Veni in scholam. intravi, dixi: ‘Ave, magister’, et ipse me osculatus est et resalutavit. porrexit mihi puer meus scriniarius tabulas, thecam graphiariam, praeductorium. loco meo sedens delevi. praeduxi ad praescriptum; postquam scripsi, ostendi magistro; emendavit. iussit me legere; legi. iussus librum alii puero dedi. didici interpretamenta, reddidi. sed statim dictavit mihi condiscipulus. ‘Et tu’, dixit, ‘dicta mihi’. dixi ei: ‘Redde primo’. et dixit mihi: ‘Nonne vidisti, cum redderem prior te?’ et dixi: ‘Mentiris, non reddidisti.’ ‘Non mentior.’ ‘Si verum dicis, dictabo tibi.’

A very unrealistic representation of how a lawyer finds a job (perhaps third century ad). Because many people who learned Latin did so in order to become lawyers, ancient Latin teachers painted a rosy picture of the life of a lawyer in an effort to encourage people to study Latin.

So far we have seen two participles: the perfect participle, which is passive (e.g. amātus, -a, -um ‘loved’ or ‘having been loved’, but not the active ‘having loved’: see chapter 6.2), and the present participle, which is active (e.g. amāns, gen. amantis ‘loving’: see chapter 21.3). There is also a future participle, which is active; as English does not have a future participle its translation is rather cumbersome, e.g. amātūrus, -a, -um ‘(being) about to love’.

Clauses containing a word for ‘if’ (Latin sī) are known as ‘conditional clauses’ because they indicate the conditions under which something is or would be true: ‘If the weather is good we shall have a picnic’ or ‘If he had come sooner it would have been a disaster.’ In order to translate Latin conditional sentences successfully it is necessary to understand how conditionals work in formal written English, though many spoken varieties of English diverge from this system significantly.

So far we have seen three declensions, but there are also two more. The fourth declension includes nouns of all three genders, while the fifth includes only masculine and feminine nouns; neither includes any adjectives. In both these declensions masculine and feminine nouns are declined identically to each other.

The imperative is used to give direct commands (‘come!’ ‘go!’), but it is also possible for a command, like a statement, to be indirect. Indirect commands occur not only after verbs of ordering (‘he ordered me to go’) but also after asking (‘he asked me to go’) and after verbs expressing related concepts such as advising, urging, and encouraging. In English indirect commands use the infinitive, but in Latin they use ut with the subjunctive (or nē with subjunctive if negative); they are very similar to the purpose clauses seen in chapter 15.2 and chapter 16.

Most second-declension nouns are declined like servus or like bellum, but there are some common words that have slight variations on these paradigms. Words with a nominative in -r use it for the vocative as well and then decline on a stem that is not predictable from the nominative, only from the genitive. Words with a nominative in -ius have different forms for the vocative and genitive.

So far almost all the verb forms we have seen have been in the active voice; that is, they have indicated action done by the subject. It is also possible for a verb to be passive; that is, to indicate action done to the subject (we have seen this with the perfect participles in chapters 6.2, 23.3, and 24). Compare the following

Watching the trials in a Roman courtroom (probably fourth century ad). One of the main reasons Greek students learned Latin was to become lawyers: note the emphasis on the role of the lawyers. Torture of both defendants and witnesses was common during the later imperial period, when this piece was written.

Declension of Iste and Ipse

Latin has a relatively large group of words that can function either as adjectives or as pronouns. We have seen quis ‘who?’, ‘which?’, hic ‘this’, ille ‘that’, and is ‘he’, ‘this’, ‘that’, but there are also a number of others, including iste ‘that of yours’ and ipse ‘-self’. These two are declined as follows; note the similarity to the declension of ille.

Use of Iste and Ipse

Iste can be used for something connected with the addressee, and/or for something about which a disparaging comment is made: iste equus ‘that horse of yours’, istud ‘that thing of yours’.

Ipse is usually translated with English ‘himself’, ‘herself’, ‘themselves’, ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘ourselves’, ‘yourselves’, but nevertheless it is sharply distinct from sē. Ipse is intensive, meaning that it emphasizes the word to which it is attached; sē is reflexive, meaning that it refers back to the subject of the sentence. Ipse can be used for any of the three grammatical persons (‘I/we’, ‘you’, ‘he/she/it/they’), while sē belongs exclusively to the third person (‘him’, ‘her’, ‘them’) – for reflexive ‘myself’, ‘ourselves’, ‘yourself’ and ‘yourselves’ the ordinary personal pronouns mē, nōs, tē, vōs are used. Ipse can be either a pronoun or an adjective, with the same translation in either case, but sē can only be a pronoun. The possessive of ipse is the genitive ipsīus (‘of himself’ etc.), but the possessive of sē is the adjective suus, -a, -um (‘his own’, ‘her own’, ‘their own’). Ipse always means ‘-self’; sē is sometimes (in indirect statement) equivalent to English ‘he’ etc. rather than ‘himself’ etc.

The Aeneid is poetry: the rhythm of the words is part of the art form. But Latin poetry works on different principles from English poetry, in that it is based on syllable quantity: the Aeneid is built on a pattern of long and short syllables.

The gerund is a noun formed from a verb. In English gerunds are formed by adding ‘-ing’ to the stem of a verb; this makes them look like present participles. Nevertheless a gerund functions very differently from a participle, so it is important to be able to distinguish the two.