Latin course for the Virtual School of Languages

Lesson 9: On the Capitol

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Text
Marcus Epicharmo et Demarato hodie Capitolium monstrare studet.
"Ecce, hic populus Romanus summo deo immolare solet, ibi Minervae
reginaeque deorum."
Tum Epicharmus: "Capitolio igitur unus deus et duae deae praesident."
Et Marcus: "Non erras, amice; hic feminae multum valent. Itaque
Marcus Porcius 'Romani', inquit, 'cunctis populis imperant, Romanis
autem feminae imperant - et Romani feminis parent.' "
Tum Demaratus: "Igitur Marco quoque Cornelia imperat, et Marcus
Corneliae parere debet ut servulus."
Amici Graeci diu et valde rident. Tandem et Marcus ridet.
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Reading vocabulary you needn't learn:
duae (Nominative Plural Feminine): two
praesidere: to give shelter
Marcus Porcius: famous Roman politician, also known as Cato
servulus: (small) slave

Vocabulary

Practise the vocabulary of this lesson by matching it.

Usage of words
The verb"inquit"(he/she says/said) is usually put into a sentence of direct speech, so it separates
words that form a sentence together. When translating it, make sure you place "he/she says/said"
before the speech and treat the direct speech as if it wasn't separated. It is possible to use "he said"
in a similar way in English, but it's not at all common, whereas the Romans loved to do this. They
used this in order to stress the part of speech that was left of the inquit. For example:
Marcus Porcius "Romani", inquit, "cunctis populis imperant."
Literal translation: Marcus Porcius: "The Romans", he said, "rule over all people."
Normal translation: Marcus Porcius said: "The Romans rule over all people."

Grammar
In this lesson, you'll learn yet another important case: the Dative. The Dative is a
case used for grammatical objects, like the Accusative. However, it can only 
refer to beings, not things. An example: "Marcus gives the present to Cornelia." 
(Latin: Marcus donum Corneliae dat.). In this sentence, Marcus is the subject and 
therefore Nominative and "gives"(dat) is the predicate, in the 3rd person singular. 
The present (donum) is the (Accusative-)Object, because it answers the standard question
for the Accusative: "whom/what?"; in this case, it's: "What does Marcus give?". 
Cornelia is a second object, she is the recipient of the present. In order not to confuse 
Cornelia as the person/thing that is given, the English put the word "to" in front of her 
name("to Cornelia"), whereas Latin simply uses the Dative (Corneliae). There are 
occasions when the English don't put the word "to" but still the Dative is used in 
Latin, for example "They obey the Romans"(Romanis parent).
You can recognise most of these occasions by trying to put a lifeless thing into the
place of the object (e. g. try to replace "Romans" by a thing); if that is not possible,
Latin most likely uses the Dative. In contrast to languages like French or German, where
it is very important to know whether an object should be Accusative or Dative, it is
rather unimportant in Latin because most of the time you'll try to translate sentences,
not form them, so you'd just have to recognise that the Romans used Dative in the
sentence, not know that they use Dative with this verb and Accusative with that verb
and so on.
The O-declension (both masculine and neuter words!) uses the ending -o for 
Dative Singular, whereas the A-declension uses the ending -ae. In the plural, 
all these declensions use -is.

Do you remember the conjugation of the verb "to be"(esse), which you learned in
lesson 7? The forms are sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt (I am, you are, he/she/it is,
we are, you are, they are). Do you also remember that I said that there are a lot of
verbs that behave just like the verb they derived from, like adesse (adsum, ades, 
adest,...)? I think it's time to introduce another one of these, which is very important:
posse (can, to be able to). Posse is slightly irregular because the ending of the 
stem changes from -s to -t all the time, see its forms: pos-sum, pot-es, pot-est, 
pos-sumus, pot-estis, pos-sunt. (The - is just there to separate the root and the
ending for you, normally it isn't written). Originally, it was a regular verb like adesse, with 
the forms pot-sum, pot-es, pot-est, pot-sumus, pot-estis, pot-sunt. However, due 
to quick pronunciation, the t-s quickly melted into ss, which explains the current forms. 
The original t only survived where it was connected to the e (of es, est and estis).

Exercise
Find the left-out Dative for each sentence and translate.
Datives: adversariis, Barbato, cunctis populis, reginae deorum et dearum, 
summo deo
1. Romani __ magna dona debent.
2. Populus Romanus __ imperat.
3. Saepe __ immolat.
4. Romani __ numquam parent.
5. Syrus __ gladium monstrat.

Information: The Capitolium
On the Capitoline hill there was the Jupiter-temple, in which the three
gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were worshipped. That way, the
Capitolium was the center of religious life in Rome, just like the Forum
was the center of political life.
.
The Capitolium, seen from the Tiber river.

Exercise answers:
1. Romani reginae deorum et dearum magna dona debent.
    The Romans owe big presents to the queen of gods and goddesses.
2. Populus Romanus cunctis populis imperat.
    The Roman people rules over all peoples.
3. Saepe summo deo immolat.
    It always makes sacrifices to the supreme god.
4. Romani adversariis numquam parent.
    Romans never obey the foes.
5. Syrus Barbato gladium monstrat.
    Syrus shows the sword to Barbatus.