21
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ATM in Vatican City: "Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem"
The source of this Latin ATM message, as confirmed is a few profiles (such as this one from the Catholic Herald and this one from The Telegraph) is the lately-deceased Reginald Foster, who was ...
- 38.5k
19
votes
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What is the significance of the different declensions and conjugations?
It's pretty much arbitrary.
There are some standard patterns: first-declension nouns tend to be feminine, second-declension masculine/neuter, third-declension abstract concepts, fourth-declension ...
- 64.6k
17
votes
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Why "impressa" in Æneid IV.659–60?
Virgil is imitating a Greek construction here, or rather two Greek constructions: the middle voice and the accusative of respect.
Greek had a "middle" voice, which in most tenses was formally ...
- 30.6k
17
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What does "enim et" mean?
A quick web search shows that the phrase 'Diabolus enim et alii Daemones' (without the contra) appears to originate from the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215). The full sentence is Diabolus enim et ...
- 19.1k
16
votes
"Tu quoque, Brutus, mi fili?" Grammar question
I suspect that your friend misremembered the phrase.
Concerning the actual phrase that Julius Caesar said, the biographers offer conflicting evidence. Suetonius tells us that Caesar died in silence, ...
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16
votes
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Why is it "nomen mihi est" for "my name is", but it's "tibi nomen est" for "your name is"?
The Latin Duolingo course is not of particularly high quality.
Completing the course will certainly give you some insight to Latin, but every detail of the course must be taken with a grain of salt.
...
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15
votes
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Is the Phrase "Sola Dea Fatum Novit" Proper Latin?
Yes, the grammar of this sentence is perfectly fine. It's a very simple sentence composed of subject, object and verb.
Sentence Outline
Subject: Sola dea - The subject needs to be nominative here. ...
- 411
14
votes
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Why are descriptive subjects in the genitive?
See Allen and Greenough, §343.c:
c. An infinitive or a clause, when used as a noun, is often limited by a genitive in the predicate.
Neque suī iūdicī [erat] discernere. (B. C. 1.35)
Nor was it for ...
- 110k
13
votes
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Can Latin do Noun-Noun Adjuncts?
Civitatis is actually in the genitive, so it fits the rule you mentioned.
The base noun is civitas, which is what civitatis is linked to on Wiktionary.
cmw♦
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12
votes
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Understanding the grammar: «illis Evangelii nuntiandi praebens mandatum»
Christus Apostolos misit ... illis Evangelii nuntiandi praebens mandatum
Praebens is a participle modifying Christus: "Christ sent the apostles ... giving...". All the other words you marked depend ...
- 19.8k
12
votes
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What's the difference between mutantur and mutamur?
Both are conjugated in the present tense, passive voice, and indicative mood, from the same verb: muto. The difference is that mutamur is conjugated in the 1st person (plural) (“we change”), while ...
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12
votes
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Is there something special about "corpus"?
Here corpora is what's sometimes called a Greek or synecdochical accusative (in Greek the accusative of respect).
Stellatus actually goes with the person whose body it is, and the accusative is the ...
cmw♦
- 50.7k
11
votes
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Ars gratia artis
"Art for the Sake of Art"
This phrase, quite conveniently, uses the same word order in both English and Latin.
Ars, artis (artium) is a third-declension feminine noun. It can mean "art&...
- 64.6k
11
votes
How to translate the phrase "perfacile factu esse"?
Your translation "he proved to them that completing these efforts was done very easily" is good.
To express such things in Latin the supine is a good choice.
The supine ablative (like factu) is an ...
- 110k
11
votes
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How do you parse "futurum est" in Matthew 2:13?
Futurum est is a future active periphrastic form. It is built from futurum, the future active participle of sum (here in the neuter), which by itself means "going to be, about to be". With the ...
- 30.6k
11
votes
Is the Phrase "Sola Dea Fatum Novit" Proper Latin?
Sola dea is the subject, and the subject must be nominative.
Fatum is in the accusative, and not the nominative, and must be, since sola dea is in the nominative. It's the direct object, and the ...
cmw♦
- 50.7k
11
votes
"Tu quoque, Brutus, mi fili?" Grammar question
It should indeed be Brute, not Brutus, and the vocative form seems to be far more common if you make an internet search.
The person who told that the last words came with Brutus appears to be slightly ...
- 110k
11
votes
Accepted
Why indicative in a indirect question?
This isn't actually an indirect question, but a relative clause: quod dixit "(that) which he said".
The two constructions are easy to confuse, especially since English can translate both ...
- 30.6k
11
votes
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"quae haec mihi dōna dedistī"
Quae in that sentence is feminine nominative singular: Now help me, O Venus, who gave me these gifts!
The verb is in the second person because it refers to the second person. The syntactic structure ...
- 26.6k
10
votes
Nonne "a fortiori, a priori, a posteriori" solecismi sunt?
In classical Latin, the ablative of comparatives could end on -i, although -e is probably more common. Here are a few quotations that I think must be conceded to contain ablatives:
Cornelius Nepos, ...
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10
votes
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The three maxims at the Temple of Apollo (Greek)
Ἐγγύα πάρα δ' ἄτη appears to have been a proverb; it is apparently quoted (see fn. 3) in a fragment of Cratinus, an Attic comic playwright (though Cratinus's version seems to have been different, ...
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10
votes
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Translation of "...quae parvas aves capit et est."
Indeed, it means [he] eats; it is a contracted form. It's not very common, nor extremely rare. Lewis & Short even call it "very frequent", which I think is an exaggeration:
The contr. forms es, ...
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10
votes
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What does "Filiane" mean?
Your analysis is correct: this is fīlia "daughter" + -ne "?".
The trick is, -ne can attach to any word, not just verbs. In fact, it usually attaches to either the first word, or the most emphatic ...
- 64.6k
10
votes
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The function of "quo" in "Quō quisque est sollertior, hōc docet īrācundius"
Lewis & Short have hidden this in their entry for qui/quae/quod (and not, as I would have thought, in the dedicated entry for quo) – II,E,2,b:
Quo, abl. neutr., with compp. (with or without hoc, ...
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10
votes
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Why or when do we use Genitive to say you're in a place
This isn't a genitive, it's a locative.
For certain types of nouns, a bare ablative means "from", a bare accusative means "to", and a bare locative means "at". The ...
- 64.6k
9
votes
Is the Phrase "Sola Dea Fatum Novit" Proper Latin?
The sentence, absent any context (could you provide some?), would ordinarily be translated
The Goddess alone knows [their, or his, or her, etc.] fate.
Let's break it down word by word:
Sola: ...
- 1,041
9
votes
How is "quod" operating in this sentence of Hyginus?
The word quod probably means 'therefore' (or 'in respect of which').
(My dictionary mentions this meaning but gives no examples.)
This would imply that Prometheus was dissatisfied with the situation ...
- 110k
9
votes
Is the Phrase "Sola Dea Fatum Novit" Proper Latin?
You have several excellent answers here. I just want to add a few words about C. M. Weimer's suggestion that scit might be better than novit.
Scire (scit) and noscere/novisse (novit), two Latin words ...
- 16.4k
9
votes
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Causatives in Latin
A relatively common construction in Latin is to use the verb curare.
If "I do this" is hoc facio, then "I have someone do this" is "hoc faciendum curo".
To my knowledge this construction is impersonal ...
- 110k
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