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Latin Past Tenses

There are three different past tenses in Latin.

• imperfect

• perfect

• pluperfect

And they all do different things, so it’s really important that you know how to translate them all and how to spot them. Today I’m just going to be focusing on active verbs in the past tenses, which should be a little bit more straightforward. If you want the Passive endings, you can learn them from my free Verbs Reference Guide.

Let’s start with the Imperfect tense

Now, if you’ve read my blog before, you may well know this is my favourite tense, and I call it “the sheep tense” for reasons that are explained in my full post about the Imperfect tense.

Forming and Translating the Imperfect

You translate it using the English words “was” or “were”. It is formed using the present stem, the imperfect signifier -ba-, and then the normal person endings that you would expect. Take the verb porto portare: I carry, to carry

If I want to put it in the third person singular, imperfect tense. I take the present stem, add ba, then the 3rd singular person ending, and I get portabat. This translates as “he was carrying”.

This is what’s called a continuous action in the past, which means that the action is ongoing at the time of the story. So “he was carrying the cup when he fell over”. portabat shows that it is an ongoing action at the same time as the fall.

Secret Extra Translation:

You can also translate the imperfect tense using the phrase “used to”. “He used to carry the cup to his friend every day” for example. It can be useful to have this in mind in case it makes more sense in your translation, but it’s more common to use “was” or “were”, that’s why we call it the continuous action in the past.

Imperfect Endings

Here are the endings for the imperfect tense:

• -bam

• -bas

• -bat

• -bamus

• -batis

• -bant

The eagle eye will have noticed that the first three make up the name of my website, and that is because it is my favourite tense in Latin!

All of those have the -ba- imperfect signifier. Let’s look at some verbs that are using this ending:

• portabam - I was carrying

• sedebas - you were sitting

• audiebat - he/she was listening

• trahebamus - we were dragging

• ferebatis - you plural were bringing

• mittebant - they were sending

All of these contain the -ba- syllable. That’s a really obvious signifier for the imperfect tense. If you try and keep in mind the phrase the imperfect sheep was saying “ba”, that can help you to remember that it is imperfect. You use -ba- and you translate it using “was” or “were”.

The Perfect Tense

The perfect tense is a bit different. It’s no longer a continuous action in the past, it is instead a completed action.

Forming and Translating the Perfect

You translate it in English using “-ed”. Walked or laughed or killed. Unfortunately, English doesn’t follow its own rules and not all past tense verbs use -ed at the end, like how ran is the past tense of run. It’s not “runned” - and saw is the past tense of see, rather than “seed”. But have in mind “-ed”, and that can help you to get the right past meaning of the verb.

You form it using the perfect stem and the perfect ending. These are different endings from the normal person endings you are expecting. The perfect stem is the third principle part in your dictionary. You’re always given the present: porto, “I carry”, the infinitive, portare “to carry”, and then the perfect portavi “I carried”. So the perfect stem is portav-

portavit means “he carried”. This is a completed action in the past, that’s different from the imperfect, which was a continuous action. This one is done. It’s over. “I tripped yesterday”. “I walked to the shop”, “I saw my friend”. It’s done. It’s not still ongoing.

Perfect Endings

Here are the endings of the perfect tense:

• -i

• -isti

• -it

• -imus

• -istis

• -erunt

These are different from the normal person endings that you expect, but they do follow similar patterns. For example, the 3rd singular (he/she/it) ending still ends with -t, like in the present tense. The 1st plural (we) ending still ends with -mus, and the 3rd plural (they) ending -erunt ends with an nt.

Here are the same verbs as I had before in the imperfect switched now to the perfect. You might see that there is a difference in some of them in the stem. That’s because before the imperfect uses the normal present stem, but these are perfect, so I have to use the perfect stem, which can look very different from the present.

• portavi - I carried

  portav- is the perfect stem, then the endings from above are added to that.

• sedisti - you sat

  sedere goes to sedi in the perfect.

• audivit - he/she heard

• traximus - we dragged

• tulistis - you (plr) brought

  This one is very different. It’s a great example of why you must know your perfect stems. It is from fero - “bring, carry, bear”. It goes fero, ferre, tuli in the dictionary.

• miserunt - they sent

  It’s from mitto, mittere, misi

This is still using those perfect endings, and the perfect stem. Some of these word are really different than they were in the imperfect, so it is really important that you learn those principle parts.  

Want more detail? Here’s one of my posts about the Perfect Tense from the bambasbat archive.

The Pluperfect Tense

The last one we’re going to look at today is the pluperfect tense. The idea of this tense is that its “more than past”. That’s what pluperfect literally means, “plus perfect” - it’s even further back in time than an action in the perfect tense.

Forming and Translating the Pluperfect

You translate this in English using the word “had”. So “had walked”, “had seen”. It’s really important to remember the “had” in your translation, because these actions have already happened before something else.

• “I had shut the door when I realised I didn’t have my keys”.

• “He was being careful today, because he had fallen over each morning that week”.

The pluperfect tense is formed using the perfect stem again, but this time it’s with the pluperfect endings, which are different again from the perfect and imperfect we have looked at.

Let’s take porto, portare, portavi again. We need the perfect stem, which as we saw before is the 3rd principle part: portav. Then if I add the 3rd person singular ending, I get portaverat, “he had carried”.

Pluperfect Endings

Here are the endings of the pluperfect:

• -eram

• -eras

• -erat

• -eramus

• -eratis

• -erant

Note: If you have ever looked at the verb esse “to be” in Latin, you might recognise this pattern. This is the same as the imperfect tense of esse. If you see eram on its own in a sentence, it means “I was” something. “I was happy”, “I was a teacher”, “I was late”.

But when it’s an ending added to a perfect stem it forms the pluperfect tense, and you have to translate it as “had”.

Here are those same verbs from above again, this time in the pluperfect tense:

• portaveram - I had carried

  I’ve got the same perfect stem portav, and then -eram is added to it

• sederas - you had sat

• audiverat - he/she had heard

• traxeramus - we had dragged

• tuleratis - you (plr) had brought

  Remember this one has a very weird perfect stem - tuli from fero

• miserant - they had sent

If you want more practise and detail, you can read this post about the Pluperfect Tense.

All Three Past Tenses

Here are all the verbs that we’ve just looked at today in all three of the tenses. Spot the patterns across the person endings and the tenses:

• portabam, portavi, portaveram

• sedebas, sedisti, sederas

• audiebat, audivit, audiverat

• trahebamus, traximus, traxeramus

• ferebatis, tulistis, tuleratis

• mittebant, miserunt, miserant

See that some of them are very similar, especially the 3rd plural of the perfect and pluperfect! Make sure to really learn those endings carefully.

Tenses Test

Now let’s test what you’ve learned.  Which tenses are these verbs? And can you translate them? If you want to have a go at translating these on your own, only read on when you are ready as the answers will be below!

1. speravit

2. putebam

3. ceperamus

4. incendebant

5. vulneravi

Have a go, and then read on when you are ready to check your answers!

Answers below! Warning!

Ok here we go:

1. speravit has the -it ending, so it is perfect. “He hoped”.

2. putebam has the -ba- imperfect signifier, so means “I was thinking”.

3.  ceperamus has the -eram -eras -erat endings, showing it is pluperfect. “We had seized”

4. incendebant has the -ba- imperfect signifier. “They were burning”.

5. vulneravi has the -i -isti -it perfect endings. “I wounded”.

How did you do? Let me know in the comments whether you managed to figure out which tense all of these were!

If you want to go into any of these tenses in a bit more depth, you can find posts about each of these tenses in the bambasbat archive. Don’t forget to download my free reference guide to Latin verbs. It will really help you out for all of these verb endings.

In this post I’ve been focused on active verbs, but if you want to have a look at the passive, they’re in that guide as well. So do download it. It will help you as you carry on your Latin journey.

I hope this has been useful to you. Let me know what you think! Are there any areas of Latin you’re struggling with and would love me to do a post or video about? Email me or leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks so much for joining me, and I’ll see you next time on bambasbat!

But fear not! The 4th and 5th declensions in Latin are fairly straight forward, and only encompass a few words. However, those words can be very important, so it is crucial you get to know these tables just as you have for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd declensions.

If these first 3 declensions still aren’t solid in your mind, make sure you have downloaded my free Noun Endings Guide by clicking here, or adding your email below.

Hello! Welcome back to bambasbat!

It feels like an age since I last wrote a post, and for this I apologise - 2025 really got away from me! I hope you are still interested in sticking around and have felt a small pleasure at receiving my first post of 2026.

While I have been busy, I have been itching to get back to posting, and I plan to resume my (mostly) weekly musings about grammar, culture and historical figures. To help ease myself back into the swing of things, I have not done a full write up of the 4th and 5th declension as usual. I hope you watch the video and still find it useful!

Did the video help? Let me know if you think adding a 4th and 5th Declension Noun Table to my free guides would be beneficial to you by sending me a quick email or commenting on the video. Please do get in touch - I would absolutely love to hear how your Latin journey is going, any struggles you are finding, and what you hope to learn in 2026!

Thank you for all the support I have received so far. I hope to keep helping you learn Latin for a very long time to come.

With very best wishes for the New Year,

Ellen

Today I’m going to talk about why we use participles so much, the two most common ways to translate them, and why I really like them.  

What are Participles?

They are what's called a verbal adjective. Now that can sound quite scary,  but really it breaks down into two parts.

The verbal part means that it is formed from a verb, and the adjective part means that it describes a noun, just like an adjective does.  

Because it's formed from a verb, participles have tenses. Because it is like an adjective, participles have case, number and gender as well.

• present tense participles, portans, portantis

• future participles, portaturus, portatura, portaturum

• perfect passive participles, portatus, portata, portatum

Each of these also declines like an adjective (hence the multiple endings shown for each one).

Don't worry about what they look like for now. All we're really talking about today is what the point of them is.  If you want to know more about any of these, you can find my posts about participles in the bambasbat archive. But for now, let's just talk about what they do.

Remember, because they describe a noun, that means that participles have to agree in case, number and gender with the noun they are describing. That means you really need to know your noun endings! To help you with that, download my free noun endings guide here. It's really going to help you out as you go through your case, number and gender endings,  because present participles follow the 3-3 endings of the third declension, and the others follow 2-1-2 endings, which means using second declension endings for a masculine noun, first declension endings for a feminine noun, and second declension neuter endings for neuter nouns. So do download that, it will help you.  

What are participles used for?

Well, there are two main uses.

1. Adjectival (or attributive)

2. Circumstantial.  

Adjectival Participles

An adjectival participle means that it describes a noun. You would expect this from the title adjectival, I suppose, as adjectives do describe nouns. But  in its  most basic sense, it describes what a noun is doing, or how a noun is feeling, that sort of thing.

And you can use it to distinguish from others. So for example,

• servum currentem vidi

  “ I saw the running slave”

currentem is a present participle, so it follows 3-3 endings.  servum is masculine accusative singular, so currentem also needs to be masculine, accusative, singular, which it is.

So current-em is adjectival because it is describing the slave at this moment in time. It could be translated “I saw the slave who was running”.  

Now currentem is a present participle, which means that it's happening at the same time as the main verb. vidi is a perfect “I saw”,  and therefore  I have to take my present participle back a tiny little step to make it happen at the same time as “I saw the slave”. He was running when I saw him. So “I saw the slave who was running”.  

This is adjectival because you can use it to distinguish him from others. So as opposed to the slave who was not running is sort of one of the meanings that you could have for this.

Circumstantial Participles

The other option is circumstantial. Now in Latin it is exactly the same, and in fact the meaning in English is also very similar.

• servum currentem vidi

  “I saw the slave while he was running”

This is the same sentence, currentem is still a present participle. I've just now used “while” to translate it. That's because this is describing the circumstance that this slave is in. It's what he was doing at the time of the main verb.  

It's a very tiny difference in how you translate these participles,  however, it can be useful to know that you can translate participles in different ways.

So this present participle currentem I could use differently depending on how I want to translate it:

• Circumstantially: while he was running

• Adjectivally: who was running  

Adjectival and circumstantial, they basically are the same. It just is a different way to translate things.

Why are there different ways to translate participles?

The reason we have both of these is because Latin is very influenced by Ancient Greek,  and in Greek, the attributive participle is shown in a slightly different way to the circumstantial participle. It uses something called the definite article (the word “the”) if it is adjectival (attributive) and it doesn’t include the definite article for circumstantial.

In Latin, it isn't, it's exactly the same, because we don’t use the definite article at all, Latin doesn’t have one, so it's not a big thing to worry about.  The difference is very small.

Let's have a look at an example with a perfect passive participle.

• puellam captam vidi

  “I saw the having been captured girl”

captam is a perfect passive participle. It means “having been captured”. So the translation above is a very literal one, which we might not want to use in English.

Now, if I wanted to translate this sentence using the participle adjectivally, or as an attritive participle, I could say:

• “I saw the captured girl”

It's attributed to her. It's telling me  more information about the girl - she has been captured.  It acts like an adjective.

If I wanted to do it as a circumstantial adjective, I could say:

• “I saw the girl after she was captured”

Now that's because this one is a perfect passive participle,  and so it happened before the main verb vidi. So I saw the girl after she was captured. That's the circumstance she is now in. 

Why is this important?

This is quite a niche use of grammar in Latin. It's not a huge difference in how you actually translate them into English, but it gives you something to think about as you see participles. Do you want to translate it adjectvally or attributively, or do you want to translate it circumstantially?

If you're unsure about participles, I do have an entire set of videos on YouTube which you can find here. Or if you prefer reading the posts, you can find them in the bambasbat archive and search for “participles”.

The main thing to remember is that participles are verbal adjectives. They're formed from a verb and they describe a noun.

Don't forget that participles have to agree in case number and gender with the noun they are describing. So do make sure you've downloaded that free Noun Endings Guide to help you.  

That's all there is for my participles post today. I hope it's been useful!

Let me know in the comments if you have any specific grammar topics you'd like me to cover, any of your favourite Latin authors you'd like me to analyse, or just anything you'd like me to know! It would be lovely to hear from you.

Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

If you're not sure about any of your noun endings, my free Noun Endings Guide will really help you. It's got all the endings for the first, second, and third declension nouns, and these are going to be really important endings for when you talk about possessive adjectives. It's completely free and it's just to help you out.

Wait, what are Pronouns?

Before we talk about possessive adjectives, let's just recap pronouns. I did a post last week about Latin pronouns which you can read here, but basically pronouns are used in place of a noun.

They're used to avoid repetition. So instead of saying “The girl saw the boy. The girl greeted the boy”, you would say, “The girl saw the boy. She greeted him”. That's what pronouns are.  

They are also used to make more complex sentences,  as well as just making basic ones less busy.  

And pronouns are really useful, but  there are some times when you have to use a possessive adjective instead. So let’s get into those.

What is a Possessive Adjective?

Now a possessive adjective agrees with a noun. Because of this, it follows the 2-1-2 adjective endings that we expect. By that, I mean it changes its form based on the case, number, and gender of the noun it agrees with, like laetus, laeta, laetum does.

If you’re struggling with adjectives, you can read my 2-1-2 adjectives post here.

So a possessive adjective has a second declension masculine ending if it's describing a masculine noun, like a first declension feminine ending if it's describing a feminine noun, or a second detention neuter ending if it is describing a neuter noun. That's why you need to know your noun endings really well. Get my free Noun Endings Guide sent straight to your inbox  by typing your email below.

Possessive Adjectives do exactly what they say on the tin - they are adjectives which show possession. They tell you who owns the object or person being described. Let’s get into what that means.

Genitive Pronouns vs Possessive Genitives 

Last time we looked briefly at genitive pronouns.

You don’t get them very often, unless it is being used as a partitive genitive or an objective genitive. For example:

• pars mei - “a part of me”.

mei is in the genitive, and this is what's called a partitive genitive. I'm taking a small part of myself  rather than the whole thing. Like a slice of cake - cake would be in the genitive.

But you don’t often need to use a partitive genitive. More frequently you want to explain who owns something. If I wanted to say “my part”, showing that I own the part, I would say:

• pars mea - “my part”

This is different to a genitive pronoun. This is now a possessive adjective.  

1st Person Possessives

The first person possessive adjectives are “my” and “our”

• meus, mea, meum

• noster, nostra, nostrum

Both of these follow the 2-1-2 adjective endings, because they can be in any case number and gender, depending on the noun they are agreeing with.

• fratres meos amatis

  You love my brothers  

meos is accusative, plural, and masculine because it agrees with fratres. It does not agree with “me”, as in my case that would be singular and feminine. It has to agree with fratres, as they are also accusative, plural, and masculine. They are my brothers.

 In the plural the concept is exactly the same.

• vinum nostrum malum est

  Our wine is bad

In this case, vinum is nominative and neuter, and therefore so is nostrum. It's nominative singular and it is neuter to agree with vinum.  

2nd Person Possessives

Second person possessives are “your” singular and “your” plural.

• tuus tua tuum

• vester vestra vestrum

The meaning of these words doesn’t change based on the ending. If I am talking to one person and I say “I see your books”, the plural nature of “books” doesn’t affect the work “your” at all. I am still just talking to one person who possesses many books. It’s the same in Latin.

• amici tui adsunt

  Your friends are here  

The possessive pronoun tui is nominative, plural, and masculine. “The friends are here” is the main sentence. tui just agrees with amici to give us more information about those friends.  Clearly I am talking to one person who possesses many friends. The meaning of it being a singular tuus - just one person - does not change, even though the ending matches a plural noun.

The same concept applies in the plural:

• ad terram vestram festino

  I am hurrying to your land

This is an accusative of motion towards - ad terram “towards the land”.  vestram therefore has to agree with terram, so it has to be accusative, singular and feminine.

It does not matter that vestram itself means “you plural”.  I'm talking to multiple people. “I'm hurrying to the land of all of you”,  but land itself is singular. vester is just the word used because I'm talking to a group, but vestram can describe a singular  noun just as tui can describe a plural.

That's something a little bit confusing to get your head around, but it's really important.

3rd Person Possessives

 For third person possessives, we have to do something a little bit different.  

Reflexive Possessives

We have reflexive third person Possessives, and that is suus, sua, suum. Again, you will see it follows the 2-1-2 adjective ending pattern. But suus mean “his, hers, it’s”, and “their” - it is the adjective used to refer to possessors in the singular and the plural, so you only have to learn one set.

• urbem suam videt

  He sees his own city

suam is a reflexive possessive. It’s meaning reflects back to the nominative of the sentence, which in this case is third person singular “he” or “she”, shown by the -t ending of videt.

urbem is accusative, so suam has to agree with it. “He sees his own city” is a good way to think of this reflexive. If you're not entirely sure about how reflexives work, read my previous article about pronouns. I do explain what reflexives are there, and the concept is the same for reflexive possessives.

 suam has to be accusative, singular, and feminine because urbs, “the city” is a feminine third declension noun.  suus is an adjective, so it has to agree in case number and gender.  That is why  goes with urbem as suam. It doesn’t matter that it could be a “he” seeing the city, suam agrees with urbem rather than the person doing the verb.

• urbem suam vident

  They see their city

As you can see here, all that has changed in the Latin is the verb has gone from “he sees” to “they see”. suus a, um, hasn’t changed its ending. It still agrees with urbem, being accusative feminine singular. However, it is now “their” city. suus can mean “his”, “her” “its” and “their”. You just have the one word for all of the third persons.

 It is still their city, still possessive, but now it's reflecting back to the several people doing the main verb.

3rd Person Non-Reflexives

As well as reflexives that refer back to the person doing the verb, we also have non-reflexive third person possessives. This is when it's talking about someone else, someone who is not doing the verb.

In this case we have to use eius.

Now,  eius is not a 2-1-2 adjective, and its ending doesn’t change. eius is simply the genitive of is ea id, the pronoun that we looked at last week. Notice that it actually uses the distinctive -ius genitive singular ending: it’s not an -us ending at all! It is used for the singular “his, hers, its” for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.

eorum, earum, eorum are used for possessors in the plural.  So for example:

• fratrem earum vocavi

   I called their brother

This earum is a genitive, feminine, plural. It's plural because it is more than one woman who has this brother. He is the brother of multiple women, and therefore it is not reflective because it's not talking about me (the nominative of the sentence shown by the -i ending of the verb). He's not my brother, and it is also not the brother who we are talking about.

Because this is a genitive,  it is just showing possession. It does not have to agree with the noun it's describing. earum does not agree with fratrem.

This is a little bit different to a reflexive third person possessive, because it is a non-reflexive pronoun.

 So just to recap, if the possessor is non-reflexive, that is they are a different person to the one doing the verb, you just use the genitive of is ea id, which makes it very different from a reflexive third person possessive adjective.

So for a singular, you would use eius for masculine, feminine, and neuter, so that means “his” or “her” brother, but for a plural you use eorum if it's multiple men, earum if they are multiple women and eorum for plural neuter nouns.  

Review of Possessives

So let's have a little recap.

First person possessives:

• meus, mea, meum for the singular “my”.

  I may be possessng singular or plural nouns here, so meae sorores cantant - “my sisters are singing” (nominative plural)

• noster, nostra, nostrum “our” is also  able to be singular or plural, depending on what “we” are possessing.

  in nostro domo - “in our house” (ablative singular)

Second person possessives:

• tuus tua tuum for a singular person “your”

  donum tuo patri da! - “give the gift to your father”

• vester, vestra, vestrum, for talking to a group “your”

  senatores, vestrum consilium mihi placet - “Senators, your plan pleases me”

Third reflexive possessives:

• suus, sua, suum, “his”, “her”, “its” and “their”. Used for singular or plural possessors.

All of these above agree with the noun they are describing.

Third person non reflexives:

• eius

• eorum, earum, eorum

These just use the genitive of is ea id, and they do not have to agree with the noun that they are describing  because they are genitive in their own right.

 If any of this has made you a little bit confused, go and reread my pronouns post in the bambasbat archive. That's where I really go over how pronouns work. This post has just specifically focussed on when using possessives without using the genitive pronoun.

The possessive adjective is much more versatile and much more widely used. So it is important to understand  the uses of the possessives, as listed above.

 Make sure you download my free noun endings guide. It will really help you out as you learn these endings because as you can see, lots of these adjectives use the 2-1-2 endings that we are so familiar with. So if you're not confident with them, go and download that noun endings guide to help you learn them more easily.

Any clearer?

 How do you feel about possessive adjectives? Have I just completely confused the situation, or is that a little bit clearer? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

To help you out on your Latin journey, download my 3 Simple Steps to Instantly Improve your Latin Translations here. It's a free guide that has just a few ideas on how you can immediately take your Latin translations from doing okay to being really good.

You can also pop your email in this box and get it sent straight to you, along with all my other free guides.

What are pronouns?

Well, they are used in place of a noun.  If I had a sentence, “the girl sees the boy”, I don't want to then say, “the girl greets the boy” the next sentence along. I would rather say “The girl sees the boy. She greets him”.  

So they're used to avoid repetition, and they can be used in basic sentences as well as to make more complex sentences. So we're going to have a look at them in Latin today. Let's start with the first person.

1st Person Pronouns

In English, this is “I” and “we”. I is singular, and we is plural.

Here is my table for first person pronouns in Latin:

  As you can see,  they change in case and number. If I am in charge, I use ego,  but if I'm in the accusative, if I'm the object of the sentence, I would say me. It's exactly the same as in English.  “You greet me” is the same as  me salutas  in Latin.

Here are some notes:

1. Nominatives are only really used for emphasis.

   That's because in Latin, the verbs tell us who does  the action anyway so I don't need a pronoun as well. But if I want to say “I greet someone”, that's when I use ego, or to highlight that “we know the truth”, that's when I use nos.

2. The genitive pronoun is only really used for partitive genitives (find this post here) and objective genitives, which is when a verb “takes the genitive”.

   That's because there is something called the possessive adjective. We'll get onto those later.  

3. For the ablatives me and nobis,  if they're an ablative of accompaniment, the sentence needs the word cum as well.

   However, it is not cum me or cum nobis. They combine with the word cum and we get mecum or nobiscum.

   You can read my post all about ablatives here for more information on ablatives of accompaniment.

Using First Person Pronouns

Let's have a look at some examples of the first person.

1. ego laeta sum.

   I am happy

Now, as I said,   ego the pronoun is only really used for emphasis. So this means I am happy, as opposed to someone else who maybe is not quite as happy.  

2. Romani nos vicerunt.  

   The Romans defeated us

Now, this could mean “we Romans defeated”, but it doesn't say what we defeated. Therefore I assume nos is accusative rather than nominative, as it's more likely to be “the Romans defeated us”. Remember, nos can be nominative and accusative in the plural first person.

3. puellae nobiscum ambulant.

   The girls are walking with us.

Here the ablative nobis has been combined with cum because it is an ablative of accompaniment.

2nd Person Pronouns

In English this is “you” for both singular and plural. Latin needs different words:

All the same notes apply to this as the 1st person:

• The nominative is used for emphasis.

• The genitive is used for the partitive and the objective genitives

• The ablative of accompaniment combines with cum to make tecum or vobiscum

Now for the second person, you also have the vocative case. It's identical to the nominative form in the table above. We didn't have it for the first person because you can't talk to yourself very easily.  But the second person is definitely used for the vocative. You do something - you, I'm talking to you. So we definitely need vocative in this one for when we directly address people without using their name. This is the only pronoun that actually does have vocative.

Possessive Adjectives

 Now, there's a reason that genitive pronoun is only used for partitive and objective genitives, and that is because we have something called possessive adjectives in Latin.

These are used in place of the genitive pronouns. They are far more common than the genitive pronoun, and they follow the regular 2-1-2 adjective endings so they're actually quite easy to spot, but it does mean there are a lot of them to remember.  

My next post will be all about possessive adjectives, so make sure you’ve subscribed to get that sent straight to your inbox next week

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3rd Person Pronouns

 We are going to leave possessive adjectives for now then, and we're going to move on to third person pronouns. Third person pronouns are he, she, it, and they.

In this case, I have two pronouns in the second sentence. She,  which is referring to the girl, and him referring to the boy. In English this is quite easy to spot because she is feminine, as is “the girl”, and “the boy” is masculine, as is him.  

Let's change that second sentence.

In English it is very easy to spot the difference between the first set of sentences and this one.  He is masculine, so goes with “the boy” and her is feminine, so goes with “the girl”.

 Let's look at a similar sentence in Latin.

Now this is just as easy to see as the English sentence, but it will take a little explaining.

 eum is a third person pronoun. It ends with -um which shows  it is  accusative masculine singular. That tells me that it goes with puerum from the first sentence, as he is masculine singular,  and it also tells me that he is not in charge of the second sentence.

So I still do not have a nominative for my second sentence.  salutat is a third person singular verb.  This tells me that my  nominative is “he, she or it”.  From my first sentence I had “the girl sees the boy”. Now I have “something greets him” because eum is masculine. So this by context means “she greets him”.

Third Person Pronouns

 Here are my third person pronouns:

Often you will hear people call this table “is ea id”. The third person pronoun has become a little bit like an adjective, in that it needs to be able to agree with all nouns. So we need all the cases, all the genders and both singular and plural options.

NB: There is no vocative case, like the first person pronoun table.

 The plural should be easy to learn as these follow the regular 2-1-2 adjective endings,  so that's quite nice. There's not a lot of new things to learn here. It's just to be aware that they exist. In the plural they mean “they”, or they can mean “those people”  or “those things”. Notice also that the neuter follows my rule:

Remember, remember every day, neuter plurals end in -a.  

Gender Difficulties

Now, some of you might be thinking, okay, I get “the girl saw the boy”, that's easy to spot because of the different genders, but what if I have this sentence?

Now who is greeting who in this sentence? It's a little bit confusing.  Because of context we would have to imagine that as the girl saw the woman, therefore the girl also greeted the woman. But we don't know.

It could well mean “the woman greeted the girl”.

Latin is just as ambiguous,  

eam is accusative feminine singular.  And so it could agree with either puella or femina, both being feminine singular nouns.  It all depends who makes most sense to be doing the greeting.  

So it is just as ambiguous as the English. In this case, I would say from context it probably makes more sense that the girl is greeting the woman. We haven't necessarily had a change in nominative, so just keep in mind that you do sometimes have to make a judgment call even with the help of pronouns.

Reflexive Pronouns

 Let's talk about reflexive pronouns. Reflexive pronouns are used to reflect upon the original subject, so I saw myself in the mirror.  

First and second person pronouns can be used reflexively:

• me paro: “I prepare myself”

• vos servatis: “you save yourselves”.

Both of these can be used to talk about the same person who is doing the verb.

However, third person pronouns (is ea id) cannot be used reflexively.

• uxor eam necat: “the wife kills her”

In this sentence, the wife has killed a different woman, someone else, indicated by eam.  That means if we want a third person to be used reflexively,  to do something to themselves, we need a new set of pronouns.

These are the third person reflexives:

Now, the good thing about the third person reflexives is there is no nominative because you've already used the nominative in the original sentence.

 There is only one set of endings for all genders and numbers, so you only have four  extra words to learn for all the third person reflexives. se means himself, herself, itself, and themselves! How versatile!

The ablatives group with cum just as the personal pronouns do. secum means “with him/herself”, and it can also mean “with themselves”.

Look at these pairs of sentences:

1. uxor eam necat: The wife kills her.

2. uxor se necat: The wife kills herself.

The first uses is ea id, the third person pronoun. The wife kills someone else, another woman (as eam is feminine). The second sentence uses the reflexive third person pronoun se. se is an accusative, as she is the object, but it is referring back to the nominative uxor. It is reflecting back to her. It is a reflexive pronoun.  

1. donum ei dat: He gives the gift to him.

2. donum sibi dat: He gives the gift to himself.

The first man gives to someone else, shown by ei in the dative, to someone other than himself.

The second gives to sibi.  This is a reflexive pronoun. It's referring back to whoever is the subject of dat. “Himself”.  Don't forget  sibi could also be feminine - “she gives the gift to herself”.

 Technically, sibi can also be plural: “themselves”. However, dat is a singular verb, so it must be himself or herself to refer back to the nominative.

Review

In first person pronouns: ego and nos “I” and “we”

• They can decline based on the case,  ego in the nominative, me in the accusative all the way down to ablative.

The second person pronouns are tu and vos.

• Remember that in the nominative these are just for emphasis, but they also decline into the different cases with te and vos for the accusative etc.

 Third person pronouns: is ea id.

•  This one exists in all three genders and also both numbers singular and plural, as well as all cases, so that's a big table to learn.

  The plural endings, however, just follow the regular 2-1-2 adjective endings so that should be nice and easy to get your head around.

Third person reflexives:

• se is the accusative for both singular and plural.  

  There's only four cases to learn for that one.  se, sui, sibi, se.  

I am going to do a post on possessive adjectives next time, so make sure you keep an eye out for that as they're a little bit different to genitive pronouns.

Do download that 3 Simple Steps booklet to Instantly Improve your Latin Translations. I think you'll find it will really help you.  

I hope this has been helpful! Let me know what you think of pronouns in the comments. Do you like it when Latin gets personal or do you wish that it wouldn't?

Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

 As we're talking about superlatives. It'll be really helpful if you know your noun endings, especially the first and second declension. The reason for that will become clear. But if you don't already have this, download my free noun endings guide here, or type your email below to get it sent straight to your inbox.

 It'll really help you out to just have this to hand as we go through how superlatives work in Latin.

What are superlatives?

Well, they're a type of adjective  and they are translated in English using:

• very - very happy

• most - most happy

• -est  - happiest

  ---

I’ve forgotten how Adjectives work

If you're not sure about adjectives, here’s a quick recap of how they work in Latin.

They describe a noun, and in Latin they have to agree in case, number and gender with the noun that they're describing.  For example:

• laetus servus - “the happy slave”

 servus is nominative in case, it's singular and it's masculine. laetus therefore also has to be nominative masculine singular to match.

•  laetae puellae  - “of the happy girl”, “to the happy girl” or “the happy girls”

laetae goes with puellae. They match in case, number and gender. Each of these words could be nominative plural,  or it could be genitive singular or dative singular. We're can’t be sure without context, but they do agree.

 These two examples are both from 2-1-2 adjectives.  If you're not sure about these, you can read more about them in this post. They're called 2-1-2 because they follow the second declension endings for masculine nouns, the first detention endings for feminine nouns, and the second detention neuter endings if they're describing neuter nouns.  

So we have 2-1-2 adjectives, but we also have another type.  Ones that look like this:

•  gravis servus - “the serious slave”

 In this case, servus is still nominative, singular, and masculine. So gravis also has to be nominatve, singular, masculine. This doesn't look like they match, but gravis is a 3-3 adjective, meaning it follows the third declension endings (like canis, “dog”).

• gravia bella - “the serious war”

bella is nominative or accusative neuter plural.  So gravia also has to be nominative or accusative neuter plural.  gravia in this case is following the third declension neuter endings.

3-3 adjectives follow third declension endings whether the noun they’re describing is third declension or not. What matters is the gender, not the declension. Again, if you aren’t sure about 3-3 adjectives, you can read a more in depth post about them here.

OK, I get adjectives. Now what are Superlatives?

I've said they are type of adjective, but they're not just  the normal type of adjective. It's not just serious or  happy. It's the most serious or the happiest. That's what a superlative is.

We spot them in Latin  using these  syllables:

• -issim-

• -errim-

• -illim-

They're quite easy to spot because Latin doesn't often have double letters. And these syllables are inserted in the middle of the adjective. So you have your adjective stem, then you have one of these superlative indicators, and then you have your 2-1-2 endings.

• laet- + -issim- + -us/-a/-um

• pulch- + -errim- + -us/-a/-um

• grav- + -issim- + -us/-a/-um

It doesn't matter whether the adjective was originally a 2-1-2 adjective or a 3-3 adjective. All superlatives have 2-1-2 endings, which makes it easier to learn because you just need to know your second declension and your first declension endings for superlatives.  The us, a, um that you are familiar with.

Noun Agreement

The -us, -a, -um endings shown above are just the nominative for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns respectively. But of course, as we have said, they have to agree with the noun in case and number, as well as gender.

 So if a superlative is describing a masculine noun, it declines like servus, using the 2nd declension masculine endings. If it's a feminine noun, its like puella using the 1st declension endings, and for neuter nouns superlatives use the 2nd declension neuter endings, like bellum.

 Again, if you're not sure about these endings, just download my Noun Endings guide. It's completely free and it'll really help because it has all these endings written out in pretty colours!

Superlative Examples

1. laetissimi domini

   The very happy masters

laetissimi has  the -issim- syllables we were looking at above to spot the superlative with, and it also has -i at the end, which matches domini. domini is a masculine plural nominative, and therefore so is laetissimi.  

Note: it could also be a genitive singular phrase: “of the happiest master”, you would have to figure it out from context

2. pulcherrimas puellas

   The most beautiful girls

pulcherrima has that double R syllable, -errim- so it means “the most beautiful”. It ends with -as, showing that it is a feminine accusative plural adjective. It is describing the puellas who are also feminine accusative plural.

3. ferocissimo flumine

   By the fiercest river

This one is a little bit trickier. flumen, fluminis is third declension noun, so it doesn't necessarily look like it matches our 2-1-2 superlative. However, flumine is ablative singular. It is also neuter. ferocissimo  could be either dative or ablative neuter, and we’re going to suggest ablative to go with flumine. It means “by the most fierce river”, or “by the very ferocious river”.

There are lots of different ways to translate a superlative. Just pick whichever one sounds most natural.

 Remember that ferocissimo uses the second declension neuter endings, even though flumen is third declension. Declension doesn't matter. What  matters is the gender of the noun it is describing, in this case neuter. 

4. audacissimus nauta

   “The boldest sailor”

Here is another that shows how important it is to know genders. nauta is a first declension noun, so it declines just like puella. However, it is masculine. This means the adjectives (and superlatives) that describe it have to also follow masculine endings like servus. In this example, nauta is nominative and singular, so audacissimus also has to be nominative singular.

I’ll say it again:

Irregular Latin Superlatives

So that's how regular superlatives work. But there are a few, just like in English, that don't follow this pattern.  Let's have a look at some of them now.

• bonus a, um: good

• optimus, a, um: best

The superlative of “good” is “best”, and optimus still uses the 2-1-2 endings, but the actual word itself has changed. It's also irregular in English, so it hopefully isn’t too daunting.

• malus, a, um: bad

• pessimus, a, um: worst

Again, the superlative is irregular in English as well (worst)  but pessimus still uses the 2-1-2 endings that we expect.

• magnus, a, um: big 

• maximus, a, um: biggest

This one is regular in English, but irregular in Latin.

• parvus, a, um: small

• minimus, a, um: smallest

Again, it has a completely different stem to the normal adjective, but it still has the 2-1-2 endings.

These irregular superlatives can't be noticed with the double letters we saw before, -errim-, -illim-, and -issim-. So you just have to learn these ones.

quam + Superlative

Superlatives can also be used with a very interesting word. quam can do a lot of different things in Latin. It pulls a lot of weight.

If it's with a superlative, it has a very specific meaning: “as … as possible”

• quam pucherrimus: “as beautiful as possible”.

For example, puer quam pulcherrimus erat - “the boy was as beautiful as possible”. pulcherrimus is masculine nominative, and so still matches the puer.

So be aware if you see quam and any superlative, it means “as something as possible”: as fast as possible,  as cold as possible, whatever the superlative may be.

Superlatives are the best

 So now I hope you see why superlatives are the best Latin adjective. That's my Latin joke! You translate superlatives using most or est or very!

 I know. I'm hilarious.

(Please don’t unsubscribe because of my terrible humour)

 And that's all there is to Latin superlatives! I hope it's been useful! Do grab my noun endings guide from the link, it'll help you out as you learn your 2-1-2 endings.

Thanks for joining me today, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

She is a Senior Lecturer of Literary Culture and Heritage, and has previously worked at the University of Manchester, Radboud University in  Nijmegen, and Newcastle University.

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If you're not sure about perfect verbs as a whole, you can find my post about perfect tense verbs in the bambasbat archive, and make sure you download my free Latin Verbs complete reference guide by adding your email here.

Irregular Perfects

So there are two main types of irregular verbs in Latin.

1. The Rogue Perfects, the ones that go completely off-piste with their perfect tense

2. Verbs that have varied endings to what you'd expect.

There is some crossover between these groups, for example fero is in both. Don’t worry about this, we’ll go through them.

Rogue perfects

These include:

• dedi which comes from do “I give”

• egi, from ago “I drive, I act”

• tuli from fero “I bring, I carry”

These are the ones that are really irregular from their present stem. But don't stress, because English has loads of irregular verbs:

These are all examples of irregular perfect in English, so it's not weird that Latin does this. In fact, this is partially where English gets it from. So Latin is no different to any other language in this regard.

Spotting Irregular Perfects

Look at the third principle part. I know I harp on about this in every one of my posts about verbs, but your principle parts are so important to learn. In your dictionary you will get:

• servo, servare, servavi, servatus

NB: You might not get that fourth principle part, hopefully you do in a good dictionary, but an earlier dictionary aimed at a lower level of Latin might just have the first three.

Hopefully it does have that third principle part, servavi, because that is your perfect stem. That is how your perfect is formed, and it tells you how it changes.

So servo is very regular. It does what you expect. It has its present stem and it has its perfect stem, which is quite similar, but might have a -v- added.

In terms of irregular perfect, textbooks are your friends. Irregular verbs still have principle parts. They are still shown in your dictionaries in the same way. So you might have:

• fero, ferre, tuli, latus

This is my favourite verb in Latin because it is just so wild! It looks so different in the perfect to what it looks like in the present. You have to make it your best friend, otherwise you'll forget about it.

tuli is the perfect stem. It's in the same place as in the principle parts for regular Perfect verbs, and it means “to bring” or “to carry”.

• eo, ire, ivi (ii), itum

This means “to go”. eo “I go”, ire “to go”. ivi is the perfect tense. “I went”. That's really irregular in English too. The thing with ivi is that it can also just be ii - without the -v- perfect signifier. I'll come to that later.

• sum, esse, fui, futurus

That's the verb “to be”. The verb “to be” is irregular in almost all languages because it's used so much. And Latin's no different. sum means “I am”, fui “I was”.

The bold words in all these examples above are your perfect first person ending. Learn them. Make sure you know them. Make sure they don't surprise you when you see them in a passage.

Perfects with Varied Endings

Then there are those that have varied endings, so they change the pattern that we have learnt so far.

• fero

• malo

• sum

• volo

These are the verbs you need to know more naturally, as they can do unusual things in some person endings.

volo velle volui

This verb means “I want”. Its present tense changes quite a lot. It does still have the endings you expect, but they come in a slightly different way.

• Present: volo, vis, vult, volumus, vultis, volunt.

The stem itself changes in some forms, so volo is one you need to learn.

Luckily, after that, it stays quite regular:

• Imperfect: volebam volebas volebat volebamus volebatis volebant

That's what you expect for “I was wanting” etc. The same is true for the future:

• Future: volam voles volet volemus voletis volent.

It goes like a third or fourth conjugation verb in the future with the A and the E.

The perfect follows the usual pattern. It uses the third principle part, volui I wanted and then follows the i isti it imus istis erunt. So even though it's technically irregular, it still follows the patterns you expect. You just have to be able to use your logical skills and use them in a slightly different way.

• Perfect: volui, voluisti, voluit, voluimus, voluistis, voluit

As long as you know your principle parts, you should be fine.

Irregular Verbs in Compounds

volo also has some compound verbs. So for example, nolo means “I do not want”, and malo means “I prefer”, which has a similar meaning. These are based on the stem of volo.

The only slightly weird thing is that nolo has non vult in the present tense, “he does not want”, and non vis “you (s) do not want”. This is just an expansion of the negative you have for the other options (nolo = non volo). Other than that, it's exactly as you would expect.

fero, ferre, tuli, latus

I told you before, this is my favourite verb. It’s highly irregular in the stem changes, but also has unusual endings.

• Present: fero, fers, fert, ferimus, fertis, ferunt

It just sounds ridiculous and I love it. This is the present tense. It again has the present endings that you expect, -o, -s, -t, -mus, -tis -nt, but it doesn't have the thematic vowel you expect in each person. The second person singular (fers), second person plural (fertis) and the third person singular (fert) have the person ending directly following the stem - no vowel is added.

They're not very common to see in the present tense, but don't forget them because they can come up in speech or legal cases. So they are important, but they're not super common.

The imperfect is much more common, but it's also very regular. It's exactly what you would expect from an imperfect tense.

• Imperfect: ferebam, ferebas, ferebat, ferebamus, ferebatis, ferebant

The same for the future. It has the changed vowels of -a- and -e-, like a third or fourth conjugation verb:

• Future: feram, feres, feret, feremus, ferets, ferent

Then the third principle part comes into play for the perfect:

• Perfect: tuli, tulisti, tulit, tulimus, tulistis, tulerunt.

So although the stem changes, it's one of the rogue perfects that goes completely wild from the present stem, the endings are still regular. -i -isti -it -imus -istis -erunt. So although the present stem has weird endings, you don't have the thematic vowel, the perfect does exactly what you would expect.

Compounds of fero

fero means “I bring/carry/bear” and it has lots of compounds. For example:

• aufero, auferre, abstuli, ablatus. “To take away, to carry off”

  Although we have the prefix au- or abs-, it does exactly the same thing. It follows these patterns just with that prefix added on.

• offero, offerre, obtuli, oblatus. “To offer, to present”

• refero, referre, rettuli, relatus. “To bring back, to return”

So you might see compound verbs, and you have to be able to remember that they do the same thing in the third and fourth principle parts.

eo, ire, ivi, (ii), itus.

I told you I'd come back to this one. This means “I go”.

• Present: eo, is, it, imus, itis, eunt

  This is nice and simple, does what you'd expect.

• Imperfect: ibam ibas ibat, ibamus, ibatis, ibant

  The first letter has changed from the present stem, the eo, but like the rest of the present table, it just uses an i- as its first letter.

• Future: ibo, ibis, ibit, ibimus, ibitis, ibunt

  It uses the i- and then uses the common -bo, bis, bit endings.

• Perfect: you'll see from the third principle parts (parts, plural!), it can be ivi which is kind of what you'd expect. It has i- for the stem, the -V-, which is the perfect signifier, and then the -i ending. But you don't always have to have the V. Some writers, especially later on syncopate [shorten] the verbs. So they just have ii meaning “he has gone, he went”.

  ivi ivisti ivit ivimus ivistis iverunt /OR/ ii iisti iit imus istis ierunt.

Compounds of eo

• exeo, exire, exivi, exitus: “I go from”

• ineo, inire, inivi, initus: “I go into” and “I return”

• redeo, redire, redivi, reditus: “I go back”.

Again these all follow the same pattern as eo. So once you've learned one, you effectively have learned all the ones that are compounded from eo.

sum, esse, fui, futurus

Now sum, “to be” is highly irregular. I've touched on it in this post a little bit, but if you want to have a really in-depth version, I have a whole post on it, just on its own.

You can find it here in the bambasbat archive.

Irregular but not Irrational

I hope this has been helpful for irregular Latin perfect verbs! If you are struggling with any Latin verbs, subscribe to receive my free Complete Verbs Reference Guide. It has all the endings for all tenses voices and moods of Latin verbs, so it's super useful just to have to hand as you're starting to do translations.

Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

What are PPPs in Latin?

The Perfect Passive Participles are the fourth principle part that comes up in your Latin dictionaries. If you look at a verb, you should see this:

porto, portare, portavi, portatus

portatus is your fourth principle part, the perfect passive participle.

How are Perfect Passive Participles used?

PPPs can be used in 3 main ways:

1. As verbal adjectives in their own right.

2. Part of ablative absolutes

3. Forming passive verbs

So let's start with verbal adjectives. 

This is just a fancy word for a normal participle. A participle is formed from a verb and it declines like an adjective. Hence the fancy term verbal adjective.

This means portatus at, um is formed from the verb porto. That's where the “verbal” bit comes from, and it also declines like an adjective, which is where the -us, -a, -um endings come from.

Why do we have several different endings?

Why is it not just portatus? That’s because it declines like an adjective. Adjectives (and participles) have to agree with the noun that they’re describing in case number and gender.

• Case changes depending on the role the noun is playing. If it is in charge, the noun will be nominative and so will the participle. If it’s an indirect object, the noun would be dative, and so the participle would also have to be in the dative case.

• Number is whether the noun is singular or plural. If it is plural, the participle also has to use a plural ending to match it.

• Gender is why we have -us -a -um, relating to masculine, feminine and neuter nouns respectively.

In a dictionary, you will only see the nominative singular endings as with portatus, a, um. However, remember these 3 options can also be every case, and singular or plural.

Here's an example:

• feminae auditae discesserunt

  “The women who had been listened to left”

auditae is the verbal adjective. It describes the women. It's verbal because it comes from the verb audio “I hear”, but it changes just like a normal adjective. It's describing these women.

Because it's a PPP, the mood is passive and it's in the perfect tense, so these women are not in charge of the action. You have to keep the passive sense when translating. So “the women who had been listened to [implied “by other people”] they then left”. It's describing the women, it's just giving us more information.

That's quite a clunky translation of the perfect passive participle, so I could instead say “the women having been heard left” or “the women after they were heard left” or even “the listened to women left”.

Pick whichever translation you like the most, they’re all correct and give a little more fluency to your sentence. You've got the passive sense in all of them. The women are not doing anything actively.

That’s how PPPs are used as verbal adjectives on their own.

Ablative Absolutes

Another use of a PPP is an ablative absolute. I did a whole post on ablative absolutes which you can read here. Basically an ablative absolute is a noun plus a participle, where both the noun and the participle are ablative and they're grammatically separate from the whole of the rest of the sentence. The ablative absolute doesn't affect anything else, you can take it out and the rest of the sentence makes sense.

You translate ablative absolutes as with “X having been Y-ed”. This is a super clunky translation, but it helps to keep the perfect passive sense of the ablative absolute. Let me show you what I mean.

• urbe deleta milites dormiverunt

  “With the city having been destroyed, the soldiers slept”

urbe deleta is the ablative absolute. On its own, milites dormiverunt is a complete sentence, “the soldiers slept”. Grammatically that is a full sentence. urbe deleta can be taken out of that. That's what I mean when I say the ablative absolute is grammatically separate.

“With the city having been destroyed” is quite a clunky translation. It gets the traditional “with X having been Y-ed” translation down, which is really good. But once you understand the literal translation of “with the city having been destroyed”, we can be a bit more fluent. Here are some more options for translating this ablative absolute:

• urbe deleta

  “When the city had been destroyed”

  “After the city was destroyed”

  “With the city destroyed”

All of those are perfect translations, and you'd get the marks for all. I personally like to start with the clunky translation, to make sure I remember it’s a passive, and then if I feel like it could do with a more fluency it can be changed to whichever of the above I prefer.

Passive Verbs

There are three tenses of passive verbs that use a PPP in their formation.

1. perfect passives

2. pluperfect passives

3. future perfect passives.

NB: If you need any help with passive verbs, read my previous post about passive verbs.

The three tenses above are all formed from the fourth principle part, the PPP followed by esse in various tenses.

1. The perfect passive of porto is portatus sum: “I have been carried”.

   That is the fourth principle part (portatus), plus the present tense of the verb “to be”. In this example it’s sum, showing its a 1st person singular “I”, but it could be es, est, sumus etc depending on who is doing the verb.

2. The pluperfect passive - portatus eram: “I had been carried”.

   This tense uses the PPP portatus again, plus the imperfect tense of the verb “to be”. Again, the eram shows its a 1st person singular and could change to eras, or erat etc to change the person.

3. The future perfect passive - portatus ero: “I will have been carried”.

   It uses the fourth principle part portatus plus the future tense of the verb “to be”.

Of course, as mentioned above, the PPP portatus will change based on the number and gender of the thing being described. So if it was me speaking, they would be portata sum, portata eram, portata ero because I am a woman. I need the feminine ending. If the sentence was “we have been carried”, it would have to use portati sumus if it was a group with males and females, or portatae sumus, if it was just females.

So these 3 passive tenses all use the fourth principle part, the PPP, plus a variation of tense on the verb “to be”.

Have I convinced you?

Perfect passive participles are so interesting, and are very useful. It's the fourth principle part in your dictionary, and it can be used for various things. I think they're super cool, and they make your translation so much more interesting! Clearly I'm a huge fan of the PPP.

Verbal adjectives, ablative absolutes and passive verbs. All are very important in more advanced Latin passages. The ablative absolutes do have a special place in my heart because I think they're excellent and the literal translation is nonsense. “With X, having been Y-ed”, absolutely fantastic. Peak Latin.

Let me know what you think in the comments. If you think I'm crazy for loving PPPs or if you agree that these are an excellent piece of Latin grammar!

If you're struggling with learning any of the Latin verbs endings, do download my complete reference guide to Latin verbs. When you do that, you'll also get my nouns reference guide, which will help with the verbal adjectives, and remembering the 2-1-2 endings of the PPP.

Let me know your opinions on PPPs in the comments. I hope this has been useful. Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!

I love passive verbs, and I'm going to tell you why today.

What is a Passive Verb? 

To show what a passive verb is, let’s look at these two sentences:

• The king saw the messenger.

• The messenger was seen by the king.

These sentences effectively mean the same thing, but grammatically they are different.

In the first, the king is the nominative. He's in charge of the verb. The messenger is the accusative.

In the second sentence however, the messenger has become the nominative. The messenger is the grammatical subject of that sentence. Now, the king is in the ablative case - “by the king”. He's an ablative of agent. He's the one doing the passive verb.

These differences are because the sentences use different voices of verb. In the first sentence, “saw” is an active verb. In the second, “was seen” is a passive verb.

OK, what about Passives in Latin?

Here are the same sentences, but in Latin:

• rex nuntium vidit.

• nuntius a rege visus est.

In the first, rex is the nominative and nuntium is the accusative. This sentence is in the active voice: vidit is an active verb. “The king saw the messenger”.

In the second, nuntius has become the nominative. a rege is ablative - “by the king”, an ablative of agent. And for the verb, visus est is passive. “The messenger was seen by the king.”

What does this mean?

For active verbs, the subject does the action, but for passive verbs, the subject actually has the action done to them, they are a passive figure in the sentence. This is different to how we've learnt verbs work.

• Active verbs: the nominative does the action and this accusative receives the action.

• Passive verbs: the nominative is the one receiving the action.

This can sound a little bit complicated, but once you get your head around it, it actually becomes really simple, and I'm sure you'll love passive verbs just as much as I do!

Forming Passive Verbs in Latin

We actually have two different ways to form passive verbs, depending on which tense we need. There are ones that are formed with the present stem, and there are ones that are formed from the perfect passive participle.

Using the Present Stem

The 3 tenses that use the present stem are:

1. the present

2. the imperfect passive

3. the future passive

They all use the first principle part in your dictionaries.

1. captivi in foro necantur. “The prisoners are being killed in the forum”.

   This verb, necantur, is happening now. It's present tense, and it is also passive. It's a present passive: “are being killed”. -ntur is my third person, plural, ending for passive verbs.

   The prisoners are the nominative of that sentence. They are receiving the action. I know it's a nominative plural, captivi.

2. rex gladiis pugnabatur. “The king was being attacked with swords”.

   This is an imperfect passive. It's not happening now, it was happening in the past. -batur tells me it's imperfect (with the -ba- imperfect signifier we expect) and it's a third person singular ending.

   The king is the grammatical nominative, he “was being attacked”.

3. nos Romani numquam vincemur. “We Romans never will be defeated”.

   This is the future passive. vincemur is in the passive voice and the future tense.

   It uses the present stem with the future signifier and -mur, which is the passive ending for the first person plural.

So these all use the present stem: present, imperfect, and future passives.

Passive Endings

All tenses use the present stem use the same person endings:

This set of endings is a really good one to chant. It sounds really good out loud. These are added to the three tenses of verbs we just saw.

Present Passive Verbs:

• first principle part + passive endings

• portar: “I am being carried”

  portaris: “you are being carried”

  portatur: “he is being carried”

  portamur: “we are being carried”

  portamini: “you are being carried”

  portantur: “they are being carried”

Imperfect Passive Verbs

• first principle part + -ba- + passive endings

• portabar: “I was being carried”

  portabaris: “You were being carried”

  … etc

Future Passive Verbs

The future is a little bit more complicated because you have two different ways to form the future, depending on conjugation. But again, you just use the present stem plus the future signifier and those passive  endings. 

• first principle part + future signifier + passive endings

• portabor: “I will be carried”

  portaberis: “You will be carried”

  portabitur: “he will be carried”

  … etc

Or

• vincar: “I will be defeated”

  vinceris: “you will be defeated”

  vincetur: “he will be defeated”

  … etc

If you're not sure about the different futures, read this post about future verbs.

Using the Perfect Stem

The tenses that use the perfect stem are:

1. the perfect

2. the pluperfect

3. the future perfect passives

These tenses are formed using the fourth principle part in your dictionaries, the Perfect Passive Participle, and different forms of the verb esse. If you need a quick recap on this verb, head to this post.

1. puella a milite servata est. “The girl has been saved by the soldier”.

   servata est is a perfect passive verb. It uses the fourth principle part, servata and then the present tense of the verb “to be” est. These two words together become a perfect passive verb.

   It has to be servata by the way, because I'm talking about the girl, she's the nominative and the ending has to therefore be feminine.

2. heri in taberna visi eratis. “You had been seen yesterday in the shop”.

   visi eratis is a pluperfect passive verb. This is using the fourth principle part, the PPP along with the imperfect tense of the verb “to be”, eratis.

   In this case, I'm talking to more than one person, visi eratis, “you plural had been seen”. The ending of the PPP changes to reflect this plural subject.

3. tribus diebus feminae inventae erint. “The women will have been found within three days.”

   This inventae erint is a future perfect. At some point in the future, they will have already been found - a completed action in the future.

   This uses the PPP, which is feminine plural to agree with the women, and it uses the future of the verb to be erint - the third person plural.

These are all using the perfect stem, or more correctly, the fourth principle part, which is the perfect passive participle. So these passive verbs that use the perfect stem are formed using the PPP plus the verb to be in various tenses.

Perfect Passive Verbs

• PPP + esse (present tense)

• portatus sum. “I have been carried”.

  portatus es. “You have been carried”

  portatus est. “He has been carried”

  portati sumus. “We have been carried”

  portati estis. “You have been carried”

  portati sunt. “They have been carried”

NB: 1) Remember that the PPP changes in number and gender to agree with the noun it is describing. 2) It will only be in the nominative case when used to create a verb.

Pluperfect Passive Verbs

• PPP + esse (imperfect tense)

• portatus eram. “I had been carried”

  portatus eras. “You had been carried”

  … etc

Future Perfect Passive Verbs

• PPP + esse (future tense)

• portatus ero. “I will have been carried”

  portatus eris. “You will have been carried”

  … etc

PPPs Agree

Now actually, all of the Perfect stem examples I’ve written out above are slightly grammatically incorrect. This is because I am a woman and, as I mentioned in the NB, the PPP should agree in number and gender with the subject.

So if I'm saying all those verbs, it should be portata sum, portata eram, portata ero etc, because I am feminine, so I should use the feminine endings.

If it was talking about a man, portatus would be correct. If it was about a gift, it would be portatum. Latin has 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter. So just something to look out for.

They can also be plural. So portati for many men, portatae for many women, and portata for many gifts.

Don’t be Passive about Passive Verbs

So just little a recap:

• Active verbs: the nominative does the action. The king sees the messenger.

• Passive verbs: the nominative receives the action. The messenger is seen by the king.

And that's all there is to passive verbs. If you're not sure about any of these endings, you can download my complete reference guide to Latin verbs here. It's got all of them written out in lovely tables, and it'll really help you when you're trying to learn these endings.

Let me know what you think of passive verbs in the comments! Do you love them as much as I do or are they the bane of your life?

Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!

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If you are not sure about any of the noun endings, you can download my free noun endings guide here. It's got all the endings for the first, second, and third declension nouns, and it's very useful to have to hand as you're doing exercises or translations.

What is the Ablative Case?

We often translate an ablative by using one of these words: by, with, from, or in. Keep that in mind when you're talking about the ablative. By, with, from, in.

If you see a word in the ablative case, you should be thinking this little phrase. Make it into a mantra to remember, and say it to yourself when you see ablatives.

This is helpful because for the most part, one of these words will be what you need to add to most nouns in the ablative case to get a good English translation.

Main Uses of the Ablative

The ablative does several things. It's used for circumstances, it's used for separation, and it's used for location. Each of these has various uses within them, so I'm going to go through each of these types, and use examples to explain what they mean.

Let’s get started.

1. Ablative of Circumstance

The ablative of circumstance breaks down into three uses.

• ablative of accompaniment

• ablative of means, which we also call the ablative of instrument, or the instrumental ablative

• ablative of manner.

  ---

i) Accompaniment is for when you are with someone, it literally does what it says on the tin.

• “The girl was walking with the boy”

  puella cum puero ambulabat

puero is in the ablative, as he is the one accompanying the girl. This type of Circumstance is often found with the Latin word cum which means “with”, which can make spotting the ablative a lot easier.

ii) Means or instrument - this is used to talk about how someone does something, the means with which they have completed an action.

• “The king was killed with poison”

  rex veneno necatus est

veneno is ablative, “with poison”. It is the instrument with which an action has been completed.

iii) Circumstance can mean the emotions with which something is done, or the manner in which it is happening.

• “We heard the news with fear”

  nuntium terrore audivimus

terrore here is in the ablative case - “with fear” or “in fear”. I could also have used “with joy”, gaudio.

2. Ablative of Separation

Again this has three common uses:

• place from which

• ablative of agent

• ablative of general separation

  ---

i) ablative of place from which. This is a location from which something's happening, usually where you're leaving from  or sailing from. 

• “You are fleeing from the island”

  ab insula fugitis

ab means “away from”, and insula means “the island”. Now, that is a first declension noun, so this is ablative. Place from which could be from the house, from the city, from the forum. Any place from which something is happening, or involves a movement away from.

ii) agent is also a part of separation. This is the person completing an action when you have a passive verb. With passive verbs, the grammatical nominative has something done to them by this person.

• “The king was killed by his wife”

  rex ab uxore necatus est

She's the agent in this, and so she is in the ablative, ab uxore is the ablative of agent. This is always found with a or ab (if the following word begins with a vowel).

iii) separation itself, which is where you physically separate two things.

• “We saved you from the river”

  te flumine servavimus

In this example, we have physically removed you from the river. flumine is the ablative of separation, “from the river”.

3. Ablative of Location

The last of the three main types of ablative are ablatives of location, and unsurprisingly these are to do with placing something in a place or time:

• the place where something is happening,

• the time when something happened,

• and the time within which something happened.

  ---

i) Place Where is a physical location

• The master sat in the garden”

  dominus in horto sedit

horto is the ablative of place where. This requires the preposition in, which leads me to an important point: there's a very important difference between in + ablative and in + accusative in Latin.

in + ablative is the place where something is happening; a physical location, as in the example above.

in + accusative shows movement towards. So if you wanted to say “the master walked into the garden”, you would have to use in hortum.

ii) Time When is used to explain a specific moment when an event happens.

• “They arrived at first light”

  prima luce advenerunt

In this case, prima agrees with luce as they are both in the ablative: “at first light”.

iii) This is different from Time Within Which:

• “I will leave within 10 days”

  diebus decem discedam

diebus is the ablative, “within X number of days”.

You can often tell the difference between Time Within Which and Time When, because of the type of quantifier used. Time Within Which will always use normal numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. “I will leave within four hours”. “I will leave within six days”.

However, Time When will be a specific period, so at the first hour, or by the seventh day. Time When uses ordinal numbers (where you have an order of things - first, second, third etc).

In my example above, decem, 10, is just a normal number, a cardinal number. It's not the 10th day, it's just within 10 days. diebus is days, and that's in the ablative. decem doesn't change because it's indeclinable, but it goes with days.

Other uses

There are a couple of other fairly common uses of the ablative.

i) Cause: this is a bit like the ablative of manner we talked about in Circumstance.

• “to burn with desire” ardere cupidine.

• “to weep for joy” lacrimare gaudio.

ii) Comparison:

• “the boys are happier than the girls” pueri sunt laetior puellis

In previous comparative posts, I may have ignored this form of comparative, as more often you see pueri sunt laetiores quam puellae - using the word quam with another nominative (puellae). If I don't have quam, then I have to use the ablative case. It's an ablative of comparison. It means I can get rid of the word quam and just put the noun that's being compared in the ablative.

If you want to know more about comparatives, you can read my post on comparative adjectives here, and you can find all my previous posts here in the bambasbat archive.

The Ablative Case? Completed it mate.

So these are my three most important types of ablative.

1. Circumstance

2. Separation

3. Location

Each of those has different uses, but on the whole, it can be described using these four words: by, with, from, in. Cycle through those in your head when you see an ablative noun, and you'll probably get the right answer!

Make sure you've downloaded my free noun endings guide! It'll really help you out.

Let me know what you think of the ablative case! People always think the ablative is the most complicated of the noun cases, but I actually think once you get your head around all the uses, and those four words (by, with, from, in) it's really quite simple.

I hope this has been helpful. Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!

The Perfect is one of Latin's past tenses, and today we're going to have a look at how to recognise and translate the perfect tense.

Need help with verbs?

If you're struggling with any of your Latin tenses, download my free Latin Verbs Booklet here. It's a complete reference guide to all verb endings. You might not need all of it, you might only need the first page, but go and download it. It's absolutely free, and it's really helpful for learning those endings.

What’s the difference between Present and Perfect?

Look at these two sentences:

• I greet the girl

• I greeted the girl

They're very similar but there is a key difference. The first one is present tense and the second one is perfect tense. In English, we often express this by adding -ed on the end of the verb. Now look at them in Latin:

• puellam saluto

• puellam salutavi

In the first one, the present verb ends with an -o. The second one ends with -i. This is really key. First person singular verbs end with -i in the perfect.

Here is the second person singular:

• in foro ambulas: “you walk in the forum”

• in foro ambulavisti: “you walked in the forum”

Again, the difference is in the verb. The first is present tense, ambulas, and the second is perfect, ambulavisti. This is a very big difference in endings. We have -s in the present, but -isti in the perfect tense.

The third person singular is very similar in present and perfect.

• regem laudat: “he praises the king”

• regem laudavit: “he praised the king”

The present ends with -t (lauda- is the present stem) and the perfect ends with -it.

Something has changed

There is a big change in each of these between present and perfect. Of course the endings have changed, -i, -isti, -it are the singular perfect endings, rather than the -o, -s, -t of the present. But another key part of the perfect is not just the endings, but how the stem itself changes.

The Perfect Stem

You'll notice that the three perfect verbs we have seen so far seem to have a -V- added to the present stem before the perfect endings. In fact, this is a completely different part of the verb.

So it's not saluti, it's salutavi. Instead of ambulisti, it's ambulavisti, and laudit becomes laudavit.

This is because the perfect tense is formed using the perfect stem and the perfect person endings.

Let's have a look at saluto. In your dictionary, you'll see it like this:

You might also have a fourth, which is salutatus but we’ll ignore that for now. salutavi is the Perfect stem. It's what's called the third principle part, and it's really essential for when you are learning your perfect verbs. This is because it shows you immediately how the verb is going to change in the perfect tense and in other tenses that use the perfect to form the verb.

For salutavi, the perfect stem is salutav-, and the -i at the end is the person ending.

ambulo is the same: ambulo, ambulare, ambulavi. ambulav- is the perfect stem, and the perfect ending is -i. This person ending just changes based on who is doing the verb. The perfect stem does not change.

laudo, laudare, laudavi. Again, laudav- is the perfect stem, and the -i at the end shows who is doing the verb, in this case the first person singular.

Plural Perfect Endings

So far we just looked at the singular person endings. But what if I want to say “we did something” or “they did something”. I need plural endings.

Let's take ambulo as an example.

• ambulavi: I walked

• ambulavisti: you (s) walked

• ambulavit: he/she walked

• ambulavimus: we walked

• ambulavistis: you (plr) walked

• ambulaverunt: they walked

Each time, the perfect stem stays the same (ambulav-) and all we do is change the ending. -i, -isti, -it, -imus, -istis, -erunt. Get used to saying that because they're really, really important.

“I don’t need to learn the principle parts”

You might be thinking this. You will see the perfect ending looks similar to the present ending, and you might be wondering why this is so important to learn.

However, so far we have only looked at extremely regular verbs in the first conjugation. -are verbs (like saluto, ambulo and laudo) follow the present stem closely.

But Latin is just like English: sometimes (lots of times actually) the nice, neat rules don’t apply. Keep reading and we will look at some more tricky ones.

Changeable verbs

We looked at regular verbs. Now we're going to have a look at some changeable verbs. They are still formed with the perfect stem and the perfect endings. However, their perfect stem might look a little bit different.

• video, videre, vidi

  “I see”, “to see”, “I saw”

In this case, the perfect stem is not simply the present stem with a -v- added. The whole stem itself is slightly different. This actually is similar to English. We don’t use “seed” as the past tense, the stem changes to “saw”.

• conspicio, conspicere, conspexi

  “I catch sight of”, “to catch sight of”, “I caught sight of”

The stem here has changed from conspici- in the present to conspex- in the perfect.

• do, dare, dedi

  “I give”, “to give”, “I gave”

This one is very different, but you can see that it still has the perfect endings. dedi, dedisti, dedit, dedimus, dedistis, dederunt. The endings are just added to that perfect stem.

NB: It doesn’t completely track that changeable stems in Latin correspond to the changeable verbs in English when translated. dormio, dormire, dormivi is regular in Latin, but “sleep” goes to “slept” in English. However, the examples are helpful to bear in mind!

• in via sedemus: “we sit in the street”

• in via sedimus: “we sat in the street”

I have two different tenses of this sentence. It's a very slight difference. The first one has sedemus is with the present stem sede-. However, the second one sedimus is with the perfect stem sed-, with the perfect first person plural ending -imus. The difference can be very, very slight sometimes, and you have to be careful.

The super important thing, therefore, when learning perfect verbs is the third principle part of your verbs. If you look in your dictionary, it will tell you how that verb changes in the perfect tense. Get used to looking at those third principle parts. They're really important when learning vocabulary.

Perfect Tense Sentences

Let's have a look at these examples. If you want to have a go at them on your own, use the vocab list below to help, and then keep reading to get the answers and walkthrough.

1. pueri puellam vocaverunt

2. mercatores vidimus

3. miles urbem spexit

4. donum deae dedistis

Walkthrough and translation

Answers here, only keep reading when ready!

1. pueri puellam vocaverunt.

   I'm going to look at the verb first because it tells me the most about the sentence, so at the end of my sentence, vocaverunt is my verb. It comes from voco, which is at the bottom of my list, voco vocare vocavi. If I take vocav-, that's my perfect stem, and -erunt is the “they” form of the verb. So I know this means “they called” in the perfect tense.

   Because my verb is third plural, I now look to see if there is a plural nominative. pueri fits, “the boys called”.

   puellam, “the girl” is accusative, so she is the one receiving the action

   “The boys called the girl”

2. mercatores vidimus.

   mercatores could be nominative or accusative plural, so I'm going to ignore it for now and have a look at the verb.

   vidimus is my verb, and it comes from video, which I haven't written on my vocab list because we had it just above. video is “I see”, but vidimus is formed using the perfect stem vidi. That tells me it's “we saw” in the perfect tense.

   Now back to mercatores. It is a plural noun, and it could be nominative: “we merchants saw”, but I'm not being told what we saw. So instead, I am going to use logic, and I'm going to assume it is accusative, as this makes more sense in English.

   “We saw the merchants”

3. miles urbem spexit.

   spexit is the verb. It comes from specio which is in my vocablist: specio, specere, spexi. So I know this is a perfect verb because it's got the -X- in it, spexit. I also know that it is the “he/she/it” ending. So “he or she, or it saw”

   miles is a nominative singular and it means “the soldier”. So that fits with spexit as a singular nominative. So the soldier saw the urbem, the city, an accusative noun.

   “The soldier saw the city”

4. donum deae dedistis.

   This one's a little bit trickier, so let's look at the verb first. dedistis comes from do dare dedi, which is the third word on my vocab list. do means “I give”. dedi is the perfect stem, so dedistis means “you plural gave”.

   Now deae I could be nominative plural, which would mean “you goddesses gave”. Let's see if that makes sense. You goddesses gave what? donum, “the gift”.

   Now that could make sense, however, we're not often going to be speaking to goddesses. So what else could it mean?
   It could mean dedistis “you gave” donum “the gift”, and deae could be dative singular. “To the goddess”. That makes much more sense to me. Hopefully it'll be clear from context in the passage you're doing, whether it's you goddesses that we're talking to, or whether it's a dative singular. Because it's following the verb give I'm going to assume it's dative.

   “You (plr) gave the gift to the goddess”

Picked up the Perfect

And that's all there is to the regular perfect verbs! If you haven’t already, subscribe to get my post about irregular perfect verbs which will be coming in the near future.

Subscribe now

Make sure you download my free reference guide to Latin verbs. It's really helpful just to give you the tables of the ending so you can have it to hand while you're having a look at some translations!

I hope this has been useful. Let me know what you think in the comments, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!

In my previous post I talked about Tacitus' life and why he's so important. You can find that post in the archive but I’ll just recap quickly.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus

He was an orator, a public speaker - hilarious, because his name Tacitus means “the quiet one”. He was a politician, and he was a fantastic historian, and that is why we know about him today: because of his writings.

Tacitus’ Writings

We have five of his works left. We have three Monographs, the Histories, and we have the Annals. If you want to know a bit about each of these, you can read about them more in my previous post.

The Annals are what we're going to look at today.

Tacitus’ Annals

It was published around AD 117 and it was originally called ab excessu divi Augsuti, which means “from the departure of the Divine Augustus”. So it begins after the death of Augustus in AD 14 and tells the history of Rome by year (annus = “year”, hence the name Annals). It goes all the way up to AD 68, and it's sort of a prequel to his work that he had earlier published called Histories, which goes from AD 69 onwards.

It covers the reigns of Emperor Tiberius, the second emperor who took over after Augustus's death, and it goes through the three other Julio-Claudian emperors (Caligula, Claudius, and Nero), all the way to Nero's death. We're going to have a look at an important event in Nero's reign in the bit we're looking at today.

The Annals was 16 books long, we think. We're not entirely sure because there are bits of various books missing, and we're not entirely certain that the 16th book is the last one, as the last half of it is missing, but it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that some of it survived. In fact, quite a lot of it survived, and it gives us a really good look into different parts of Roman history!

Annals: 15.38

We're going to look at Book 15, Section 38.

Quick note: when we talk about books in Latin texts, we often mean something about the length of a long chapter in a modern text. This is sort of “chapter 15, section 38” in terms of modern lengths, but we call it book because each one would probably have been written on a separate scroll. So this is the 15th scroll, part 38 of the Annals.

This section deals with the 19th of July, AD 64, and the really important event on this date is the Great Fire of Rome. This is during Nero's reign, and it was a complete disaster for parts of Rome. Much of Rome burned down.

Now Tacitus is very keen not to say anything about whose fault this fire is. He says who Nero blames, but just after the section we will look at, Tacitus also relates an interesting rumour that while the great fire of Rome was raging on, Nero was in his country estate singing a song about Troy. Troy was an ancient city that was burned to the ground, and in Rome after the fire Nero built a grand palace over much of the destroyed city. So areas that had been people's houses and shops became Nero’s golden palace.

Tacitus doesn't say anything explicitly about this link with singing about the destruction of Troy, but the impression here is that maybe Nero wasn't quite as upset as he should have been about a part of Rome burning down. There is in fact a hint of the idea that possibly Nero was slightly more involved in the Great Fire of Rome. Did he know the fire was going to start, and therefore sang about the destruction of Troy? Or was it a mere coincidence, or a later rumour spread by his enemies?

This is also, incidentally, where the slightly apocryphal phrase that “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” comes from. He definitely didn't, as violins and fiddles hadn’t been invented, but he possibly was singing or playing a lyre, and singing of the destruction of a great city, while in the distance, Rome was burning.

Section 38 analysis.

Let's have a look at some Latin. I’ll give each part, and my translation of it, and then underneath each small part I will analyse some aspects of the prose. When you comment on Latin prose, it's a bit different to Latin verse. You can't talk about word order. You have to talk more about style and technique.

sequitur clades, this is how section 38 starts, “a disaster followed”. clades is quite a vague statement. It doesn't say what kind of disaster it was, and we have to wait for quite a long time to find out that it is ignium “fire” that is causing the problem. This is dramatic tension. Tacitus is heightening our expectation of what's coming. This is quite an emotive start to this section.

forte an dolo principis incertum: “whether by chance or having been contrived by the emperor”. Tacitus is putting forward both points of view. This is to create a sense of anticipation and a bit of intrigue. It could have been an accident, or it could have been contrived by the Emperor, by Nero. Then we get this bit in brackets,

nam utrumque auctores prodidere: “for authors have put forward both explanations”. Other authors, other people, not me. Tacitus is almost distancing himself from the blame. He is very careful not to say “I think it was Nero” or “I think it wasn't Nero”, he's just giving a very impartial view. He also doesn't give the names of which authors say which. So it's a very clever way of telling his readers that there are two different opinions, but he's not putting himself in the firing line for anyone who might be offended by this point of view.

omnibus quae huic urbi: “of all the things which have happened to the city”. omnibus quae, we still don't know what the disaster is. So this heightens the sense of tension. This section is all about raising the drama to make it more interesting for the reader. It's a history, so you have to give the really exciting parts to keep your readers entertained.

NB: huic urbi, that's Rome. It's often just called “the city” in Roman texts.

per violentiam ignium: “through the violence of fire”. Finally we understand what the disaster is. It's the Great Fire of Rome.

gravior atque atrocior. These are both comparatives, which means we are comparing this disaster with anything else that has happened by fire before, and this is “more serious and worse”. We don't necessarily need both of those words, one would have done. We call this stylistic choice pleonasm or tautology. It is giving more description than necessary to give more of a sense of drama.

In this section we get a snapshot of where the fire started and how it grew.

initium ortum: “its beginning began”. We don't need both those words, so this is tautology. It’s a technique being used to hone in right on that very beginning, almost as if a film director has zoomed in on one very specific bit before a great disaster. It might be the spark that we're looking at. So “it's beginning began” draws us in, and makes it very clear where we are in the story.

Palatino Caelioque montibus: Rome was built on Seven Hills. This is two of them. We get a location for start of the fire, between these two hills, in the Circus Maximus.

per tabernas: “amidst the shops”. This was quite a common thing in ancient Rome, there were fires because things were very close together, especially shops which might have had wine or other merchandise, which is what feeds the flames (quo flamma alitur). This is why the fire has started here. We're getting an explanation from Tacitus. He doesn't just say where it started. He explains it was in the shops, then describes that in those shops were things that made it worse. So there might have been clothing or fabric, there might have been wine, there might have been food stores, things that feed flames. So again, this is heightening this tension. We get more and more information about why the fire became so bad.

simul, statim. “at the same time” as the fire began, “at once” it was strong and quick. These are both temporal words, and both of them together heighten the sense of how quickly this happened, which adds to the drama.

validus ac vento citus: “it was strong and fast because of the wind”. These are two other things that make the fire so devastating. Tacitus gives us more and more information about why this fire was terrible. He's increasing the pathos, the sympathy, the emotion we have about this event

corripuit: “it seized” the whole length of the circus. The fire is almost being personified here. This almost gives us an enemy to target in our minds. We don't want the fire to succeed. This is a really clever way for Tacitus to bind his readers into the same headspace. We want Rome to beat the fire, and this almost makes it sound like an evil fire that is seizing the city. So it's a really interesting way for him to write about an inanimate thing (fire) which doesn't have a motive. corripuit is an incredibly emotive and dramatic verb, often used when talking about conquering armies seizing property, or tyrannical leaders seizing slaves.

longitudinem: “the whole length” gives us more descriptive information so we can try and picture the circus Maximus, the big chariot racing arena in Rome, completely on fire down the whole length of it (probably one side). Those shops that sold souvenirs and wine on race days have been completely engulfed.

enim: “for”. enim is always a really good word to talk about because it means something's going to happen. It creates tension in the audience about what new disaster is coming.

neque… vel… aut: “no houses… nor temples… nor any other delay...” This is a tricolon (rule of three, triple, etc) of reasons why the fire kept spreading. The point is that the fire wouldn't have got the houses if they had stone areas surrounding them. Its the same with the temples. If they had stone walls, they wouldn't have been overcome by the fire. There were no other delays, nothing else to act as a firebreak. So he's giving us a tricolon of reasons that the fire kept spreading as fast as it did.

impetu: “in fury” the blaze spread. This is again personifying the fire. impetu gives it a sense of aggression. This fire's not going to stop.

plana primum, edita and inferiora. This is all about where the fire goes. So at first it's “the flat ground”, the plana primum (which is also alliterative, so you could talk about how that draws our attention directly to that bit). We start in the low areas because the Circus Maximus was in a low valley. Then it surges (adsurgens) to the edita, “the high points”, to the hills. So you can see the progression of the flames up the hill. And then again it plunders “the lower places”, the inferiora. Now that does mean lower places, but I suppose there's also the sense of the poorer districts. You can track the path of the fire because of how Tacitus has described it, rushing up and down the hills. He’s showing us the path the fire takes as it rages through the city. Lots of description to help us picture this disaster.

pervagatum, adsurgens, populando, antiit. This sentence is very full of movement verbs in quick succession, so you get the sense of speed of the fire.

artis intineribus hucque et illuc flexis atque enormibus vicis: “with these narrow streets and those winding and irregular paths”. This is the key. This is the important quality of Old Rome, vetus Roma. These types of streets are winding, they're narrow, so it's really easy for fire to spread across the way. If there were wide avenues, the fire might get to one side of the street, but wouldn't be able to cross the road and keep spreading. But because they're so small and so narrow and winding and built up it's very easy for the fire to spread. This also contains tautology. You don't need all those words to describe the streets. If Tacitus had just said it was narrow, you'd get the impression, but he's giving more and more description so that we get a really good view of these flexible, winding, really close and irregular streets.

Interestingly, Tacitus says vetus Roma - this was the quality of old Rome. This was the type of street we found in Old Rome. The implication is that we don't find these anymore in New Rome. We have had to rebuild. It's a bit of a tantalizing sense of the end of the story. The Romans are going to have to rebuild. So we get a bit of dramatic irony as we know more than the people who are in this part of history.

Tacitus is drawing in more senses for his audience to flesh out their picture of the scene, which is really good to heighten the sense of drama and to make you feel like you're really there to make you feel very present in the situation.

ad hoc lamenta: “to this was added wailing”. So this is in addition to all the problems with the fire. Tacitus tells us who you can hear. First, we get a tricolon of vulnerable people who are being affected by the fire. So the terrified women (paventium feminarum), those weary because they’re old (fessa aetate) and the inexperienced young (rudis pueritiae aetas). This gives a sense of the human cost of this fire. Tacitus is trying to evoke our pity and emotions for these people by telling us a bit more about them.

quique sibi quique aliis. Next we have “those who are saving themselves”, and “those who are saving others”. There's no judgment here about which one is which, but we have a really nice repeated pattern here, with the added contrast of sibi and aliis.

Then we have three really interesting verbs. consulebant “saving”, trahunt “dragging” and opperiuntur “waiting for”. Three different actions taking place in a really short space of time. So we get this sense of this crowd. Some people are actively saving others, some have already saved them and are dragging them along behind them. And some people are waiting because they've lost family or friends.

pars mora, pars festinans: “partially by delay, partially by hurrying”. With the repeated use of pars to draw our attention to how different groups are acting.

And this all adds to the sense of cuncta impediebant. This is the most important part. “Everything was entangled”. Everyone was getting in each other's way in the panic that is being caused by the fire. So all these stylistic and linguistic choices add to the dramatic motion and the human events of the fire. We've had the impartial bit about how the fire raged up and down in the city, but now we're looking at the people that this is affecting. Tacitus has really cleverly done this. He's given us an almost cinematic view of the fire, and now we've zoomed in onto one street and we can see how this is affecting the real people.

Now Tacitus is talking about the people trying to escape and finding nowhere is safe from the flames.

in tergam respectant: “looking behind them”. lateribus and fronte mean “at the sides” and “in front”. So while they're looking behind them, the fire has gone down different paths and has cut off their escape route. They see the flames ahead of them or to the side, and it's almost snuck up on them. This is again the idea of the personification of the flames with circumveniebantur “they were surrounded”. The flames are almost like an evil presence.

si evaserant: “if they had escaped”. evaserant is a pluperfect verb. In analysing prose, you can talk about the tenses of verbs if they make a really interesting point. Often it’s the historic present tense, as above (respectant) but here I'm going to talk about the pluperfect. Here, if they had escaped, they have a very slight brief moment of light, of hope. If they had escaped to somewhere nearby, proxima. However, the implication with si + the pluperfect is that even if they had escaped, they aren't going to have escaped for very long.

illis and quae: “these places” and “those places”. We have a little contrast here. Even the ones that they think are so far away and must be safe are not going to be an escape route.

crediderant is also pluperfect. Even those places which “they had believed” were far enough removed, indicates they were soon disenchanted of that idea. longinque gives us that sense of distance. longina gives us the word long in English.

eodem casu: “in the same misfortune”. Tacitus doesn't need to say the word fire again. He's used it before, igni correptis. He knows we will remember what the misfortune is, and by not naming it he almost heightens our fear of the fire. We've also got that correptis verb again. We had it before with corripuit, now “it has been seized by fire” and they find all the other parts in the same misfortune.

I hope you can see from this post that this a very emotive and dramatic reading of the fire of Rome.

Pointers for Analysing Prose

When you are analysing Latin prose there are some really key things to think about:

1. Description.

   How much description is being used? How clearly can you visualize what is being said?

2. Repetition or Alliteration. These things draw your attention to a specific point, so talk about it.

3. Personification. Giving inanimate things human characteristics is an excellent technique to manipulate the emotions of an audience. In this case, the fire has been personified. How does it make you feel?

4. Senses. If any other senses are drawn into the story, it’s for a reason. A really great one for prose is direct speech. We didn't have any in this passage, but we talked about the wails of the women. Tacitus could have talked about the burning smell. Using sensory descriptions that bring a reader into the very moment that you are describing make narrative history really interesting.

So that's analysing Tacitus! It's a great section of the Annals. I would recommend you especially read the Nero section of Tacitus' Annals, and maybe the Tiberius bit as well.

If you would like to get to the point where you can read this in the original Latin on your own, then why not start by watching my free Latin workshop where you can learn the basics in just one hour. You also get all my free guides, so it's a really great way to start your Latin journey and eventually read Tacitus on your own in Latin!

I hope you've enjoyed this analysing Tacitus post! If you want me to do any other authors, let me know. If you didn't see my Analysing Virgil’s Aeneid post, you can find that here in the archive, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!

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Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was many things:

1. An orator.

   He was a fantastic public speaker, which is quite funny because his name “Tacitus” means something like “the quiet one”. However, he was an amazing public speaker.

2. A great politician.

   He was very active in the public life of Rome

3. A historian.

   This is probably why most people have heard of him and this is mainly what we will be focusing on today.

Life & Times

He was born around AD 56 and he died in about 120. We're not entirely certain of the exact years, but they are the agreed upon dates from historians.

He came from an equestrian family, so he wasn't one of the poorer classes in Rome but he also wasn't one of the super wealthy. He wasn't a Patrician or from a senatorial family. His family were in the upper classes, but they were not the super top level. However, he did have a good education. He did very well for himself.

He married a woman called Julia Agricola, and she was important because her father, Julius Agricola, will become very important in Tacitus' life and his writings.

Domitian: Time of Crisis

When Tacitus was a young man, Domitian was the emperor of Rome. Domitian was not a particularly calm and peace-loving emperor. In fact, he had a sort of reign of terror and it caused a time of crisis.

Domitian’s brutal reign consisted of him murdering quite a lot of the Senate and their supporters. Tacitus was quite lucky as a member of the Roman high class to survive his rule with his life. It was not a calm time, and Domitian did not keep things very peaceful in Rome.

Part of the reason that Tacitus is famous is because of his writings about other emperors. Because Tacitus survived the rule of Domitian, he was able to look back on other periods of history with a different view to someone who had been writing in Augustus's very calm era, for example. He has a very positive view of some of the earlier emperors, and a very negative view of others. And this makes his histories very interesting.

Tacitus’ Monographs

He wrote three major monographs (that have survived) between AD 98 and 102.

1. de vita Iulii Agricola

Do you remember I said that he married a girl called Julia Agricola? Well, this text is about her dad: “the life of Julius Agricola”.

The reason Agricola was important is he was one of the generals who was pacifying Britain, and that's why in modern times, especially in Britain, Tacitus is seen as a really important source because he gives us a lot of information about the peoples of Britain.

2. de origine et situ Germanorum.

This is about the life of the Germanic tribes, “the beginnings and the situation of the German people”.

Both of these fall into ethnographic history: they tell us about the ethnicities of the people who lived there. This was a really big thing at this time in Roman writing. They were very interested in where the people they were conquering had originally come from. So Julius Caesar was very interested in this.

A lot of people have said, because Tacitus has a very sympathetic view of the people being conquered it is possible that he or his family were originally from Germany or somewhere on the edges of the Roman Empire. There's no evidence of that, but it is just very interesting that he does have a very sympathetic view of these people whose livelihoods and places are being overtaken by the Romans.

3. dialogus de oratoribus.

“A dialogue about oratory”, a didactic (teaching) essay about how best to give public speeches.

These all have shorter names:

1. The Agricola

2. The Germania

3. The Dialogue or the Dialogus.

Histories

The next surviving work we have of Tacitus is his Histories, and this is published in around AD 105. It is a history of the year AD 69 - 70.

Now, it wasn't supposed to be such a small amount. In fact, it wasn't this short at all when it was published, but much has been lost. It was supposed to start in AD 69, just after the death of Nero, but the original text went all the way through to the assassination of Domitian, which was in 96 AD. So we have lost about 26 years of this history.

The bit we do have is very short, but it's very detailed and very rich evidence for the year of the four Emperors, which starts when Nero was assassinated in 69. It talks about the four emperors who came in very quick succession in the one year following Nero's death. It's a really rich piece of history and historians particularly find it very useful for what happened in that time period, which can be quite confusing because the events happened so rapidly.

Once he'd published this, he then wrote The Annals.

Annals

The Annals were published in around 117 AD. This covers the period ab excessu divi Augusti (“from the Death of the Divine Augustus”), which was in the year AD 14. So it goes as almost a prequel to the Histories. It goes from AD 14 all the way up to AD 68. Again, parts of it are lost, but far more of the Annals remains than the Histories. It basically goes from Tiberius' reign all the way through to Nero.

The whole text is about 16 books long. We know there were at least 16, but we are missing the last half of the 16th, or the last part of it, at least. We don't know if there was a 17th, but most scholars think there were 16 books of the Annals. In comparison, the Histories should have been about 14.

What we do have is still partial. Books six and seven are missing completely. Half of book five is missing. Bits of book 11 are missing. So unfortunately we have lost a great deal, but it's an absolute wonder that so much of it has survived for effectively 1900 years! So we can't be too choosy, can we?

Future plans

But this wasn't the end of Tacitus’ plans. He had a grand future prepared for himself. He wanted to continue writing, to take his Histories further and go past the end of that and talk about Nerva and Trajan who came after Domitian. He also wanted to go back earlier than his Annals and talk about Augustus, and even further back to the founding of Rome.

Unfortunately it didn't get that far and he died before (as far as we know) he could complete any more work. So he had a grand plan to effectively write the entirety of Roman history from the founding of Rome in 753, all the way through to present day when he was alive. Alas, he died just a couple of years after the Annals were published.

Style Icon

The reason Tacitus is so popular is that he has a fantastic style of writing. First of all, he writes these ethnographic accounts where he gives very sympathetic views of the people who are being conquered by the Romans. This wasn’t necessarily the case in Roman writers. They didn’t often give the situation of the peoples who were being conquered. They just celebrated the fact they had been conquered and that the Roman Empire has expanded.

Tacitus is a little bit different, in that he looks deeply into the histories of the people who are being conquered. So for the Britains, he talks about the different tribes. Again, for the Germans, he talks about all the places where they came from and all the skills that they had, and how the Romans effectively wiped that out or took advantage of those things in order to expand their empire. I'm not saying that he doesn't agree with expansion, but he has a very humanitarian view of the people who are being conquered.

He also has a narrative style to his history. He doesn't just give events one after the other. Sometimes he will zoom in on a very specific event and he puts them in a chronological order.

That makes it very interesting, very easy to read. So, for example, in my next post, I'm going to be doing an analysis of a part of Tacitus writing about the Great Fire of Rome. Make sure you’re subscribed to get that straight to your inbox!

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His description of these accounts is so moving, but it's such a short snapshot of that time. He gives a very quick overview and then he moves on. He has very rapid narration, but he weaves in some very deep and detailed single scenes, so you really feel like you have been there. It's a very interesting way of writing history.

And he also is very ideological about the emperors he writes about. He wants them to be good people. (I mean, who wouldn't? They're in charge!) But he has a lot to say about the way other people have written about emperors. Take a look at what he says:

He says, when Tiberius, Gaius (who is Caligula), Claudius, and Nero were alive, the people who were writing the histories falsified the accounts because of fear. So they made it too positive. And after the emperors died, the opinion went completely the other way, and because they were so close to the events, the historians became very negative about these emperors.

And Tacitus carries on to say,

This is his whole point - because I have, you know, a hundred years between myself and Tiberius, I can have a more detached viewpoint, and I'm just going to relate the history without any feelings attached.

Now some people would maybe debate how impartial Tacitus stays in his accounts. However, that's his plan. That's what he says he wants to do. We will have a look next week, and you can see what you think about whether he remains impartial or not.

Next week I’ll be analysing Annals 15.38. It's a fantastic section about the Great Fire of Rome and really shows Tacitus’ style. So make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss that next week!

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Hint: there is a reason this blog is called bambasbat!

Spotting the Imperfect Tense

Look at these two sentences:

• puella in foro ambulat.

  The girl is walking in the forum.

• puella in foro ambulabat.

  The girl was walking in the forum.

What's changed? In the first sentence, the girl is walking. That's in the present tense. In the second sentence, the girl was walking. That's the imperfect tense.

Singular Endings

• she is walking: ambulat

• she was walking: ambulabat

That's the key part of the imperfect, the -ba-. This is how you always spot the imperfect tense. It doesn't matter who is doing the verb or what verb it is. The imperfect tense will always have -ba-.

ambulabat is the third person singular, the “he, she, it” form of the verb. But I'm going to show you just how easy it is to spot the imperfect tense for all different person endings.

• you are walking: ambulas

• you were walking: ambulabas

In the second sentence we have the -ba- again. That's all that has changed. I've just added that in front of the second person singular ending -s.

• I am walking: ambulo

• I was walking: ambulabam

Now this one is slightly different, however, I still have my -ba- for the second verb. All that's changed from the others is that ambulabao doesn't work in Latin. They don't like the sound of it. So instead of an -o on the end, they change it to an -m. This is the first person singular ending.

So I've now got -bam, -bas, and -bat. They're my singulars: “I was”, “You were”, “He, she, it was” endings.

• -bam: ambulabam - “I was walking”

• -bas: ambulabas - “you were walking”

• -bat: ambulabat - “he was walking”

Is this getting repetitive?

Good.

Learn it.

Plural Endings

Here are the imperfect plural endings.

• -bamus: ambulabamus - we were walking

• -batis: ambulabatis - you plural were walking

• -bant: ambulabant - they were walking.

-ba- -ba- -ba-. All the bas! Be like a little sheep and repeat these endings to yourself.

Spot the Difference

• puer in via currebat

• pueri in via currebant

Can you spot the difference between them?

The first sentence is singular, -bat - “he/she was”. The second is -bant, the third person plural ending (“they were”).

Practise Sentences

Have a go at these yourself. I've got vocabulary to help you. The answers are below so scroll only when ready to find out the translations!

1. feminae servos videbant

2. regem plaudebamus

3. vos puellas clamabatis

4. dominus clamorem audiebat

Read on when you’re ready to find out the answers!

Answers

1. feminae servos videbant.

   feminae is a nominative plural noun. It means “the women”.

   Even if I'm not sure about that, servos, “the slaves”, can't be in charge because that's accusative plural, so can’t be doing the verb.

   videbant is my verb. I have video in the vocab list. That means “I see” and it's the present tense. But in my sentence, I have videbant which has the -ba-, the imperfect signifier. So videbant means “they were seeing”

   “The women were seeing the slaves.”

   ---

2. regem plaudebamus.

   It helps to look at the verb first. plaudebamus has a “we” ending, -mus the first person plural. Now plaudo from the vocab list means “I applaud”. So here I'm going to change it to we applaud because of the -mus. But I've still got -ba- in the middle of that word to translate. So plaudebamus means “we were applauding”. Who were we applauding? regem, “the king”, is accusative.

   “We were applauding the king.”

   ---

3. vos puellas clamabatis.

   I've got help here with vos, which means “you” plural.

   clamabatis is the verb, and the -tis ending also means “you” plural. I know it's “were doing something” because it also has the -ba-, so it's imperfect tense. Then I look in my vocab. clamo means “I shout”. So clamabatis means “you were shouting” or “you were calling”.

   puellas is accusative plural, it’s a first declension noun, so they are the object of the verb.

   “You were shouting the girls.”

   ---

4. dominus clamorem audiebat.

   audiebat ends with -t, so it's a third person singular verb. It also has the -ba- so I know it's imperfect. audio from the vocab list means “I hear”. If you put all that together you get “he was hearing”, or “he was listening to”

   dominus is nominative singular, and it matches the -t ending of the verb.

   Now we need an object for him to hear - clamorem is a noun this time, not the verb from the 3rd sentence. It is the 3rd declension accusative singular, “the shout”.

   “The master was hearing the shout.”

   ---

And that is the imperfect tense! It's the easiest tense. I absolutely love it, and I hope you see why. You can absolutely rattle through learning it. It's just -ba- and your normal person endings.

So yes, I named my website and YouTube channel after the Imperfect Tense in Latin.

To be fair, I never claimed to be cool.

If you're struggling with any of your Latin verbs, you can download my Complete Reference Guide to Latin verbs here. It's a free PDF, and it'll really help you with all your Latin verb endings!

Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

To really help you out with the genitive case, download my free noun endings guide here. It's got all the endings for nouns in the first, second, and third declension in all the cases, and it will really help you get to grips with the tables.

Understanding the Possessive Genitive Case

The genitive case is mostly used to denote possession. Let’s recap that quickly:

First Declension

• “the girl's dog” - canis puellae

puellae is in the genitive case. It is her dog. She is the one who has possession. You can see she should be in the genitive case more easily if we use the longer “the dog of the girl”.

puellae - genitive singular

puellarum - genitive plural.

Second Declension

• “the slave's money” - servi pecuniam

servi is the genitive here. The money is his. Again, elongate the sentence to see the genitive more clearly. “The money of the slave”.

• servi - genitive singular

• servorum - plural (of the slaves)

Third Declension

• “the king's house” - villa regis.

regis is the genitive because the king has possession, it's the king's house. This is a third decension noun.

• regis - singular

• regum - plural

Partitives!

But there is another use for the genitive: the partitive genitive. This is sometimes called the genitive of the whole.

Often the positive genitive comes next to quantifiers. Things like numbers or pronouns that tell you how much of something we are talking about.

Common partitive phrases

• pars terrae - “part of the land”

  terrae is genitive. That is the whole thing. The “of the land” needs to be genitive because that's the what the quantifier “part” has come from. It's like if you say “a slice of cake”, the cake is the whole, the slice is just a bit of it.

• aliqui eorum - “some of them”

  This uses a pronoun, “some” aliqui and then “of them” is genitive - eorum.

• unus canum - “one of the dogs”

  This is with a number. So I've had a pronoun, I've had a quantifier. Now I have a number. canum is a third declension genitive singular. You have to be really careful with third declension, genitive because they look very accusative. But canum is genitive plural “of the dogs”. That's the whole group we're talking about. However, we've just picked out one of them: unus.

• pessimus omnium - “worst of all”

  You can sometimes have quantifiers that are superlatives. pessimus is the superlative, “worst”. omnium is the genitive of the whole, the partitive genitive.

• passuum mille - “a thousand steps”

  Again, the quantifier is a number, mille. Now this is quite a common phrase because it actually just means “a mile” - literally “1000 of the steps”. passuum is the genitive.

Remember, in Latin word order doesn't matter, so don't worry if the partitive genitive comes before the quantifier (above that’s the thousands). The important thing is that it is in the genitive case

Distinguishing Possession from Partitive

The key distinction is the role that genitive plays: possession addresses the owner of something, while partitive identifies a part extracted from a whole.

As always in Latin, you just have to use your common sense. Luckily, if you translate the genitive literally, a more fluent translation will usually pop out to you.

Empower Your Latin Learning

For all Latin enthusiasts eager to master genitive endings, you can download my free noun endings guide here. It spans first, second, and third declension nouns for all the cases.

Thanks for joining me on a journey through the Partitive Genitive, I hope it has been useful, and I will see you next time on bambasbat!

Ides of March means the middle of March, the 15th to be exact, which marked the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. But how did this momentous event unfold, and what led to Caesar's dramatic demise?

Who was Julius Caesar?

To find out why he was assassinated, we first need to know what Caesar was like as a person.

Military and Political Life

Known as an incredible general, a prolific politician, and eventually a dictator, Caesar's life was marked by remarkable achievements. As a general in the army, he led critical campaigns, such as the Gallic Wars, and crafted narratives about these wars in clear language to bolster his popularity with the masses in Rome through strategic propaganda. He was notably the first Roman to attempt conquering Britain. However, in 59 BC, Caesar made a pivotal shift to prioritizing his political career over his military triumphs.

Although owed a triumph (celebratory procession through the streets of Rome with his troops), Roman law forbade a commanding officer to enter the city while in control of an army. This meant Caesar had to choose between running for the top office (consul) or celebrating his military victories. He chose to disband his army and stand for the election. He won the vote, and became consul for 59.

The Triumvirate

Once he'd been consul he went back to the army, and this gave him more protection from the law. As a consul, he couldn't be tried for any crimes people thought he had committed. And the same was true when he was, ruling an army, as he had imperium.

However, he was worried that this protection would be taken from him, so he and two other men set up something called the triumvirate, “the three men rule”. It wasn't official, and it wasn't sanctioned, but basically between the three of them, Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompey and Marcus Crassus, they ruled Rome. They had the political power, the army, and the wealth. So Caesar became a triumvir.

Unfortunately for the three of them, it was quite the shaky alliance, especially when Crassus died quite suddenly in 53 BC while on campaign in Parthia. This put quite a bit of a strain on Pompey and Caesar's relationship.

The Rise to Dictatorship

This strain of relations eventually culminating in a civil war. Caesar emerged victorious, ascending to the role of dictator - a role he was elected to by the people yet became fraught with resentment from the Senate. These emergency powers weren’t unheard of, and because of the Civil War they made sense.

The only thing was that the Romans really hated kings. They didn't mind electing someone dictator for six months or even a year. But what they didn't like was when he got the title dictator in perpetuo: “eternal dictator”. So he had effectively been electeda king in all but name. This is a problem. The Senate were the body of men who ruled Rome, but now Caesar was in charge of Rome on his own.

As dictator, he had granted clemency to all the people who had fought against him. This is a really good idea, as it stops the war, doesn't it? Those who fought against him on Pompey's side were allowed to come back as long as they apologised properly, and he had people to run the country again with him.

The Conspirators

The Senate at this point in 44 BC was made up of various groups. We have Caesar's allies, the people who had fought with him in the Civil War. There are also those people who feel overlooked because Caesar’s staunch allies have been promoted above them, and maybe they weren't particularly for or against Caesar or Pompey, so they’re worried about fading into the background. And there are also the enemies that he has forgiven, those people who fought with Pompey against Caesar, but to whom he gave clemency.

You may expect the real worry, the real danger will come from those forgiven enemies, or maybe the overlooked Senators who are getting a bit frustrated. But as we are going to find out, some of Caesar's closest allies are also involved in the conspiracy to kill him.

The Omens

The Roman world was deeply superstitious, and a series of unsettling omens foreshadowed the events of the Ides of March.

Tablets

A collection of bronze tablets was found, which reportedly contained dire warnings. The story we get from historians is that the tablets foretold that when they were discovered, great misfortune would befall a descendant of the goddess Venus.

Julius Caesar, a member of the Julian family, claimed to be descended from Venus through her grandson Iulius, and so perhaps this was something to watch out for on his part.

Animals

There are also two separate omens involving animals. The first one is the horses.

Julius Caesar had crossed the River Rubicon in 49 BC and lots of people say this was the beginning of the Civil War. He crossed into Italy with his army, and afterwards he set free the horses on which he had crossed the river, he had let them go to pasture. These horses had been seen weeping and refusing to eat any grass. To the Romans, this was very telling and very worrying that his horses were weeping.

The second animal omen involved birds. Lots of different types of birds from all around the city converged on a single wren. The wren had flown into the Senate house with a laurel leaf in its mouth, and it was torn to pieces by these other birds. This one particularly is very poignant when you find out that Caesar was killed in the Senate house by lots of different senators, and he was wearing a laurel crown at the time. So this one could well have been a very important sign if Caesar had listened to it.

Worried Wife

Calpurnia was Julius Caesar's wife, and she began to have worrying dreams. To the Romans, dreams were also messages or warnings from the gods. First she dreamed that the gable end of their house collapsed. This would be a little worrying, but not a big deal. However, next she dreamed that Julius Caesar was lying in her lap, having been stabbed in the chest. A slightly more specific warning you might say.

So all of these things added together maybe made Caesar a little bit worried and he was considering maybe staying at home on the morning of the 15th of March, especially when Calpurnia begged him not to leave.

The Soothsayer

In Rome, an important type of priest was a Haruspex. This is a soothsayer, someone who looks at the entrails of an animal that's been sacrificed to the gods and tells you the future from those entrails. This Haruspex was called Spurinna, and according to Suetonius, he gave Caesar a warning. This warning became famous because of William Shakespeare. In his play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has his Soothsayer shouting:

This has become quite a famous saying. A very strong statement.

So Caesar has had the omens from Calpurnia, the dreams. He’s had the birds and the horses, and the tablets being found. And now a soothsayer who can see the future in the entrails has specifically said to Caesar “watch out. Something's coming for you. You’re in danger until the Ides of March”

So how on earth did we get to the Senate House on the Ides of March with all these warnings? Honestly, Caesar's arrogance overshadowed his caution.

On the morning of the 15th March (the Ides), he had decided not to visit the Senate. His wife has been begging him to stay home, and no favourable omens can be found. The soothsayers outside the Senate house are reading the entrails of the sacrificial victims and there are no good omens at all. They keep sacrificing and they keep checking different animals but all the entrails are blackened and malformed, and this is not a good sign from the Gods.

Unfortunately, he was persuaded otherwise by Decimus Brutus, a trusted associate. He informs Caesar that lots and lots of senators have already gathered at the Senate house and there's a rumour going round that they're going to crown Caesar king of Rome. This is tempting.

Note: Decimus Brutus is not the most famous of the Brutus family to be involved in this story. Decimus Brutus is a younger cousin of the Brutus who we're going to talk about in a little bit, the famous “et tu Brute” Brutus. Decimus Brutus is younger, and he is a very close friend of Julius Caesar. He almost looks up to him as an uncle or a father figure.

So Decimus Brutus comes to Caesar's house and says, listen, you're really going to have to go to the Senate house. Everyone is waiting for you. Don't upset the Senate by not attending because they won't vote you all the honours that you'll want. So Decimus persuades Caesar to come to the Senate House.

Ironically, as they walked there, a note listing the names of the conspirators was thrust into Caesar’s hands - but it was unread and ignored. Caesar did not read the note. He put it into a bundle of papers in his left hand (left is unlucky to the Romans) and he carried on walking.

Suetonius Divus Julius

Thus, Caesar entered the Senate house, dismissing the divine warnings. This is what Suetonius says about his entry into the Senate house in Divus Julius 81.4.

• introiit curiam spreta religione “He entered the Senate house ignoring the omens”. This is part of the reason in the Romans mind that Caesar kind of had to die. He is ignoring the omens, the signs from the gods.

• Spurinnamque irridens et ut falsam arguens. “and laughing at Spurinna and declaring him a fraud”. Caesar is actively laughing at the spokesperson for the gods. Again, not a good idea in very superstitious ROme. And this is why he's laughing at him

• quod sine ulla sua noxa Idus Martiae adessent “because the Ides of March had come without any injury to him”. Caesar is taunting Spurinna, saying look it's the Ides March, the 15th. I'm fine. You said something bad would happen but I am still here.

• quanquam is venisse quidem eas diceret, sed non praeterisse. “though [Spurinna] said they had indeed come but they had not yet passed by”. Spurinna basically says yes, well done Caesar. You've made it to the Ides of March, but the Ides of March haven't finished yet. We still have time.

So this is a very ominous little bit of Suetonius there. It's one of my favourite parts so I put it in.

The Moment of Betrayal

Caesar sat at the front of the Senate and the conspirators gathered round him. Lots of different senators coming towards him with petitions, things for him to sign, requests. That's not uncommon, that was often how a meeting started. But what was uncommon was when they drew the daggers. One of the conspirators came very, very close to Caesar and tugged at his toga, and then brandished a dagger.

Supposedly after he is stabbed for the first time, Caesar says ista quidem vis est!  “This is indeed violence”,  which is quite a weird thing to say after you've been stabbed I think, but that is what our historical sources tell us he said.

Over 60 senators said they would be involved in this conspiracy in some way or another. In order for them to share the blame, they each agreed to stab Caesar. Caesar was stabbed 23 times. So obviously not everyone stabbed him. It's kind of like every group project you've ever done, where some people don't necessarily pull their weight, but they still get the grade. Caesar is dead and he lies on the floor of the Senate house in his own blood.

Caesar’s Last Words

There's been quite a lot of discussion over the past 2000 years about Caesar's final words. It is a topic that has kept people invested for a long time.

One important thing is that these words were supposedly said to Marcus Junius Brutus, not Decimus Brutus, who led him to the Senate house. Marcus Junius Brutus had been pardoned by Caesar. Actually, so had Decimus Brutus. Both of them had fought on Pompey's side. Both had been granted clemency by Caesar, but both of them were quite close to Caesar. Anyway, Marcus Junius Brutus is (supposedly) the one assassin Caesar couldn’t bear to see attack him. He saw this as the ultimate betrayal, and gave up on defending himself.

The reason most people know Caesar’s final words are because of Shakespeare. In the play, Julius Caesar says as his last lines et tu, Brute? “and you, Brutus?”. Even you, even you are stabbing me? The disbelief, hurt and betrayal are clear in this final exclamation.

However, in Suetonius, his final words are quoted as καὶ σὺ τέκνον; [translit: kai su teknon?] which is Greek for “and you, my child?”

This has led to many theories about their relationship. Possibly Caesar was revealing that Brutus was his illegitimate child in his final moments! However, other people have pointed out:

a) why would he speak in Greek in his final moments?

b) if he has kept us a secret forever, why would he say it in his final breath?

c) which Brutus was he actually talking to?

So kind of a confusing amalgamation. But the most important thing is that the final words that everybody knows of Julius Caesar are et tu brute? “even you, Brutus?”

Success or Failure?

It's the 16th of March, 44 BC. Caesar has been assassinated. Is this a success against tyranny? The Roman senators at the time were worried that Caesar had too much power, was going too far, and didn't have enough checks against him. To be clear, this was a small number of senators (fewer than 20% of the senate) conspired to kill him, and they did think the Roman people would rejoice.

This wasn't necessarily what happened. In fact, you could say it wasn't a success against tyranny. You could say it became the catalyst for the Principate. The Principate was the rule of the emperors who came after, because Julius Caesar's heir (his great nephew, Augustus Caesar) became the first official emperor of the Roman Empire.

So you could say that the conspirators actually got the exact opposite of what they wanted. They tried to kill a man who had too much power to stop him being a king, and instead they caused another civil war, and they left the door open in a way for Augustus to sweep in and pick up all the pieces and become basically a king anyway.

Ides of March Party

Whatever you think about the Ides of March, whether it was a success or a failure, you should celebrate it your way! On this 15th of March make sure you're doing something to remember Caesar. Honestly, it's just a good excuse to have a gathering, to play fun murder mystery games, or to eat lots of delicious food.

Find some way to celebrate the Ides of March. Why not? Let me know how you mark the occasion!

See you next time on bambasbat!

Welcome back to bambasbat, and Happy New Year! I've always been really fascinated by the god Janus, and so I thought as a celebration of the start of 2025, I would make him the subject of today’s post.

Doorways

Janus is known as the god of doorways, but his influence stretches far beyond that. While doorways might seem mundane, Janus also presides over gates—both the everyday kind and the monumental gateways leading into cities. In fact, Janus was so integral to Roman life that their term for a front door ianua, stems from his name.

You might not think the god of doorways will have a big effect on people's lives but he becomes one of the most important gods in the Roman pantheon.

NB: The Romans didn’t have a J letter, so his name would begin with an i. However the Anglicised version is with a J, much like Jupiter or Juno.

Janus's influence was so profound that the Romans gave his name to the month of January, the start of the year. He embodies new beginnings and he's also therefore the god of endings. This is why he has two faces! He looks backwards into the past and forwards into the future, making the 1st of January an important one for the worship of Janus.

A God of Transformations

Janus's role extended from transitional zones like doorways to the cycle of life itself. He had the remit over life and death, birth and demise, embracing an expansive scope of responsibilities. As we usher in the new year, Janus is the perfect figure to salute - a deity who guides us into the future while keeping us anchored to the lessons of the past.

Position of Power

The Romans acknowledged Janus's paramount importance through the Gates of War, otherwise known as the Gates of Janus. Located in the Roman forum, these gates, sometimes referred to as part of a temple, were indicative of the state of Rome’s foreign affairs. During wartime, the gates were opened, and when peace was announced, they were shut - a vivid symbol for all within the Roman Empire. Though very militaristic, the Romans celebrated peace as a show of their own power, cherishing the moments they could enforce it across the whole of their empire simultaneously.

The historical significance of the Gates of Janus is emphasized in the words of Augustus, the first emperor. Proudly inscribed in bronze, Augustus' autobiographical obituary, the Res Gestae Dei Augusti, (“The Things Done By The Divine Augustus”) contained the following section:

Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Section 13. Translated by Ellen at bambasbat.

That's a very long way of saying that during his rule, the Gates of War were shut three times. So three times during Augustus's reign, the whole Roman Empire was at peace. And this is something he was really proud of.

This passage starts with Ianum Quinnum, which means “the gates of Janus Quirinus”. The Gates of War. So they're mentioned by the most powerful man in the Roman Empire. They have a place in the centre of the Roman Forum, Which also shows how important they were.

Augustus is even more proud of this, because before his time, the Gates had only been closed twice before ever. In the 750 years or so since Rome had been founded, they had only been closed twice. So Rome was always at war with someone, somewhere, in their empire. But during his reign, three times, the Senate said, Oh, we're at peace now, we can shut the gates of war. So, Augustus was really proud of this, and therefore valued the gates of Janus very highly.

The Many Titles of Janus

As we've seen, Janus was in charge of lots of different aspects of Roman life, and they had lots of different names for him. Here are some examples:

• The Gatekeeper of Heaven

• The Opener

• The Sower (for his role in the harvest - another transition)

• The Tracker of Time

• The Good God

• The Creator (some thought he had created the world)

• The Father

A few of his titles show the vast remit he held for the Romans, and their awe of him.

Modern Influences

We get the word janitor from Janus. It's now quite an American term, but it means the gatekeepers, and the people who track time. They are the keepers of a place, and the Romans thought that Janus was very powerful and could look after lots of different aspects of your life.

So “Go janitors!” for keeping track of everything and looking out for everyone!

A Divine Partnership

Janus shares a significant link with Juno. Although they fulfil different roles, their names were often considered nearly interchangeable. Both were associated with beginnings, and so the kalends of each month (the first day) were important to them both. They are also linked with lunar cycles, and Juno especially (but also Janus) was charged with childbirth and menstruation. It was unusual for a male god to have anything to do with feminine fertility, but as it is so important for “beginnings” (i.e. of babies) I suppose it makes sense!

Their names were almost interchangeable, if you make them feminine and masculine respectively. Janus was sometimes called “the one like Juno”, and Juno was sometimes called “the one like Janus”. There has even been the idea put forward by scholars (like M. Renard) that Janus may have been the original husband of Juno in Roman mythology, not Jupiter, due to their commonalities.

Janus holds a special place in January, as it is his month and the chance for new beginnings. I hope you found this insight into Janus and his importance to the Romans interesting. Who's your favourite Roman deity? Janus is one of mine. Let me know in the comments which gods I should do another post about!

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Thanks so much for joining me, Happy New Year, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.

Today we’re going to look at some different person endings for verbs in the present tense.

Last time we looked at verbs needing to match their nominatives. So if you have a singular nominative, you need a singular verb. Like, puella in horto sedet, meaning the girl sits in the garden, versus having a plural nominative needing a plural verb, like puellae in horto sedent. So the verb has changed because I now, in the second sentence, have a plural noun, puellae.

Expanding Our Verb Vocabulary

So far, we have encountered several forms of the verb portare, “to carry”:

• porto (I carry)

• portas (you singular carry)

• portat (he or she carries)

These are our singular verb endings: -o, -s, -t. Here are the plural verbs:

• portamus (we carry)

• portatis (you plural carry)

• portant (they carry)

These endings are -mus, -tis, -nt.

The endings -mus and -tis are new. They the first-person plural (we) and second-person plural (you) respectively, and these patterns apply to all verbs in the present tense.

We and You

Consider this sentence:

puellas in foro videmus

“We see the girls in the forum”

Here, -mus at the end of the verb videmus shows that "we" are the subject, and therefore the ones doing the verb. puellas is the accusative form, meaning they are the object and not the subject, so the girls are not in charge of this sentence.

Here’s another examples:

puerum vocatis

“You (all) call the boy"

Here, the ending -tis signifies "you plural" are the subject of the sentence. Again, the object, puerum, being accusative, cannot be the subject.

Emphasizing Subjects with Pronouns

In Easy Latin Part 2 and Easy Latin Part 3, we looked at using the pronouns ego (I) and tu (you) for emphasis. Neither are necessary, because verb endings show who the subject is anyway.

Similarly, nos (we) and vos (you plural) can be used for emphasis. Seeing nos points toward a verb ending in -mus, while vos suggests a verb ending in -tis. Again, neither of these are necessary, but add stress to who is in charge of the verb.

Practise Makes Perfect

Let's have a look at some examples to practise verb endings. Like usual, under the sentences there is a green box with some helpful vocabulary.

1. servos in foro salutatis

2. in horto sedemus

3. puella dona in via portat

4. feminam video

5. nos argentarios vocamus

6. vos in villa habitatis

Read on for the answers!

1. servos in foro salutatis

servos is accusative plural, so it can't be in charge of the verb. So let's ignore servos for now. I'm going to look at my verb first. salutatis means “you plural greet”.

Then I've got servos, my accusative plural, “the slaves”. in foro “in the market” or “in the forum”.

“You greet the slaves in the forum”.

2. in horto sedemus.

sedemus - I'm going to look at the verb first because it tells me the most information. This is a “we” ending, and it means “we sit”.

“We sit in the garden”.

3. puella dona in via portat.

Look at the verb first: portat. It’s a singular third person verb, meaning “he/she carries”.

Now I'm going to see if I have a subject, a nominative, that is singular in this sentence that might match my verb.

puella is nominative singular and it means “the girl”. So the girl carries, dona “the gifts” in via.

“The girl carries the gifts in the street”.

4. feminam video.

feminam is singular and it's accusative, so cannot be in charge of my sentence.

video tells me that “I” am doing the verb. “I see”.

“I see the woman”.

5. nos argentarios vocamus.

vocamus means “we call”, and the sentence also includes nos, “we”, so it is emphatic.

argentarios is accusative plural, “the bankers”.

“We call the bankers”.

6. vos in villa habitatis.

habitatis tells me that it's a “you plural” verb. We also have vos, which we don't need, but it's emphatic.

“You (all) live in the house”.

All Present Tense Person Endings

Here is the complete present tense in Latin.

The endings you need to learn are here:

• o

• s

• t

• mus

• tis

• nt

These are the same for present tense verbs from any conjugation.

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Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!

vale!