Latin course for the Virtual School of Languages

Lesson 25: Beaten winners

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Text
(We already know that simple Romans were often hostile to Greeks. 
This is what an important Roman politician of the 2nd century BC thought 
about the Greeks:)
Marcus Porcius Cato, vir severus et asper, Graecos cunctis Romanis
perniciosos putabat.
"Graecia expugnata", inquit, "Romam expugnabit, nisi cavebimus.
Litterae Romam importatae, philosophi e Graecia huc arcessiti pueris
nostris nocebunt.
Iam disciplina antiqua a cunctis populis laudata interdum labat; mox
filii vestri non iam parati erunt pro patria pugnare. Tum adversarii a
nobis saepe superati exsultabunt, arma capessent, Romam et Capitolium
numquam expugnatum, numquam deletum petent. A quo tum adiuvabimur?
Ubi erunt copiae Romanae vix umquam superatae? Ubi (erunt) viri ne
summis quidem periculis perturbati?
Cavete, Romani! Nos semper disciplina, constantia, modestia clari fuimus,
non litteris et eloquentia!"
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Reading vocabulary you needn't learn:
labare: to stagger

Vocabulary

constantia, -ae

constancy, solidity, firmness

Practise the vocabulary of this lesson by matching it.	

Grammar
This lesson is about the Participle Perfect Passive (we'll refer to it as PPP).
Don't run away yet, participles don't bite. I'm sure you already know some,
at least in English.
For example "conquered" is a participle, if you use it like in adjective:
"the conquered city". Or "imported", as in "imported beer".
In Latin, PPP is formed by taking a verb stem (taking off the -re which is
an infinitive marker), like "importa-". Then, add -t- as PPP marker and
the usual adjective endings -us, -a or -um. "imported" translates to "importatus".
The verbs of the Consonantic Conjugation put their usual extra vowel -i-
in between the verb stem and the ending: "petere"(to request) becomes
"petitus"(requested).
These new words behave just like adjectives. They change their endings
according to the noun they refer to, for example "chased-away enemies"
would be "fugati adversarii", not "fugatus adversarii". 
Unfortunately there are also verbs which form their PPP irregularly, just
like some perfect forms are irregular. Some verbs even have no PPP
at all (because there's no reasonable adjective that you could make of
them).  If the PPP is important and irregular, I'll include it in the vocabulary.

There are two ways to translate a PPP. Let's take the example
"Vinum (e Graecia) importatum..." 
The first way of translation would be to treat the PPP like an adjective,
so you'd translate the example as "Imported wine (from Greece)...".
The second way of translation would be to make a relative clause out of
the PPP: "Wine, which was imported (from Greece),...". 
As you can see, the first translation is better when there's just the PPP
that refers to the noun, without more information. However, the Romans
also found it great to use the PPP with lots of words that aren't related
to the main clause but just to the PPP. In this case, it's better to create
a relative clause in English. In some cases, that's the only way to translate
a PPP to English.

Exercise
Translate the following expressions:
1) pueri ab amicis vocati
2) vocati pueri
3) copiae a Gallis arcessitae
4) litterae ab Etruscis importatae

See also: 
Information on Greeks and Romans in lessons 13-15
Information on Cato
Information on Ancient Greece




Exercise answers:
1) boys, who were called by their friends, 
2) called boys / boys, who were called,
3) supplies, which were fetch from the Gauls,
4) imported sciences from the Etruscans / sciences, which were imported from the 
Etruscans