46
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Did the Romans use any swear words?
Yes, they used swear words all the time! There's actually a whole book on the subject, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary by J. N. Adams. Cinaedus (a pejorative term for a 'bottom'), mentula (male genitalia),...
cmw♦
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19
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Why is suus in the accusative feminine singular in this sentence?
This is a really common stumbling block for those approaching Latin from the background of a language like English, so it merits a careful step-by-step explanation. I'll break my response into two ...
- 38.5k
17
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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 ...
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15
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Why is this a correct sentence: "Iūlius nōn sōlus, sed cum magnā familiā habitat"?
Although it's possible that the verb est has been omitted here, as Adam says, I find it more likely that the sentence really is equivalent to Iūlius nōn sōlus habitat, sed cum Aemiliā et cum magnā ...
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15
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Why Is This Noun in the Singular?
It is because cunae, -arum, f, is the word for a single crib. The singular cuna is never used. This is similar to how castra is a single camp. Such a word is called a plurale tantum (plural: pluralia ...
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12
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12
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What is the quantity of the "a" in "maxime"?
On the one hand, we have MAX(IMO), A with an apex in CIL VI 2080 17
However, as De Angelis and Chilà 2015 put it,
"the interpretation of the vowel of maximus as long is anything but certain" (p. ...
- 11.6k
12
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What does "Non procul abest" mean?
Here is one way to make sense of this:
Think of esse as "to be" and abesse as "to be away".
Then non procul est is "he is not far" and non procul abest is "he is not ...
- 110k
12
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Why is nominative instead of ablative absolute used in 'Ibi egressi Trojani'?
Egressi Trojani is in the nominative because it's the subject of agerent. The structure of the sentence is a bit unusual, but it's clearer when you move the cum to its vanilla position before the ...
- 8,647
11
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Why are some of these names ending in -a and some in -ae?
The the word ancilla and the names Syra and Aemilia are declined (rather than conjugated) according to the first declension, as shown in the following chart from Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar:
...
- 10.7k
11
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Is the 'i' in 'videt' long or short?
The i in videt is short. The length of a vowel in classical Latin pronunciation is defined by its duration—its "quantity"—as opposed to its "quality", i.e. the nature of the sound: ...
- 15.8k
11
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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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11
votes
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Differences between cano and canto
According to Döderlein's Hand-book of Latin Synonymes (also here), canere is the more general term for music (and thus may be used for singing), whereas cantare usually is used more specifically to ...
- 10.7k
11
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What does "ensem sufferre" mean?
The verb that is intended here is almost certainly tollo, tollere, which shares third and fourth principal parts with sufferre*. Although sufferre can, according to Lewis & Short, mean 'hold up,' ...
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11
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Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, chapter 6, weird sentence with passive voice
Simply put, timentur doesn't mean "are frightened," but instead "are feared." The verb in English to frighten (the Latin terreo, terrere) is to cause something to fear, whereas ...
cmw♦
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11
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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 ...
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10
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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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Why is Italiae used rather than Italis in the phrase "In hortis Italiae"?
Graecus, -a, -um is an adjective “Greek”, put in the ablative plural Graecis to agree with the ablative plural noun oppidis: “In (the) Greek towns.”
Italia is a noun “Italy”; Italiae is the genitive ...
- 26.6k
10
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LLPSI: "Mārcus Quīntum ad terram cadere uidet."
This is called an accusative with infinitive construction, or accusativum cum infinitivo in Latin. We actually have them in English as well, though it's unclear how much of that is borrowed from Latin:...
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10
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What is the difference between "in umerīs" and "in umerōs"?
In + ablative means "in/on something" while doing the verb.
In + accusative means "into/onto something", i.e. the verb involves moving/transferring something else into/onto the ...
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10
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"neuter e duobus pueris" vs "neuter puer"
Yes, it is equivalent in meaning to "Neuter puer jam dormit."
As pointed out by the comments, duobus is redundant, since neuter means "neither" (of two). Note that the fact that a ...
- 26.6k
9
votes
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Why is "quī" used immediately following a plural accusative noun?
The case of a relative pronoun indicates its role inside the subordinate clause, not the main clause.
Since the servōs in the main clause are the subject of pārent in the subordinate clause, a ...
- 15.8k
9
votes
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Difference between filiī and liberī
Filius, i means "son"
Liberi (masc. plur.) means "children" and more precisely children of free people, i.e. not slaves.
This family has 2 sons but 3 children. There probably is a daughter around ...
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Difference between 'urbe' and 'oppidum'?
An urbs is a city, an oppidum is a town.
It is quite common to use urbs to refer specifically to Rome, and the linked dictionary entry even says that oppidum is used for other cities than Rome.
You ...
- 110k
9
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Questions from LLpsI
As you suspected, qui is a relative pronoun which refers to Medus. However, differently from English, in Latin it can sometimes show up in an independent clause, referring to something that preceded. ...
- 10.7k
9
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Questions from LLpsI
It should be remembered that this type of punctuation and capitalization is merely modern convention. In this paragraph, I imagine Orberg chose to capitalize the qui as a convenience of breaking up ...
cmw♦
- 50.8k
9
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What does "vel potius" mean in this sentence from LLpsI?
You're basically there. Potius does mean "rather", so the whole sentence means:
He made sure that we should be saved from the storm and not drown -- or rather we ourselves (made sure of it),...
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9
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Sentences hard to understand (LLpsI)
"Behold, to him appeared in a dream most grieving Hector, the dead son of Priam—but what he was, how much he had changed from that Hector who had returned the victor from so many battles! He bore ...
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9
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Issue translating sentence from familia romana
Vetustate collapsam, "collapsed because of age".
(In terms of textbook categories this might be described as an ablative of cause or an ablative of instrument, but those categories are ...
- 30.6k
9
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lūna 'nova' esse dīcitur
In this case, lūna is not only the subject of the infinitive "esse": it's the subject of the entire phrase "'nova' esse dīcitur". That is, the structure of this clause is parallel ...
- 26.6k
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