametur moneatur 'ucatur au'iatur
Pl. amemur moneamur 'ucamur au'iamur
amemini moneamini 'ucamini au'iamini
amentur moneantur 'ucantur au'iantur
The Im-erfect Passi%e Su&$uncti%e
I II III I0
Sg. amarer monerer 'ucerer au'irer
ameris monereris 'ucereris au'ireris
amaretur moneretur 'uceretur au'iretur
Pl. amaremur moneremur 'uceremur au'iremur
amaremini moneremini 'uceremini au'iremini
amarentur monerentur 'ucerentur au'irentur
&ow again, recall that the 7erfect conditional and pluperfect conditional will be compound forms, using the
perfect passi"e participle or 777, to be followed by the conditional of the "erb "to be" , the "ery common
and irregular child of an irregular parent. ! think ! should gi"e you at this point #ust an outline of these
7erfect 7assi"e compound formations, which are simple, regular, and found a great deal in actual written
Latin.


The Perfect Passi%e Su&$uncti%e
P&. Pass. amatus sim...
P&. Pass. amatus essem...
$hese compound passi"e forms use the 9ub#uncti"e of esse, so ! might as well gi"e you these unusual forms
here. $hey actually deri"e from an ancient !ndo,'uropean 1ptati"e, as retained in Greek and 9anskrit, and
fossili(ed in the 9ub#. of the "erb "olo ,, "elim "! would wish". =are5
PRESENT SU!UN"TIVE #F esse $be$
Sg. sim sis sit
Pl. simus sitis sint

The Plu-erfect Passi%e Su&$uncti%e
B;

8ompare here again the 7erfect 7assi"e 9ub#uncti"e and that of the 7luperfect:
P&. Pass. amatus sim...
P&. Pass. amatus essem...
$his uses the !mperfect 9ub#uncti"e of esse as follows:
PRESENT SU!UN"TIVE #F esse $be$
Sg. essem esses esset
Pl. essemus essetis essent
&ote that the second element is a separate word, not fused on. $he forms sim, sis, sit etc. are atypical as
conditional, because they are obsolete forms left o"er from an old !ndo, 'uropean optati"e, which perished
in Latin e+cept here and in a few other scattered forms )"elim etc. from "olo "! wish" for e+ample*.
-ut essem, esses, esset is straight from the regular rule: !nfiniti"e )esse* plus personal endings, #ust as it is
supposed to be.
B@
'onditions #ith the Su&$uncti%e
&ow we can turn to something more interesting and difficult, the meaning and use of the 9ub#uncti"e in the
realm of 8onditionality and Fn,reality. 9ince we are dealing with the meanings of a group of "erbal forms
which define "arious stages of un,reality, we must be prepared to stretch our mind a bit in grasping them,
and ! am not going to try to simplify the nature of the unreal, since this would be a "ery unreasonable kind
of falsification, unattuned to conditionality as a thought process.
<irst, the conditionals which ha"e been listed abo"e as tenses, or time,conditioned systems, are at heart
something uite different. $hey are modes which refer to "arying stage of reality or unreality, with a slight
time,sense fla"oring. <urthermore ! 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. 8onsider some such continuum as this:
Present...Future...Pres. Con'...Im& Con'...*P&. Con'..,...P& Con'.
% = > H ?, @
! ha"e put numbers beneath both to show direction of the process, and also so we can speak of the "arious
elements con"eniently.
8lass S; represents what in daily use, we consider incontro"ertible fact, the fact that ! am here, and the earth
remains, and that the sky is blue, or that it is raining. 9ince 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. 8all this basic factuality.
8lass S @ is grammatically #ust the future indicati"e tense in con"entional terms, but it has mo"ed into
something we call "the <uture", so it is a prediction more or less, and as such far less firm that S;. !t seems
reasonable to assume that if it rains, ! will get wet? but if ! ha"e an umbrella or go indoors, ! can e"ade the
condition predicted by this future statement.
8lass ; and @ are pretty well concatenated, but there is nothing like identity of meaning. Also note that the
future tense, which seems so natural to 'nglish speakers, is lacking in many languages, and apparently was
not de"eloped in a regular form in !ndo, 'uropean, where we note historically that Greek has a form with
,s,, Latin "erb 8lass ! and !! with ,b,, but 8lass !!! and !> with a short ,e, "owel.
)9uch "ariations point to non,originality in the reconstructed parent language, and we might well wonder if
!' had a future category at all. &ote e"en in 'nglish the phrase "! am going down town", where the present
is used to clearly indicate something that lies in the future, and only a non,nati"e speaker will assume that
the person is going down town at that "ery moment.*
9ection SA is more difficult to grasp. !t refers to the merest possibility of something being so, #ust pure
possibility and the shadowing forth of an idea. "!f the sky should fall down" thinks 8hicken Little in the old
story book......and it is a fanciful idea, no more. "!f it should #ust happen to rain" says the little man in the
BA
Ari(ona summer heat, "! suppose we would #ust stand here and break out laughing". $he 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.
$urning to the ne+t group, 8lass SE, the imperfect conditional )which again ! remind you is not imperfect
time,oriented*, we find we ha"e something a little more tangible. 1ften cause and effect enter, something
like 'ngl. "!f ! should do this sort of thing, then ! would not be surprised if the police picked me up."
Actually no 'nglish speaker would say that, although he would know what the sentence means? he would
say "!f ! did that, ! guess the police would pick me up", the difference being the fact the 'nglish speakers
prefer to state situations, e"en problematical ones, in terms of fact. 6ence the indicati"e past tense "did" is
more natural to mnodern 'nglish speakers , and the traditional present conditional "if ! should do...", or the
phrase "if it be true...", would seem a little pretentious or literary.
$hink of this class as ha"ing some elements of cause and possible effect, with ideas couchable in the words
"should....would", or "should....might". -etter define "might" as a bit more hypothetical )somehow* than
"may" which is technically present tense, and more open,ended, hence 8lass S@.
$his is not easy to follow in 'nglish, but for a Latin speaker it was not only natural, but necessary. $o
confuse le"els of possibility is to confuse e"erything important in life. ! think we are not dealing with co"ert
subleties of Latin as much as the deficiencies in out sense of conditionality, which we ha"e come to accept
as normal in 'nglish.
$he ne+t class of the perfect conditional, SB, does not ha"e as distinct a fla"or or meaning of its own, and !
really cannot put words on it at this point. !t is still conditional, it e+presses "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 distincti"e meaning of its own. ! don%t like to be so absolute about a form
which concerns itself with the unreal, but ! suggest that we let this class go for the moment, and study it later
when we get into reading documents written by nati"e Latin speakers, and see from performance what the
core of meaning is )or better: may be...*.
!n many cases, when dealing with language, only e+perience and time will tell. =eading a geuine te+t often
makes the unclear grammatical statement more understandable, and ! think that applies here.
-ut with S4, the last class in our continuum, the so called pluperfect conditional, we ha"e no ualms about
being too direct. $he meaning is clear as glass, and only a little strange in that is shoots right off the right
side of the graph, and while looking conditional, tells us about something that could ha"e, but most
emphatically 0!0&%$ happen. $he traditional terms for this conditional )$he 8ontrary $o <act 8ondition* is
cumbersome and perhaps oddly worded, but it is absolutely true in its meaning. "!f it had rained" says the
Ari(onite still e+amining the desert floor, "we wouldn%t ha"e belie"ed it....", and the inference is absolute: !t
didn%t rain. We are talking about the potential or possibility which lies on the other side of pro"able 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 'nglish thought patterns:
"but it didn%t, but it wasn%t so....". $his 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 ha"e been if .om had gi"en us another piece
of cake )but she didn%t*. $he lesson is dri"en home by the sledge of disappointment.
BE
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 in"ol"e us all, than discuss money?
;*"!f ! ha"e money, you ha"e money )being my friend*."
9imple statement of fact )regular indicati"e "erb form*, factuality le"el is stated as high, e"en if he has to
renege later.
@*"!f ! get rich )clear future meaning*, !%ll for sure get out of this dump of a college."
<uture pure and simple, intent in time to come, that%s all, hence still indicati"e and a future "erb form.
A*"!f it happened that there were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, ! would be delighted."
$he idea runs high as a tempting possibility, the factualness is "ery low, fantasy rules and only the !0'A is
real. 6ence 7resent conditional, meaning pure conditionality, and nothing more.
9econd e+ample: 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, ! say "if ! had it, !%d gi"e it to
you".
7ure supposition, but no attempt to "erify by looking in my pocket, all of which with the smile, makes the
fellow reali(e that ! am not at the fooling,around or fantasi(ing stage, so he tells me where ! can go and
stomps off. 6e knows you can%t make a li"ing on suppositions.
E* 6e asks me for the monobuck, ! purposefully my slip hands into pockets, saying
"!f ! should ha"e a dollar, ! would gi"e it to you".
When we get to this stage of possibility, the imperfect conditional with its semi,"cause and effect" words
"should" and "would", e"erything changes. )Again note that to translate in collouial 'nglish, we ha"e to
condense "!f ! had it..." without the bookish should, but the meaning is the same.
-ehold the confrontation, ! ha"e 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 ) Tl.11*....and the scene does a
cinematic frame,free(e. We can%t go further, there is nothing more to be said until ! do something. $his
situation is all possibility but no fact at all5
)! might as well let 8lassSB pass by, it is furnished with with less character, no special tone of "oice, and it
operates in grammatically automatic functions mainly, in non,dramatic situations.*
-ut when you search in the Latin grammars, under the heading "8onditional 9entences", you will find that
they are talking about something that seems entirely different. !t is not so much that their e+planation is
different, as that it is linguistically inside,out. <ormalists ha"e always maintained in treating Latin grammar,
that the definition of an idea comes first, then rules were de"eloped to inform the ancient authors e+actly
how to do it, and then e+amples from genuine writing of the 8lassical period pro"e that they did it #ust that
way. .eaning is encapsulated in the definition, and the forms are automatically selected as #ustification.
$his mode of operating sounds strange, and it is indeed strange.
BB
!t is #ust as wrongheaded as making a formulation of music of 'ighteenth 8entury common 6armony, then
defining all the rules and practices, and finally #ustifying the whole matter by citing .o(art%s usage in detail
to pro"e that the formulation was right. $ruth is .o(art personally e"ol"ed a comple+ style, consciously and
unconsciously that style e"ol"ed into his life work, which when analy(ed a century later it ser"ed as the
basis for an academic statement of 'ighteenth 8entury 8ommon 6armony. 1nly one element was
suppressed: $hat is all came from the mind of a musical genius, who worked at a pace and le"el of
comple+ity which in his time defied e+act analysis. $he analytical music study starts out at a later date,,, out
of his work, it couldn%t be the other way around. .usical analysis and linguistic analysis )grammar* are
historical statements of what e"ol"ed by itself as a li"ing human occupation. $he manuals do not write the
rules for operation, the operation writes the rules5
! belabor the point for a reason. !t is "ery important how you approach something, and ! want you to
approach the Latin conditional sentence structures which can be "ery comple+, as e"idences of human
meaning, not as a system of rules which are automatic and arbitrary, or so comple+ and regulatory as to defy
comprehension.
!n practical terms, when you see a conditional form, translate it as some sort of condition in 'nglish, e"en if
it makes the 'nglish rough and odd,looking. Fse the concepts "may" and "might" and "should" and "would"
and "would ha"e" appropriately, whene"er you see conditionals, and you will come out within a stone%s
throw of the sense of what you are reading.
Later, when you ha"e accrued some reasonable e+perience in reading Latin te+ts, it will be useful to
e+amine the formal grammatical statements, which will then do you no harm. Gust so it is not harmful to
study 7iston%s or 9essions detailed books on .usic 6armony, but only after you ha"e heard a lot of music.
-ut to read them first as preface to hearing .o(art%s G minor 9ymphony is impossible and witless.
A note on modern Linguistics: 9ince the beginning of this century new schools of Linguistics ha"e
e"ol"ed, which ha"e re"olutioni(ed the way the world thinks about language. .odern language teaching
methods ha"e changed greatly in the last fifty years. $he old methods of teaching Greek and Latin with
fi+ed ideas about e"ery detail which you are learning, assuming that they will be fi+ed 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. !n the case of an ancient language, you must
read documents which come from ancient authors e+tensi"ely, until you can begin to read them in the
original, without translating. !t is #ust the way you would proceed if you would hope to read <rench or
=ussian in the original. $his is difficult, since remo"es in time and place and culture make the reading of the
books from an older society more inaccessible. -ut Latin is a language, it must be read as a language, it is a
web of meanings e+pressed in words and forms, and the sense must be taken #ust as the words occur,
without saying any word of 'nglish to yourself e"en in the back of your mind. Fnfortunately this is "irtually
the opposite of the way Latin is taught in this country, and the decline in the teaching of Latin may be in
good part a result of wrong,headed and ineffectual teching methods.
-ut whate"er your approach. the ma#or effort must come from yourself, since books and ad"ice and teachers
and dictionaries are only partial aids, when all is said and done. At a conference years ago the atomic
physicist !sadore =abi told a surprised academic audience that the most important thing for students was
&1$ to trust their teachers. &owhere does this seem more pertinent ad"ice than in the current state of Latin
instruction.
B4
The .rgani/ation of 0ords

Fp to this point we %ha"e been e+amining the basic and regular forms of Latin words, "erbs, ad#ecti"es,
nouns, pronouns, infiniti"es, participles, and imperati"es. $hese collecti"ely forms a body which we may
call the "works" of Latin, what the philologist calls the morphology. ! ha"e gi"en you a basic set of ideas
about their use, but there are larger structures in which the elements you ha"e studied are combined
according to pre,set standards, whether basic or stylistic. ! am calling this broad class of information
1rgani(ation.
1rgani(ation corresponds to the traditional term 9ynta+ )which is only the Greek schoolmaster%s words
syn,"together" and ta+is, "placing", so it corresponds closely with the term organi(ation, which ! prefer as
meaning something to you already. $he term "synta+" always calls to my mind the remark of the pitcher of
the 8lassic baseball world, 0i((y 0ean, who asked, when he heard about synta+, whether they were really
serious about putting a ta+ on that yet )sin ta+*.
Latin has a style of its own. !t tends to employ "erb,concepts hea"ily, whereas in 'nglish especially in the
present century we seem to fa"or nouns strongly. 1ften our te+tbooks are written in a style which uses only
euationary "erbs, and the formula of whole series of sentences can be no more in"ol"ed than:
5.is........is ......... so an' so *Pre'ication,
3oe ..an'...Ienr/...an' "ar/ 8ent..an' t.e/ 'i'...*Strung on....,
$he =omans did not talk like that because they do not think like that. Latin sentence structure is unusually
"aried, as it can well afford to be in a language where word,items are tagged as to function by "endings",
and artistic mi+ing of the words in a comple+ sentence is considered a mark of intelligence and artistry,
rather than confusion. 'nglish uses word order to determine grammatical function, as noted abo"e, and the
simplicity of our basic structure, which puts sub#ect first, "erb ne+t, and ob#ect after that, is neat enough in
its way, but by no means the only way humans think. 'nglish itself would not ha"e gone this route if it had
not lost its noun and "erb endings a thousand years ago as the result of a hea"y stress accent on the first
syllable of e"ery word.
With its free style word order, as it appears to us, Latin is initially confusing, and the natural thing for an
'nglish speaker to do is scan through the sentence for sub#ect, then locate the "erb, identify the ob#ect, and
finally round up all the straggling parts of speech and fit them in somehow all together. $his is completely
wrong, it not only pre"ents you from percei"ing how =omans thought, but it actually pre"ents you from
learning to read. !f 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.
$here are some e+tremely comple+ sentence structures which the poets de"elop in the Augustan period. ! am
thinking of 6orace%s odes, -ook !, SB, where the order of the words in the first stan(a seem to be duplicating
almost as if it were a painting, the positions of two lo"ers flounced on a bed of rose petals, mutually
BK
entwined, the girl euipoised at the fulcrum of the sentence. $his is a fine poem indeed, but a certain kind of
high art which would probably ha"e been incomprehensible to a =oman in the street. A sentence in a
8iceronian oration which rolls itself out self,consciously o"er 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. -ut an American a century ago would ha"e had a good ear for the 8ongressional =ecord, which is
8iceronian almost to a fault. $imes and tastes change, and we must try not to #udge =omans by our current
sense of stylistics.
&ot that all =omans were longwinded, #ust note 8aesar%s military 8ommentaries, which are intended as an
antidote to the "erbal cornucopia, and are as terse and crisp as any general%s style could e"er be. 1nly if you
read him slowly with a grammatical pedant for a teacher by your side, will you think him tedious and
boring. 8aesar is the clearest e+ample of =oman stylistic simplicity, and well worth looking into, once you
ha"e de"eloped enough speed to read right along with the General.
Latin has a relati"ely small "ocabulary, with less that four thousand words in general, current use. Greek has
three times that number, modern 'nglish prescribes ;3,333 for a college student, B3,333 for a teacher, and
there are half a million words a"ailable one way or another. 1ne reason that Latin "ocabulary is so small is
the loss of probably ninety percent of written output )the <rench scholar -ardon has written a two "olume
work on #ust what we know to ha"e been lost*.
9econdly, Latin was early standardi(ed for school use through the =oman 'mpire, and the localisms were
remo"ed. -ut this small word,supply or pure words has problems: there are fewer words to learn, but each
will ha"e a "ariety of apparently thinly deri"ed sub,meanings. 6alf an hour with the large 1+ford Latin
0ictionary and its multiple sub,meanings will make this uite clear, and reading Latin often is a matter of
making choices as to whether something means this...or that. !t slows down e"en an e+perienced reader.
=omans read slowly as a historical fact, and furthermore always phonated when reading, to the e+tent of
ha"ing to read in pri"ate rooms. $hey were apparently incapable of not reading out loud, and this certainly
slowed their reading rates considerably. !t is doubtful whether an educated =oman 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 #ust to keep up with class assignments. 9peed reading courses can get you up to o"er ;@B pages an
hour....for what its worth. Nou 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 =oman farmer%s backyard.
9ince the =omans 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. $his 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 themsel"es . &o print,culture, no "erbal o"erkill
schemati(ing on blackboards, billboards, and tele"ision screen bothered their slow craftsmanship, they were
attuned to the slow art of putting together the right words in a special way. $his shows through e"en today,
and you must not only read Latin sentences as they appear, you must read them as the =omans did.......
which is "ery 9L1WLN.
Always read out loud. &ot 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. =eading a difficult phrase out loud once or
twice has a strange way of telling you what it means, but you ha"e to try this many times to be con"inced.
'nglish has what has been called a "strung on" style of speaking and writing, an e+ample of this might be:
BD
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...
$he =oman, if he could ha"e been induced to reproduce something so banal, would possibly ha"e 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 ppia, whether he should inspect the bookstores, or go to the baths, which last having been done, he
returned home.
-oth e+amples are somewhat o"erstated, but the general sense of a careful comparison will be that 'nglish
runs things along one after the other, while Latin subordinates things to others with a "ariety of speciali(ed
clauses. $hese can be comple+ in structure, and at times hard to follow, but they do represent a way of
thinking, a hierarchy of organi(ed statements which stand in some sort of order of importance. $his 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 organi(ational talents of the =omans, )witness only the "ast system of roads,
the hospitals, the system of law, the military, and the table of organi(ation of 0iocletian which became
fossili(ed in the present,day 8atholic 8hurch* ,,,, why should such a people not demonstrate order,
organi(ation, and a regular system of subordination in their spoken and written style?
!f the manners of a culture seem foreign, its written documents will be foreign eually. 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 sub#ect: Western 8i"ili(ation.
B2
The A&lati%e A&solute
Let us proceed to some specific constructions. ! will deal first with structures which, when you ha"e read
and comprehended the elements, often still defy e+planation, and nothing could be better to start with than
the Ablati"e Absolute. $his is the traditional name, in fact %absolutely% traditional, but its meaning is
something more like -racketed !ndependent 8ircumstance. $he term Absolute )Latin ab,solutus "set apart
from"* is in Latin the core of the concept. 'nglish "absolute" has acuired entirely new meanings, which
don%t help us here.
When dealing with !ndependent sub,clauses like the Ablati"e Absolute, we might well consider them to be
in something like mathematical functions in algebraic brackets. $hat 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. $his is howe"er made more difficult in the selection of the Ablati"e case for this
structure, because of its "arious functions, which embrace notions as disparate as:
"from, in, on, be means of, and with".
-ut it is this last use "with", which dominates here, and for simplicity%s sake ! am going to name it anew as
the "-racketed !ndependent 8lause in the Ablati"e".
!n my own mind, ! think of the Ablati"e Absolute as a "Ablati"e of 8oncomitant 8ircumstance )5*" with a
7articiple, and mentally ! always note that it means "with....", which makes terrible 'nglish. -ut since ! read
Latin and ne"er translate, there is really no problem, and ! offer this approach as a good way indeed to think
about the terible "AA"..
!n simplest terms, this can be a noun and an ad#ecti"e:
duce mortuo "$he leader being dead", which ! think you might better approach saying: "with the leader
dead". -y saying to yourself "with", which is in keeping with the ablati"e case at least in part, you set up an
accompanying statement, which is going to go along with something else, a basic reuirement of the
Ablati"e Absolute =ule:
"$he sub#ect of an Ablati"e Absolute clause cannot e"er be the sub#ect of the sentence"
$hat is an iron,clad rule in the grammar books. Why? -ecause the clause accompanies something else, and
cannot be the sub#ect of the main clause which it accompanies. !n short it cannot accompany itself.
&ow try it with a present acti"e participle:
duce e+ercitum agente,.... "with the leader leading on the army....."
!n polished 'nglish we will be thinking of something more like this:
43
When the leader brought up his army, the enemy decided to cross the ri"er.
!n short, we ha"e con"erted our incon"enient Ablati"e !ndependent to a "when" clause. ! should note that we
ha"e a "ariety of "when" clauses in Latin, and it would be better to keep straight the essential character of
the Ablati"e !ndependent construction. $he Ablati"e Absolute is automatically nipped in its grammatical
e+actness, that is it doesn%t pro"ide full information you woudl ha"e if using a regular inflected "erb form
with personal endings for precision. 9o it really is encapsulated, it is a separate "aside,thought", which
comes only somewhere inside the sentence proper.
9o for the =oman it has a special shorthand,like place, it is terse, not o"erly informati"e, it often reuires a
little guessing to tell who !s doing e+actly what. $hen this whole nipped bud or nascent idea "goes into" or is
plugged into the sentence proper. 9ome more e+amples:
Eo audito, 'aesar dimittit legiones. "With this heard, 8aesar dismissed the legions." !t could also
be "this ha"ing been heard" but that is less true to the basic concept of this construction.
1is re&us -erfectis, 'aesar transi%it flumen. "With these things done, 8aesar crossed the ri"er."
$raditional: "When these things had been done" does make better 'nglish. -ut we want to stick as closely to
the Latin as possible, so follow the odd,sounding "with. ." clause. $he nice thing about approaching the
Ablati"e !ndependent this way is that on the one hand its origins are clear, and on the other hand the same
phrase "with...." co"ers e"ery kind of Abl. Abs. clause , although the 'nglish gets a little strained. All these
ablati"es are simple "Attending Ablati"es", which amplify and accompany a particular circumstance.

Summary
$he Ablati"e Absolute, as a tight, encapsulated inner,clause, is made up this way:
A noun, or a pronoun, or sometimes a pronoun )e"en understood and not actually there * . Nou can ha"e #ust
audito "with this heard", a stylistically terse turn in $acitus to be sure, but perfectly clear in meaning.
$o this basic structure you add a noun, or an ad#ecti"e, or a participle. >ery common are nouns with present
participles, which tell us something about something which is currently going on:
omnibus pueris et puellis con"enientibus "with all the girls and boys meeting, coming together "
.ore common is use of a noun with the 777 or 7erfect 7assi"e 7articiple:
eorum "erbis auditis "with the words of those ones heard", i.e. the 777 of 8lass !> "erb audio. $his could be
also considered to mean "after these things had been heard ".
Nou can also make up a similar structure with a future acti"e participle: 9partaco morituro "with 9partacus
about to die", and remember again that some one else, not 9partacus, is about to do something when we are
back in the main clause of the sentence.
9uch !ndependent 8lipped 8lauses are "ery common, especially with authors such as Gulius 8aesar who !s
imitating a clipped military style characteri(ed by terseness. Nou must ha"e the idea of what this kind of
structure really means, or you will find yourself analy(ing a long sentence with half a do(en une+plained
ablati"es left o"er at the end.
4;
Indirect Discourse

$he ne+t important topic which we should discuss is something traditionally called !ndirect 0iscourse,
which may sound "ery odd, perhaps something like "'"asi"e 9peech". !n briefest definition, when you think
or say something in the Latin language, and go on to tell about that sub#ect, what is related is put into a
special structure, in which the sub#ect of that uoted statement is in the ob#ect case, the "erb is an infiniti"e,
and the ob#ect if there is one is in the ob#ect case also. $his sounds impossibly confusing, so let%s go back
o"er it again:
When ! think or say or think something, and tell what ! thought to someone else, that is not in the same class
of reality as a <act. $his structure of !ndirect 0iscourse, which is nothing more than uoted uotation, or
something someone is said to ha"e said or thought, distinguishes between <act and 6earsay, a distinction
which is still of prime importance in our present legal proceedings.
-ut in Latin ! can make a direct uotation too, such as:
0icit, non ibo "6e say, ! will not go".
$hat is simple statement of fact, actually 0irect 0iscourse,and not like what we are #ust talking about here,
so it does not come within the grammatical pur"iew of !ndirect 0iscourse.
!n our indirect uotation structure, we can see it this way:
0icit se non abire "he says that he )himself, as signified by the se* isn%t going away"
0icit eum non abire "he says that he )another one* is not going away.
And naturally we can change tenses:
0icit 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.
$he single most incomprehensible things about !ndirect 0iscourse, which we are defining as the "$he
Puoted Puote", it that the sub#ects A&0 the ob#ect of this formula are both in the Accusati"e C1b#ect case,
e.g.:
"0i+it iudici .arcum Gulium occidisse "6e told the #udge that .arcus had killed Gulius, or con"ersely Gulius
had killed .arcus."
0on%t be fooled into the first interpretation by your 'nglish word order, in Latin there is no way to tell.
)1racles used this for centuries in prophecy, for ob"ious reasons....6orace e"en uses it in one of his 9atires
humorously.*
4@
!n uoted thought or speech coded information in Latin, we strip away a great deal of the detail of the stated
material intentionally...failing to distinguish sub#ect and ob#ect, reducing the huge in"entory of "erb forms to
a mere infiniti"e with basically only present and past forms. And why do we go to all this trouble? -ecause,
as the legally minded =oman knew e"en before be began creating the framework of the legal system of the
=epublic, there is a world of difference between a fact and a stated opinion of that fact. And the =oman
insisted on noting that discrepancy in the structure of his language.
!n 'nglish we also use a "that.... " clause after "erbs of saying and thinking, and it is typical that 'nglish
speakers ha"e difficulty separating fact from thought. "$he &ew Nork $imes says $6A$ a humanoid
primate was recently disco"ered ali"e in a remote mountain district of 8hina... ". We are left with one clue
word to mark the indirectness of the uotation:"that", but the sentence has a factual ring to it to trick the
unwary. Latin would ha"e clipped the whole uoted clause down to bare essentials:
"!t is reported monkey like animals American scientists to ha"e been disco"ered.. in remote 8hina". Nou
could ne"er confuse this with a statement of real fact, which is precisely what the moulders of the Latin
language wanted to con"ey. -ut on the other hand you ha"e lost the distinction between the sub#ect and the
ob#ect. Nou assume the report says that American scientists ha"e disco"ered monkeys, but it could eually
well be the monkeys which ha"e disco"ered American scientists. )8ommon sense pre"ails, of course.*
=eading this construction, you cannot translate word for word, intelligibility demands that you fill
something in and construct a subclause, for 'nglish usage. $he sub#ect of the indirect clause is not the
sub#ect of the original sentence unless specifically stated. 9ub#ect and ob#ect are both !n the ob#ect case,
which means that only common,sense can differentiate, and that is often about as helpful as intuition in the
7aris subway system. $he ancients used this structure !n 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.
)7alindromes like "madam i m adam" off the same possibilities.*
4A
Su&ordination as Style

We now proceed to a "ariety of clauses, actually subordinate or dependent clauses, which function as
capsules within the o"erall structure of the sentence. $hese are common, "aried, and essential to the "ery
nature of Latin prose style. As noted abo"e 'nglish 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 se"erely, he called plans into action."
$his sounds terrible in 'nglish, it is unthinkable? but in Latin it is less a tra"esty than an e+ample. 9ocially,
it denotes the =oman%s preferences for ranked, orderly society, e"eryone in his place in a great "ariety of
places. )Gaius% uniue treatise on the legal positioning of all persons within the =oman 'mpire is witness to
the =oman%s lo"e of this kind of order.... we ha"e it on an erased "palimpsest" which was later written o"er,
preser"ing underneath this legal treasure by pure accident*.
Fnder the general category of "subordinate statements" in clauses, we ha"e a uick list including:
%uo& t.at, t.e &act t.at
%ul %uae %uo& one 8.o, a erson 8.o.....-8.o 8oul'
ut as-t.at, so t.at
cum 8.en-since *alt.oug.,
tum t.en
"um...tum 8.en- t.en *not onl/, !ut also,
%uan&o 8.en
Si i& *"t.en"is imlie' in &ollo8ing clause,
$here are many introductory words of this sort, with special grammatical structure which works with them,
but the abo"e will ser"e as a guide indicating the manner in which these clauses tend to operate. After
de"eloping a basic reading skill, it will be enlightening to go back to a detailed grammar e+position, such as
the ma#or work by Allen and Greenough, and the somewhat better Lane with its wonderful e+amples of
usage, both not in print for many years now.
$here is a "ast body of minute detail associated with the uses of the subordinate clauses in the grammar
treatises, perhaps in some cases more than the =omans actually intended. -ut best lea"e that until you ha"e
picked up a reasonable reading speed, since the manual interpretations must be connected with actual
e+amples to be meaningful.
: : :
&ow let us go back for some detail on 9ubordinate 8lauses, first a clause of <act:
7raetereo uod non est "erum "! pass o"er the fact that it is not true".
$he clause is clear factual, hence grammatically !ndicati"e, the first "erbal form in our abo"e outline.
4E
$he pronouns ui uae uod can operate in the same way:
"!lle est ui ad te "enit heri"
6e is the one who came up to you yesterday.
-ut with a conditionalCsub#uncti"e we shift into the realm of the un,factual:
"!lle est ui frangeret patris cer"icem"...... with the !mperfect 9ub#., " 6e is a man who would break his
father%s neck."
!n a slightly different but related "ein, we find:
"!lle fortis est ui in hostes curreret " ....." he is the bra"e sort who would rush upon the enemy", which !s
'nglish might come out as a statement of purpose:
"6e is bra"e enough to rush upon the enemy." A minor difference, same distinguishing word,order in Latin,
but uite different in 'nglish translation.
$he introductory "ut" can also be used factually, so:
"&arra"it acta ut erant"
"6e retold the facts as they were."
-ut if we ha"e a conditionalCsub#uncti"e, as in : "6oc fecit ut te occideret"
6e did this so that he might kill you.." ...the whole meaning changes with the use of the conditional.
At this point we poise on the edge of the comple+ world of Latin 9ynta+, a comple+ web of ways of putting
sentences together in order to e+press a wide range of conditions and ideas. A detailed grammar treatise will
ha"e as detailed a treatment of the 9ynta+ as of the .orphology or forms of the Latin language. -ut since
this material is the deduction from a distillation of written te+ts, ! suggest deferring detailed study of 9ynta+
until a reasonable reading speed has been achie"ed. 9ynta+ is &1$ a set of prescriptions indicating how
Latin was originally written, it is a post facto set of "ery detailed obser"ations about how it WA9 written.
!n the time of Gohn 0onne and Gohn .ilton in the lK th c. Latin was still written with care and art as a
literary mode, and the obser"ations of good ancient Latin pro"ided an e+emplar for writing it then. $his
largely disappeared by lD33, but writing Latin 8omposition )as it was called* continued as a rather
cumbersome school e+ercise well into the @3 th c. !t does pro"ide e+cellent practice and drill in Latin
grammar and synta+, but is as articial and ultimately pointless as the e+ercises of the .usic 8onser"atories
which reuire scores to be constructed in four part canon. $hese are neither good e+amples of creati"e
writing, or good music, and they ha"e been uietly remo"ed to the academic trash can.
4B
Some Thoughts on Synta

;* $he "rules" of 9ynta+ are not rules but obser"ations drawn from the common practice of Latin writings,
there is much "ariation between the Ard c. -8 and the Eth c. A0, but the basic orientation is toward the
Augustan and ;st c. A0 timespan. 7art of our sense of Latin grammar dates from the =oman schoolmasters
and professors of the late =oman 'mpire, who de"ised systems suitable for their educational purposes.
.uch of their grammatical preferences lasted in the West until well into the @3th century, when modern
Linguistics began to de"elop general systems of approach which would work with all languages. $he current
treatment of Latin grammar, morphology and synta+ alike, is dreadfully out of date, and far inferior to
methods used in teaching the modern languages in our schools and colleges.
$his is offered as a preliminary ad"ice for a person learning Latin inducti"ely, that is, by reading and
confirming his notions about grammar from actual te+ts, 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
o"erwhelming. Least of all think that memori(ing parts of such treatises will euip you in your effort to
learn to read Latin fluently. 1n the other hand, as reference much later after you ha"e progressed in reading,
such detail will be in"aluable if tedious.
@* -y !nducti"e .ethod, we mean taking a connected, authentic piece of Latin te+t and approaching it
analytically, after a "ery brief skirmish with "grammar", then letting the te+t, as you read it in the original
without translation, teach you the structure of Latin from the inside out as it were. $his method has been
tried many times in many places, it works "ery well with interested persons who ha"e good natural language
abilities. )Without interest and talent, nobody should be studying Latin at all, that is ob"ious.*
!f there are a few basic directions ! can gi"e you, they would be:
a* >ocabulary is the persistant "illain, so look up words efficiently in an electronic dictionary such as the
one a"ailable from:
Centaur S/stems Lt'
Ro! Latouse(
HDA N. Jrearl/ St
"a'ison 9I ?>AD>+%@D>
P.one: @DB+=??+@CAC
email: latouse(Kcentaurs/stems.com
$his dictionary by the present writer, co"ers all the words you will e"er see in any Latin literary te+t, some
;B333 words in all. !t finds a word with a brief but complete definition, in about two seconds, and comes in
a .ac and a 78 "ersion. 0ictionary thumbing has been the bane of Latin since the =enaissance, at last there
is a better way.
!nformation about the 'lectronic Latin 0ictionary is a"ailable from 8entaur9ystems.
44
b* 0on%t translate after determining the meaning of a word. =ead aloud, since the ear is a critical factor in
language learning, and the =omans always read aloud themsel"es. 1ften meaning will appear on repeated
"ocal readings, and the sound of Latin is an important part of the e+perience.
c* =ead a lot, read fast, and don%t be afraid of missing something. !f you read enough, the errors will begins
to be corrected automatically, #ust as you learned to read 'nglish literature without checking each
grammatical structure and looking up all new words. .any people think Latin is to be pu((led out, many
suspicious teachers think translation is the only way they can monitor the student%s homework. $ranslating
e"erything, reading slowly, and thinking in 'nglish rather than Latin is the sure way to get discouraged at
your tortoise progress, and finally gi"e it up.
$he Loeb Library from 6ar"ard Fni"ersity 7ress is still probably the most practical series of te+ts, Latin and
facing 'nglish translation. !t was started early in this century as a "enture to bring fast reading to adults who
had studied Latin in school but failing to en#oy it then, were interested in going back to Latin later in life.
$here is a strong temptation to look too freuently at the translation, #ust as there is a temptation toward
chocolate and alcohol, but much Latin reading does need some help, and the Loebs are handy, if fairly
e+pensi"e nowadays.
$he 18$ 1+ford 8lassical $e+t series has a plain te+t with "ariant readings at the foot of each page, these
are e+cellent editions but offer no commentary so they are really rough going for the beginner. 1n the other
hand an 18$ te+t of >ergil is something you can keep and use fore"er. 18$%s were once cheap because
1+ford published them at a loss since profits accrued from their 6ymnals, but with the decline of religion in
the FQ, the 18$ series became "ery e+pensi"e, although not out of line with new book prices in cloth
binding.
$he -$ or -ibliotheca $eubneriana has been around for morfe than a century, less good paper than the 18$
but ama(ingly wide range of Greek and Latin te+t editions, these can often be found in used bookshops and
are well worth buying, e"en hoarding for future use.
After getting a good head start, what would be best to read? ! feel the poets are the heart of Latin literature,
8atullus is a good beginning and not too hard, 6orace is harder but the poems are short and many are
approachable, 1"id is great and much fun. -ut it is >ergil which is the center, the great master, the supreme
artist with words, and >ergil is enough if you read nothing else, since there is a lifetime of lucubration in
that one "olume.
6istory is a natural sub#ect for many, Li"y starts off well, $acitus is wonderful but real hard, hold him till
later. <or a start, 'utropius is simple and sort of pathetic, but good reading for a beginner. ! find 8aesar great
as a terse stylist, military mastermind, and grand politician on the large screen, but you ha"e to read him fast
or you lose the sense of those campaigns. )We treated the &ati"e Americans #ust as he taught us in his
treatment of the Gauls? he sub#ected, we went a step further intending genocide. 8aesar was read by e"ery
American army man for two centuries...the result for the &ati"e Americans is well known5
$here is an astonishing array of technical writers, whom the 8lassical scholars seem to ignore totally. 8ato
on agriculture is a genuine document from the early period, mean conser"ati"e 9.1.-. as he was. 8olumella
on agriculture backs up >irgil%s Georgics with dirt,farming e+perience. >itru"ius% treatise 0e Architecture
from @D -8 is detailed, comprehensi"e, and written in the ordinary Latin of an actual contractor. 0isco"ered
in the early =enaissance it had a remarkable afterlife in modern times as former of architectural taste for
centuries. And then there are the medical writers, 9cribonius Largus, and of course 8elsus with special
4K
interest in surgery. And what about Law, the disco"ered te+t of Gaius describing the whole framework of
=oman society in legal aspect, let along the preser"ed later Gurists?
&obody should go without reading 7etronius% 9atyricon, fragmentary as it is, and for a more magical
moment Apuleius% Golden Ass which is not fragmentary, a world of sheer mystery and magic.
: : :
.y best wishes to all of you who undertake the study of Latin. Whether you are an undergraduate who is
heading to Law 9chool, an artist who is looking for high artistic achie"ement in another era and area, or
someone who once did some Latin back in the school,days and would like to renew the acuaintance now,
less for nostalgia than for the opening of new doors ,, the study of Latin or any language which has a "ital
literary tradition is more than worthwhile as an in"estment of time. !t can be challenging, absorbing and
intellectually rewarding. And at the same time it can be something we often forget about: !t can be fun5
4D

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