18
votes
Accepted
Why is the passive participle in Matthew 10:1 rendered as active in English?
The translation is indeed syntactically inexact, but in a very common and justifiable way.
The point is that Latin -- unlike e.g. Greek, from which this text is translated -- lacks a perfect active ...
- 30.9k
13
votes
Accepted
Hogwarts Motto from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series
You're right that it's a gerundive of obligation, and thus requires a form of esse. However, it doesn't have to be expressed. Tacitus Annals 1.29 contains two without esse, though they're in indirect ...
cmw♦
- 52.1k
11
votes
Accepted
How to make a deponent passive in meaning?
Good question!
I am not aware of a possibility of passivizing such a structure.
Instead, I suggest two ways around this:
Use a different verb.
Depending on context, perhaps comitare, haerere, or ...
- 111k
11
votes
Accepted
Why is "repetunt" 3rd pl active in Luke 12:20 (Vulgate)?
I think it helps to look at two different commentaries on this verse. First we'll reproduce the Greek, and then the commentaries on the Greek.
εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ ὁ θεός Ἄφρων, ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ τὴν ψυχήν σου ...
- 12k
11
votes
Accepted
How do I use gerundives of obligation for deponent verbs?
Before we understand the gerundive of a deponent verb, we need to first understand the particples of deponent verbs.
Participles of Deponent Verbs
Deponent verbs are often described as verbs with &...
- 39.4k
11
votes
Accepted
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.
- 65.1k
11
votes
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♦
- 52.1k
11
votes
Accepted
Parsing a present perfect participle
Lavatum here isn't a perfect passive participle, but a supine. When it's accusative (ends in -um) and is coupled with a verb of motion (here eunt, "they go"), it expresses purpose.
Here's a ...
cmw♦
- 52.1k
10
votes
Passive infinive with accusative
In English, we often say "are found" to mean "there exist", as in "52 species of gastropod are found in Virginia." This phrasing casts the fact epistemologically, ...
- 15.9k
9
votes
Accepted
"cenacula dicuntur, ad quae scalis ascenditur" - why passive singular (ascenditur)?
Here, ascendere is used instransitively (Festus isn't talking about climbing the room itself but climbing up to the room). Moreover, it seems that the Romans didn't typically think of stairs as things ...
- 19.3k
9
votes
Accepted
Passive form of "One can not know"
It is impossible to know what the book wants without more context (and even at that sometimes instructions are unclear. That said, you cannot make it passive. The only thing that can be made passive ...
cmw♦
- 52.1k
8
votes
Accepted
Active verbs with passive meanings
In linguistic parlance these verbs are usually called “stative”, not “passive”. From a Latin standpoint they differ from passive verbs in that they cannot (apparently) be construed with an agent (...
- 17.5k
8
votes
Accepted
middle voice in Latin
The "middle function" can also be claimed to occur in perfective tenses (of both non-deponent and deponent verbs). For example, it's one of the three readings an ambiguous sentence like Porta clausa ...
- 8,366
8
votes
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 ...
- 65.1k
8
votes
Accepted
Latin translation of "don't get caught"
I'd suggest a very slightly less literal translation using the verb caveo "beware", with ne and subjunctive:
Cave ne capiaris!
Literally this means "watch out you don't get caught!&...
- 30.9k
8
votes
Accepted
Use of the passive voice in the verb exerceo
In English exercise doesn't change if it's used transitively or intransitively, but that's not the case for the Latin word it comes from. As Lewis and Short (and I'm sure other dictionaries) say, ...
cmw♦
- 52.1k
8
votes
Parsing a present perfect participle
In addition to cmw's answer, both of your interpretations are unworkable as the Latin text stands:
Your first interpretation (“the washed Romans”) cannot be true because lavatum does not agree with ...
- 32.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Usage of passive in Summa Theologiae
The impersonal passive can be used when you want to describe an action, but you don't want to specify who did it, and there was no logical object to turn into a subject for the passive. Amongst the ...
- 19.8k
8
votes
Accepted
Sapiens dominabitur astris — is it not Passive voice?
The verb isn't domino, it's dominor.
So what's going on?
Dominor (or dominari, to use the infinitive) is a deponent verb, which is a short way of saying that only the passive forms are used, but the ...
- 32.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Vowel Quantity in Third Person Plural of Passive Voice
A short vowel in this position is regular, not analogical. Here is how the rules for vowel length in verb endings are described by Joonas Ilmavirta♦'s answer to How can one predict the length of theme ...
- 27.3k
7
votes
Accepted
Does there exist an passive form of sum, esse, fui?
There are no passive forms of esse, for the reason you state -- it's not a transitive verb. Intransitive verbs cannot be passivized, with the minor exception of "impersonal passive" forms (in the 3sg. ...
- 30.9k
7
votes
Accepted
Instances of the future passive infinitive
This list will have some false positives, but the Packard Humanities Institute Latin Texts website generates this collection of all instances of "iri" in its corpus (179 total instances):
http://...
- 551
7
votes
Accepted
Passives Without Accusatives
Normally, when you passive a verb in Latin, the following happens:
Subject becomes a(b(s)) + ablative.
Direct object becomes subject.
All other constituents remain unchanged.
Note that a direct ...
- 19.8k
7
votes
Accepted
Why is dignetur used as if it were in the active voice?
digno and the deponent dignor are both used in the same meaning "to deem worthy", but the latter is much more frequent. L/S have a separate entry for each of them.
- 17.5k
7
votes
Latin passive endings: Why is -mini sticking out
As varro says, the question is debated. There are no r-forms in Latin, and we have no 2pl. passives attested in Sabellic, unfortunately. I think Sihler's account is rather farfetched; a much simpler ...
- 30.9k
7
votes
Passive Subjunctive Translated as Active
The verb in question (minor, -ari, -atus) is a deponent verb, which means that it has a passive form but an active meaning.
There are many such verbs in Latin. Consider the following cases:
Multa ...
- 39.4k
7
votes
Is there a gerundive of "faciō"?
Yes, there is. A couple of notes:
Faciendus (-a, -um) is attested. Perseus gives 21 results of the former. These include several forms of faciendus + [esse] (est, erat, esset)
There is also a number ...
- 11.1k
7
votes
Accepted
De passiva voce cum verbis quae casum dativum postulant
Quā dē causā ōrātiōnis subjectum in nōminātīvō nōn pōnātur ex hīs liquēbit:
Jūlia Mārcō rosam dat = rosa Mārcō ā Jūliā datur != Mārcus ā Jūliā datur
Jūlia Mārcō omnia ignōscit = omnia Mārcō ā Jūliā ...
- 5,977
7
votes
Accepted
Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, chapter 6, weird sentence with passive voice
You went wrong by translating the Latin into another language (either Russian or English) in order to understand the translation, instead of trying to understand the Latin on its own terms. This ...
- 5,977
6
votes
Accepted
When to use -ris vs. -re as a passive verbal ending
I don't have precise figures for frequency, but G&L §1301b say that it is very common in earlier prose, less common in later:
In the second Singular, passive, in all tenses of the Present stem, ...
cmw♦
- 52.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible