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What did the Romans consider the "basic" form of a verb?
First person singular (laudo) appears to be most common
Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) wrote De Lingua Latina, which survives in partial, corrupted form, but which provides valuable testimony on ...
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Is "esse est percipi" grammatical, even with infinitives?
The expression esse est percipi is grammatical.
Notice that the gerund does not have a nominative form at all.
If you want the corresponding nominative (or accusative when there is no preposition), ...
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How do you show an infinitive for reason?
In Latin, the infinitive is not used to introduce a reason, or "purpose clause" as a Latin grammar would put it. Here are some other options, which I will gear toward the (very broad) use ...
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Confusion regarding 'esse' + accusative
It's not that esse takes the accusative—it's that cupiō takes the accusative, and esse links two things in the same case. In other words, regem is accusative because mē is accusative, and mē is ...
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Infinitive main verb in Newton's Three Laws of Motion
From medieval scholasticism onward, the titles or summations of enumerated items in disputations are commonly phrased as subordinate clauses, either indirect statements (either accusative with ...
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What form is 'numerārī'?
You are correct, this is a passive infinitive: "to be counted".
The passive versions of amāre, habēre, currere, and audīre are amārī, habērī, currī, and audīrī.
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Is "esse est percipi" grammatical, even with infinitives?
Cogito ergo sum does not mean "seeing is believing". It in fact means "I think therefore I am." Decartes used it as a statement of epistemology: If he can think, if he can conjure up rational process, ...
cmw♦
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10
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How do you show an infinitive for reason?
The answer above is pretty comprehensive! I don't yet have the reputation points to make this into a comment, rather than a full answer, but there are a few things worth adding.
First, In the case ...
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Is expiari an alternate form of the infinitive expiare?
You're correct that this is an infinitive! It's just the passive infinitive, rather than the active, so I would read scelus as the subject rather than the person atoning.
Rearranging the words into an ...
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Meaning of “Videre Sed Non Videri”
Salve!, and welcome to the site!
The translation you point is missing a word or two, but it's not too far from correct. A fairly literal translation is:
To see but not [to] be seen
Videre and videri ...
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8
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Fore or not Fore?
You need the subordinate idea ('to resist to the death') to be cast into the future (because the confederates didn't bind themselves to have resisted earlier or to be resisting right now). Normally, ...
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How to translate this line from Xenophon? (Const. Lac. 9.1)
Where did you read that the constituents of an articular infinitive need to be between the article and the infinitive? I would say they need to belong to the infinitive and be subordinate to it (and ...
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Is spargier a valid passive present infintive of spargo?
That does indeed look like a passive infinitive:
…ara castis / vincta verbenis avet immolato / spargier agno.
…the altar decorated with fresh foliage wants to be sprinkled with [blood from] a ...
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How do you show an infinitive for reason?
As the point of departure for this question was the English phrase “I came here to eat”, it might be worth mentioning that in this construction “to eat” is not (at least historically) an infinitive, ...
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Is "esse est percipi" grammatical, even with infinitives?
Verbi infinitivi nomina sunt
I started to "get" infinitives when I understood that they're nouns. It's called an infinitive because it's not "bound", i.e. tied to, a time—hence it doesn't make a ...
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Nominativus cum infinitivo
Yes; when the nominative servus can be construed as the subject of videtur, (or dicitur, cognoscitur )
The slave seems to be carrying a letter.
The slave is seen to be carrying the letter.
then
'It ...
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Is an infinitive as a noun neuter in gender?
It is best to distinguish between the 'true' infinitive (esse, vocare, vinci) and compound or periphrastic infinitives, which are really a construction of a participle plus the infinitive esse (...
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Where did the passive infinitive come from?
According to Vine's "The Morphology of Italic", all the infinitive endings originated with the third/consonant conjugation, and were extrapolated from there.
Many consonant-stem verbs in Latin used ...
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Use of Infinitive
Are you familiar with accusativus cum infinitivo (ACI)?
All of the bolded infinitives in your quote belong to an ACI structure, and should not be treated in isolation from other parts of the structure....
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How to make sense of this standalone infinitive? (Metamorphoses 1.601—603)
To expand on Joonas's answer, I think he is 100% correct that mirata is elliptical; est is left out but must be assumed in order to translate the sentence. The structure is as follows:
Iuno despexit ...
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Can the articular infinitive be a dative of means? (Greek)
The articular infinitive can be used as a dative of means, e.g. (from Smyth sec. 2033):
οὐδενὶ τῶν πάντων πλέον κεκράτηκε Φίλιππος ἢ τῷ πρότερος πρὸς τοῖς πράγμασι γίγνεσθαι Philip has conquered us ...
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The usage of present passive infinitive
My suggestion with complex sentences is always to try to identify the core and to rewrite it into a simpler independent sentence.
Here the core, as far as your question is concerned, has to do with ...
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Usage of perfect infinitive ("Res mihi nondum comperta est, itaque sufficiat leviter admonuisse alios de hac quarta causa")
In the preceding paragraph Kepler has just described the fourth reason, so this seems to be simply a normal perfect infinitive with anterior meaning: "let it suffice to have suggested it", i....
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Confusion regarding 'esse' + accusative
Cupere is a special kind of verb. You can use it to talk about something the subject of the sentence wishes to do himself. In that case you use an infinitive as the object and predicate nouns or ...
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6
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Stacking many infinitives
Tria infinitiva:
Sexto intervallo ab aequinoctio autumnali incipere scribunt oportere serere usque ad diem nonagensimum unum. – Varro, De re rustica 1, 34.
… docuimus Deum necessario existere, hoc ...
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Are the present infinitive of the active periphrastic and the future active infinitive of the verb the same concept?
Basically, yes. But that terminology is highly confusing, in my opinion.
In the terminology I'm used to, the periphrastic future goes like recturus sum, "I will rule". Its infinitival form ...
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5
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Jenney's Second Year Latin, Lesson 12, exercise E: Ut clauses and how to translate English infinitives
Here are some comments:
1a: The infinitive cannot express purpose in Latin like it can in English. See this earlier question, for example.
1h&i: The rules of consecutio temporum require that a ...
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Infinitive ' habere ' usage in this sentence
Accusativum cum infinitivo triggered by sequitur, though the accusative has been ellipsed: 'it follows that it has...'
This use falls under definition 7 of sequor in the Oxford Latin Dictionary:
7 ...
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"To be" and a commentator on Aquinas
Although your proposed translation, as amended in the previous answer, is grammatical (though certainly eyebrow-raising!), I would like to approach your question from an angle that might be more ...
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How to make sense of this standalone infinitive? (Metamorphoses 1.601—603)
(Edited drastically from previous version after several rereadings of the passage.)
Mirata means mirata est.
It is not a plain participle, but a perfect form of a deponent verb.
It governs an ACI, ...
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