Do you ever find yourself sat in front of a Latin passage thinking where on earth is the verb? Well today I'm going to show you how to hunt through Latin passages to have the best chance of finding the verb.
Why do we need verbs?
First of all, verbs are really important. They tell us who is doing the action.
What the action is and when the action happened. So they're always the first thing I think you should look for in a passage.
What’s important?
There are five important things about a verb:
Who is doing it? First, second, or third person.
The number, is it singular or plural?
Tense, when was it happening, present, past, future.
The voice of the verb, is it active or passive?
And the mood of the verb, is it indicative or subjunctive?
And all these things will tell you a heck of a lot about what is going on in the passage.
How to spot the verb
So to spot the verb you need to know a couple of things:
They're often at the end of a clause. The slight caveat here is that the verb “is” (sum), is often in the middle of a clause, the same place where we would expect it in English. But all the others will mostly be at the end of a clause.
They follow distinct patterns of endings. Once you have learnt those endings, they should be relatively easy to spot.
If you are struggling with Latin verbs, you can download my Complete Verbs Reference Guide here. It has all the endings for active and passive verbs, in the indicative and subjunctive moods.
You can use vocabulary to help you. If you have been learning your vocab and you know what your verbs are, and you spot a word in the passage that looks like one of those, then it probably is a verb, or at least a part of a verb.
Hunting through a passage
So, we're going to have a look at a passage. Now don't freak out, this is quite a long passage, but it's a really good piece of text to have a look at.
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit. horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.
This is from Caesar de Bello Gallico, about his Gallic Wars, and it's the very first bit of that, the very first few sentences. All we're going to do is have a look at each line and see where the verbs are.
Let’s take the first clause:
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
The verb is est. That is the one that doesn't follow the rule that I started with. The verb is usually at the end, unless it is a form of sum.
omnis Gallia divisa est, “all of Gaul is divided”
in partes tres, “into three parts”
Okay, next section.
quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.
Now I have two verbs in this next bit because it's a set of clauses. We have some relative clauses that start with quarum and then we have our main verb.
So, starting with quarum we need to find a verb. Now, they're usually the end of clauses, so I'm looking near a comma, but we also have to remember those endings. If I see something that, for example, ends in -nt, I'm going to think, “ah, that's a they form of a verb”.
incolunt, “inhabit” or “live”: they live.
This is present tense, because it's a historic present in order to make things more interesting for the reader. Caesar does this a lot, he talks in present tense. It's what I do when I talk about translations or history actually, I talk about these historical figures in present tense because it makes it more vivid.
quarum unam incolunt Belgae, “the Belgae live in one of the parts”
I don’t have another verb for a while, so I will keep using incolunt.
aliam Aquitani [incolunt] “the Aquitaine live in another”
tertiam qui [incolunt] “those who live in the third”
Now I need another verb:
apellantur, “[they] are called”
ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli, “Celts in their own language, Gauls in ours”.
So far, so good
Then I'm going to keep going.
hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt.
Again, I'm going to start with looking for my verb. Go to the end of the sentence:
differunt, is a “they” verb and it's in the present tense. “they differ”.
hi omnes “these all” differ
lingua, institutis, legibus “in language, custom and laws”
“amongst themselves”, inter se.
Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit.
This sentence is interesting because Gallos is not my nominative. So that doesn't really help me at all with what's going on with my sentence. I'm going to look for the verb again. Always look for the end of the clause to see if that will help you.
In this case, my clause finishes at flumen. I don't have a verb in that clause, so I'm going to go to my second clause and see if I can use the verb twice.
At the end of my next sentence, I have dividit. Now that means divides. Let’s try that with my first clause to see if it makes sense.
Garumna flumen, “the Garumna river”, which is the Garonne,
dividit “divides”
Gallos ab Aquitanis “the Galls from the Aquitanes”.
“The river Garonne divides the Gauls from the Aquitaines.”
And then I have to take my verb again - dividit also goes with the next clause.
Matrona et Sequana are the nominatives: “The Matrona River and the Sequona River” (which are the Marne and the Seine today),
dividit: divide
“them”, the Gauls from our last clause,
a Belgis “from the Belgae”.
Next section
The rest of this section is actually all one sentence, so we have to make sure we are looking at clauses, not just sentences.
horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.
omnium horum, “of all of these”
Now that again is not nominative. So I just keep going to find my verb.
sunt. Look, it's not at the end of my clause, it's the verb “to be”, so it can be in the middle.
“the Belgae are” fortissimi, “the most brave” “of all of these”.
Propteria “because”. This starts a new clause, again the verb is at the end - absunt, “be away”.
longissimi absunt, “they are the furthest away”,
a cultu atque humanitate provinciae, “from the culture and the humanity/customs of the province”.
So the Belgae are the furthest away from the trappings of Roman life. So they're the most brave.
I'm going to look for another verb. I have commeant, so this is my next clause:
minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant
mercatores, “the merchants” is the nominative
commeant, “come to, go to”
eos “them”
minime, “very little”. saepe “often”. They often go out to them very little. - we could say “very infrequently” instead of “often very little” - it’s much better in English.
After this I have atque which is a connective, so that will start the next clause.
atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important,
Now interestingly, I actually have two verbs next to each other here. important is my main verb, so the main clause is atque ea important. But I have another clause in the middle because of quae: that's a relative clause. So quae to pertinent is a sub clause.
atque “and”
important, literally “they import”,
ea those things.
Then the subclause:
quae, “which”
pertinent, “makes”, “accustoms”
animos, “minds”,
ad effeminandos “to effeminacy”. So, softens minds.
This is what they're saying about the Belgae. They're very fierce because they very rarely import things from Rome which might make them weak, so they’re still very strong in themselves.
Final Stretch
We're still going on:
proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.
sunt again, it's a verb “to be”, it doesn't have to be at the end of a clause. “they are”
proximi Germanis, “near to the Germans”
qui “who” - which introduces a new clause - I need a new verb!
incolunt, “live”
trans Rhenum “across the Rhine”
Then the comma helps with finding the start of the next clause. Find a new verb for this clause:
bellum gerunt, “they wage war”
quibuscum, “with whom”
continenter “continually”
“They continually wage war with them”
Phew!
So just a reminder of what we've done as we went through this passage.
We've looked for the verb.
They're often at the end of clauses, unless they're the verb to be.
They follow patterns of endings, like o, s, t, mus, tis, nt, or bam, bas, bat, bamus batis, bant, and those sets of endings.
And it is important that you know your vocabulary to help you spot them.
If you're struggling with any of these endings, sign up below to get the free Complete Verbs Reference Guide sent straight to your inbox.
It will really help you out as you start to learn the endings of verbs and get really comfortable with all those tenses and voices and moods so you can really easily spot them in a passage.
I really hope this translation walkthrough has been helpful for you. Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!