Questions tagged [ablative]
For questions about the ablative case.
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ambobus? (a morphologically peculiar adjective with a peculiar syntax here)
There is a very famous passage in the Aeneid that narrates its hero looking at some pictures of the Trojan War, which he barely escaped from:
Miratur. Videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas,
Bellaque iam ...
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1
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Another wife named Keturah?
Consider Genesis 25:1 from the Vulgate:
Abraham vero aliam duxit uxorem nomine Cetthuram …
Which of these does it mean? Or is it ambiguous?
Abraham took another wife named Keturah.
Abraham took ...
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Meaning of "virō" in description of Lavinia
On p. 29 of Roma Aeterna by Hans Ørberg, book II of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, is this passage from a simplified Latin, solūtīs versibus (prose) rendering of Book II of the Aeneid:
Faunō mortuō,...
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Reason for ablative case in "praesidioque decorique parentibus esse"
In Lucretius II 641–643
"aut quia significant divam praedicere ut armis
ac virtute velint patriam defendere terram
praesidioque parent decorique parentibus esse."
I am not very comfortable ...
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Why do we write “cum marito eius” (cum + abl+ gen.) and not “cum marito ei” (cum + abl+ abl.)?
Pline wrote this sentence:
“Sunt mihi et cum marito eius Minicio Iusto, optimo viro, vetera iura; fuerunt et cum filio maxima, adeo quidem ut praetore 5 me ludis meis praesederit”.
I don’t understand ...
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Why ablative "natu" is used in these expressions?
In the novella Filia regis et monstrum horribile, by Andrew Olimpi, I have read (emphasis mine):
Fīlia prīma nātū est puella pulchra. Sed fīlia secunda nātū pulchrior est quam soror sua. [...] Fīlia
...
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Usage of ablative in a sentence by Curtius
This text comes from Quintus Curtius Rufus Historiae Alexandri Magni, book 3, chapter 5 (emphasis mine):
Mediam Cydnus amnis, de quo paulo ante dictum est, interfluit. Et tunc aestas erat, cuius ...
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Why ablative "corporibus" and "funeribus" are used in this excerpt from Tacitus "Annals" XVI?
In Tacitus Annals XVI, 13, one can read (emphasis mine on the words that cause me difficulty):
Vastata Campania turbine ventorum, qui villas arbusta fruges passim disiecit pertulitque violentiam ad ...
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Domino notus erat: Agent ablative without a preposition?
I am reading the LLPSI excerpt of Rhetorica ad Herennium (in LLPSI: Sermones Romani, Chapter Ostentator Pecuniosi). Near Line 64, Ørberg wrote a margin note:
pro notitia domini: quia domino notus ...
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LLPSI: Ch. 13, Ln. 120, 'Hōc annī tempore...'
My question stems from a passage of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata Familia Romana in chapter 13 on page 99 beginning at line 120 as follows.
Question
What is the role of “Hōc annī tempore” in the ...
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What's the role of the pronoun "iis" in this context?
In lines 48-52 of chapter XVI of Lingua latina per se illustrata. Familia Romana one can read:
Merīdīes dīcitur ea caelī pars ubi sōl merīdīe vidētur; pars contrāria septenriōnes appellātur ā septem ...
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Is This Noun in the Dative or Ablative
I was reading the last chapter of Fabellae Latīnae, "Puer Barbarus", when I came across this sentence:
Dāvus: Laetāre quod tibi licet in lūdum īre – mihi puerō non licēbat.
And I ...
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What is the difference between "in umerīs" and "in umerōs"?
In chapter 6 of LLPSI, we have the following sentence
Syrus et Lēander duōs saccōs in umerīs portant
While in chapter 9, we have:
Pāstor laetus ovem in umerōs impōnit.
Why the ablative in the ...
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In Vulgate in Apocalypsis 20:4, why does it say "et regnaverunt cum Christo mille *annis*" (ablative?), rather than "...annos" (accusative)?
In Vulgate in Apocalypsis 20:4, why does it say "et regnaverunt cum Christo mille annis" (ablative? Or is it dative?), rather than "et regnaverunt cum Christo mille annos" (...
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Are the following "prep. + accusative"'s used for location?
Keller's Learn to Read Latin says:
Prepositions that take the accusative emphasize the idea of motion
toward, into, around, and through.
Prepositions that take the ablative indicate one of the three
...
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With prōdesse, how would I specify what role the subject is useful in?
As someone many years out of practice with Latin I most struggle with assigning objects in the correct cases or with the correct prepositions for my chosen verbs — something most sources aren't all ...
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What's this gerundive doing here?
Metamorphoses Book V, the story of Proserpina. At this point Proserpina's mother Ceres is still looking for her daughter.
Sicaniam repetit, dumque omnia lustrat eundo,venit et ad Cyanen. ...
"...
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Why is 'cum' followed by the dative in this sentence?
Look at the following sentence from Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata - Familia Romana (ch. 18).
Consonans per se syllabam non facit, sed semper cum vocali in eadem syllaba iungitur.
The word ...
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Use of gerund with ablative of means or method
A beginner's question: when using an ablative of means/method where the means/method in question is a verb, does that verb take the gerund ablative form? This is the sentence which prompted the ...
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Ablative of Place
I am reading through Jenney's Second-Year Latin and I'm translating the following sentence:
Campaniam depopulatus est, atque ad Praeneste venit milliario ab urbe octavo decimo.
The bit about the ...
7
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Mirabile visu, horribile dictu ― is this the ablative?
Are the expressions "mirabile visu", and "horribile dictu", in the ablative case? If so, shouldn't it be "mirabili visu", and "horribili dictu"?
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Determining dative vs ablative for coelo
In a piece of fiction my wife recently read, she encountered this bit of latin
carminibus coelo possent deducere luman
Is coelo in ablative or dative case? Assuming both carminibus and coelo are ...
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Why do so many Latin prepositions of place take the accusative and not the ablative to express location?
When talking about the locative case, Latin grammars generally say that its usage was mostly taken over by the ablative case in Latin. For example: Allen and Greenough say:
Relations of Place are ...
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Where does the ablative go in a Latin sentence ? Does it even matter?
I'm learning Latin on my own with the book "Beginner's Latin" by Collar & Daniell, I recently reached Chapter IV where the ablative is introduced with the preposition In, my problem with ...
user10690
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in terra pax “in“ hominibus bonae voluntatis
Does the occurrence of “in” before “hominibus”, which seems to be found in some but not all renderings of this verse, follow usual Latin usage? A plain dative seems like it would work to me (pax ...
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Should “cum” be included in this sentence or not?
I have a sentence that I need to translate:
Having left the forum with haste, ... etc
And I'm translating it as "e foro cum celeritate egressi, ..." (the rest of the sentence refers to ...
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Why is that which is spoken of expressed as in + ablative?
Vīta est spīrandī mūnere fruī, mors prīvārī. Hoc autem spīrandī mūnus apud plērōsque in bonīs dicitur.
Livet er å nyte Guds* åndingsgave; døden å berøves [den]. Denne pustingas gave anses dermed i de ...
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Is it possible for adverbs, such as utique, to be used as adjectives?
Reading Ambrose Dē bonō mortis 4.14, I came across this passage:
Sed ipsa hīc vīta bona sī est, quibus rēbus bona est? Virtūte utique, et bonīs mōribus.
But if this life here is a Good, by which ...
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What is the ablative construction at play here?
I am reading Historia plantarvm vniuersalis. There are many sentences I do not understand, but the particular one I would like to ask about is on page 10 (page 26 in the link):
Literal transcription:
...
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Conquering darkness by science
I just found that the motto of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium is the following:
Scientia vincere tenebras
This should stand for "conquering darkness by science". This can ...
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Does accipio take the ablative?
In the sentence:
...quō ubi accēpit, in agrum quem arāverat magnā cum dīligentiā
sparsit.
quo could either be the adverb meaning where/whereupon, or it could be the relative pronoun, assuming that ...
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Can the ablative of agent and a relative pronoun be used at the same time?
Here is an example of an ablative of agent for living things:
"Puella a puero amata" = the girl loved by the boy
But is it correct if I add a relative pronoun to form:
"Puella quae a ...
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Use of accusative instead of ablative with 'pro'
I saw written in a coat of arms "PRO MARE NOSTRVM", but we all know that the preposition "pro" takes ablative, so the right form would be "PRO MARI NOSTRO" wouldn't it?
I ...
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Redundancy of “quo” with “de”
Passage: “Quo de genere mortis difficile dictu est.” Cic. Amic. 12
English translation (from Loeb): “It is hard to speak of the nature of his death.”
French translation : “Quant à la nature de sa ...
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On different expressions of partitivity in Latin
I was wondering whether there is any difference between the following partitive expressions in Latin: ūnus tribūnōrum and ūnus ex tribūnīs 'one of the tribunes' (cf. the so-called 'partitive genitive' ...
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Ablatives of Agent in Ablative Absolutes in Early Latin?
It is (often) said that participles in Ablative Absolutes in Early Latin have an adjectival nature (e.g., see Ruppel (2013: 124): "the Early Latin Ablative Absolute is not strongly verbal at all"). ...
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Ave Verum Corpus: why ablative?
Ave Verum Corpus ("Hail, true Body!") is a short Latin poem that was set to music by Mozart. For most of it, the language is quite plain and straightforward.
However, there's a bit in the middle ...
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What is the longest sequence of ablative/dative nouns ever to appear in Latin texts
I was intrigued by my question to ask this question. In that questions we have a sequence of 2 ablative nouns in a row:
"[Dama] differt a capreis [solis] cornibus ..."
I don't count solis because ...
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How did the preposition "de" evolve into meaning "from"?
I see that in reconstructed PIE "de" or "do" has a meaning of "towards" which is retained in Germanic "to" and Slavic "do". But in Latin "de" has a meaning of "from". Is that simply due it taking the ...
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Can a "dative of agent" appear in an Ablative Absolute construction (and, more generally, in a non-verbal context)?
I was wondering to what extent the syntactic distribution of so-called “datives of agent” and that of “ablatives of agent” is different. For example, besides appearing in verbal contexts (e.g., ...
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Why is the form "Antares" used as an ablative in some Latin texts?
Jam inquiro nomen stellae Antares. Multa documenta quae "ab Antares" dicunt comperi. At non scio ablativi qui in "es" terminantur. Potestne nomen "Antares" indeclinabile esse? Quare?
Exempla:
"Lanx ...
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Declension uncertainty regarding Ablative / Nominative
I'm struggling, particularly, with determining the correct case for some of the words in the following expressions:
Natura est semper invicta
Here, is the word "invicta" in Ablative or Nominative ...
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In memoriam: why not "in memoria"?
Consider this usual example of Latin+English:
As Wiktionary states, in memoriam literally means "into memory" (memoriam is in accusative case). However, as Wiktionary (above) and Wikipedia state, the ...
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Disambiguation of "nobis vobis" and "nobis nobis"
For many words, the dative and ablative take the same form. Two examples are nos and vos (nobis and vobis, respectively).
Imagine you want to say something like "from us to you [plural]" (where "...
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Ablative of Specification or Dative of Reference
Spinoza, Ethics, De Dei, Propositio 15, Scholium:
Ego saltem satis clare meo quidem judicio demonstravi ...
meo judicio is dative or ablative? I cant recognize that it is Ablative of ...
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The Nominative Case Uses
Spinoza writes in the last passage of Ethics:
Cum contra sapiens, quatenus ut talis consideratur, vix animo movetur, sed sui et Dei et rerum aeterna quadam necessitate conscius nunquam esse desinit,...
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"Fīliolō me auctum scito, salva Terentia"; what is "me" role in this phrase?
Is "Fīliolō me" the ablative of the phrase or "me" refers to "me auctum" in the accusative? If is in the ablative, how does it translates?
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Nemo te alius pari potestate saepius profuit (Apul. Florida 9)
Would you consider te to be dependent from pari ("with a position as powerful as yours") or saepius ("more often than you")?
par can be constructed with simple ablative, but rarely and more common is ...
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Why would the praeposition "per" ever take an ablative instead of an accusative complement?
PER + ABL.: Barbarism, solœcism, or diachronic evolution?
Lewis and Short clearly state that per is a praeposition whose
normal complement is in the accusative. Without having dol...
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Why is the ablative used here instead of the genitive
Mark 1:6 starts with
Et erat Joannes vestitus pilis cameli...
Which is translated as "John was clothed with camel's hairs...."
Why is it pilis instead of pilorum? Shouldn't pilis use genitive ...
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