Lesson 42 · Review
A review lesson prints no vocabulary of its own. These are the words the reading Terror Cimbricus adds; everything else in it you have already met.
Teutonēs, Teutonum is a third-declension plural of Class II — a name that exists only in the plural, declined like legiōnēs. Cimbrī, Cimbrōrum, despite standing beside it in every sentence, is second declension: its genitive is -ōrum, not -um.
Every consonant stem takes the same terminations. What separates the three classes is one question only: what happens in the nominative singular.
These stems are masculine or feminine, and they append -s to the base: prīnceps, mīles, lapis, rēx, iūdex, virtūs.
So mīles, mīlitis, m., soldier — base mīlit-, and the reading's mīlitēs, peditibus, equitibus, salūtem, calamitātem all belong here.
Here the nominative singular is the base, sometimes slightly changed: cōnsul, legiō, ōrdō, pater.
The reading's imperātor, ōrātor, terror, labor, legiōnēs, pater and Teutonēs are all of this class.
The neuters likewise add no termination: flūmen, tempus, opus, caput. Nominative and accusative are identical in both numbers, and in the plural both end in -a.
No third-declension neuter occurs in the reading at all — drill these four straight from the paradigm.
Drop -is from the genitive singular and the base remains. Nothing else is reliable: not one of rēx, legiō, pater, flūmen, tempus, caput shows its own base in the nominative. Always learn the genitive with the nominative.
Read down the nominative row: three different stories. Read down everything below it: one story, told twice for the masculines and feminines and once, with two changes, for the neuters.
| mīles, m. Class I | legiō, f. Class II | Terminations M. and F. | flūmen, n. Class II | Terminations Neuter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | mīlit- | legiōn- | flūmin- | ||
| Nom. sg. | mīles | legiō | -s / — | flūmen | — |
| Gen. | mīlitis | legiōnis | -is | flūminis | -is |
| Dat. | mīlitī | legiōnī | -ī | flūminī | -ī |
| Acc. | mīlitem | legiōnem | -em | flūmen | — |
| Abl. | mīlite | legiōne | -e | flūmine | -e |
| Nom. pl. | mīlitēs | legiōnēs | -ēs | flūmina | -a |
| Gen. | mīlitum | legiōnum | -um | flūminum | -um |
| Dat. | mīlitibus | legiōnibus | -ibus | flūminibus | -ibus |
| Acc. | mīlitēs | legiōnēs | -ēs | flūmina | -a |
| Abl. | mīlitibus | legiōnibus | -ibus | flūminibus | -ibus |
Below the nominative, Class I and Class II are letter for letter the same. The neuter differs in exactly two places — its accusative copies its nominative, and its nominative-accusative plural is -a where the others have -ēs.
Each class disguises its base in its own way, and every disguise is regular.
The s cannot stand after them, so they fall away: mīlet+s gives mīles, lapid+s gives lapis, virtūt+s gives virtūs.
The reading's salūs (base salūt-) and calamitās (base calamitāt-) are made exactly so.
Nothing is lost here; two letters are written as one. iūdec+s gives iūdex, and rēg+s gives rēx.
Most two-syllable nouns of this class also show i in the base but e in the nominative — prīnceps/prīncip-, mīles/mīlit-, iūdex/iūdic-. lapis is the exception, keeping its i throughout.
So legiōn- gives legiō and ōrdin- gives ōrdō, the n vanishing altogether; and patr- gives pater.
Bases that already end in a letter a word can close on change nothing at all: cōnsul, imperātor, terror, labor.
Here the n stays and the vowel shifts: flūmin- gives flūmen. And oper- gives opus, tempor- gives tempus.
Compare the neuter tempus, temporis with the masculine labor, labōris: the same kind of base, two different nominatives, because one is neuter and the other is not.
The reading carries two notes of its own, neither of them about declension.
pugnō is intransitive, so its passive can have no personal subject. pugnātur means literally it is fought, freely the battle is fought or the contest rages. A verb whose subject is thus indeterminate is called impersonal.
The reading uses the perfect: Diū et ācriter pugnātum est — literally it was fought, freely the fighting raged long and fiercely. Do not hunt for a subject; there is none.
Governing two objects at once — an accusative of the thing levied and a dative of the people it is levied upon — imperō means make a levy of (something) upon (some one).
Cōpiās novās nōn sōlum tōtī Italiae sed etiam prōvinciīs sociōrum imperāvit — cōpiās novās is the thing levied; tōtī Italiae and prōvinciīs sociōrum are those upon whom it falls.
Six out of six before you start the exercises.
Question 1
What is the base of salūs, salūtis, and how is its nominative formed?
Right. Drop -is from salūtis and salūt- remains — that base, never the nominative, carries the whole declension: salūtem, salūte, salūtēs. It is Class I, so -s is added, and a final -t cannot stand before s: salūt+s gives salūs, exactly as virtūt+s gives virtūs.
Not quite — the base is never read off the nominative. Take the genitive salūtis, remove -is, and ask what had to happen to that last letter before an -s.
Question 2
The base of rēx, rēgis is rēg-. Why is the nominative rēx rather than rēgs?
Right. Nothing is lost — x simply is the letter for that pair of sounds, so rēg+s = rēx and iūdec+s = iūdex. That is what distinguishes this change from the one in mīles, where the -t genuinely disappears. Either way the genitive puts the base back: rēgis, iūdicis.
Not quite — compare rēx with mīles. In one of them a letter of the base has vanished; in the other it is still there, hidden inside a single written character. Which is which?
Question 3
mīles adds -s in the nominative; cōnsul adds nothing. In which case do the terminations of the two classes next differ?
Right. This is the point of calling them one declension. mīlitis, mīlitī, mīlitem, mīlite and cōnsulis, cōnsulī, cōnsulem, cōnsule run in perfect step, and so do their plurals. The classes are named for one form only — the nominative singular — and the labour of learning them is therefore almost entirely the labour of learning that one form together with the base.
Not quite — set the two paradigms side by side and read down from the genitive. How many rows actually disagree?
Question 4
The reading has legiōnēs. Why could this form never belong to a third-declension neuter?
Right. A neuter plural nominative and accusative are flūmina, tempora, opera, capita — always -a, never -ēs. Option a overstates the rule: the neuters add nothing in the nominative and accusative only; their genitive, dative and ablative carry the ordinary -is, -ī, -e, -um, -ibus like everything else in the declension.
Not quite — -ēs is a perfectly good third-declension ending; look at the neuter column of the paradigm and find what stands in the Nom. pl. and Acc. pl. rows instead.
Question 5
In Diū et ācriter pugnātum est, what is the subject of pugnātum est?
Right. An intransitive verb has no object to promote, so its passive can have no personal subject at all. Literally it was fought; freely the battle was fought, the fighting raged long and fiercely. Note that pugnātum accordingly stays neuter singular no matter who was doing the fighting — there is no noun for it to agree with.
Not quite — before hunting for a nominative, ask whether pugnō can take a direct object in the first place. What would a passive without one have as its subject?
Question 6
Cōpiās novās nōn sōlum tōtī Italiae sed etiam prōvinciīs sociōrum imperāvit. What are cōpiās novās and tōtī Italiae doing?
Right. imperō here is not the plain he commanded: it governs two objects at once, an accusative of what is demanded and a dative of whom it is demanded from. Option c misreads the forms as well as the sense — tōtī Italiae and prōvinciīs are datives, not accusatives. Marius is not making a gift to Italy; he is imposing a levy on it.
Not quite — check the case of tōtī Italiae and prōvinciīs first, then ask whether troops are flowing toward Italy or being demanded out of it.
Answered correctly: 0 / 6