Capitulum X — Bēstiae et Hominēs

Lions, eagles, fish: the scenery changes, but the heart of the chapter is elsewhere. This capitulum hands you one new form for every verb you already know — the infinitive — and it hands you all four conjugations at once. Little to read, a great deal to remember.

The active infinitive: one ending, -re

The -re is shared; it is the vowel in front of it that tells you the conjugation — which is why, from here on, the book quotes its verbs in the infinitive instead of the 3rd person. The infinitive is a verb's identity card.

Two irregulars, and one macron is all that separates them:

esse = “to be” (< sum) ≠ ēsse = “to eat” (< edō, = edere)

The same trap as est / ēst in capitulum IX.

The passive infinitive: -rī… except in the 3rd conjugation

Remember the anomaly: conjugations 1, 2 and 4 add -rī; the 3rd puts a bare -ī on the stem — pōnī, emī, claudī, capī, dūcī. One letter, not two.

The agent is expressed as in capitulum VI: ā / ab + ablative — ā cane capī, “to be caught by the dog”.

What it is for: three verbs that call for an infinitive

• potest / possunt — “can” (volāre potest)
• vult / volunt — “wants” (lūdere volunt)
• audet / audent — “dares” (ascendere nōn audet = timet)

Careful: of posse and velle the chapter introduces only these 3rd persons. The rest of the paradigms will come (capitula XV and XX); do not guess them.

And the in-house trap, internal to this very chapter: volō means “I fly” (volāre) and “I want” (velle). Everywhere else the two part company:

volās / vīs · volat / vult · volant / volunt · volāre / velle

necesse est + dative + infinitive

necesse is an indeclinable neuter; esse carries the inflection, and the infinitive is the real subject:

Avī ālās movēre necesse est. — “The bird must move its wings.”

The dative says for whom it is necessary. It may be missing, and an accusative sometimes takes its place (necesse est eum portāre).

Accusative + infinitive: you read it, you don't learn it yet

After vidēre, audīre, aspicere, the chapter writes this everywhere:

Līvia pilam ā cane capī videt. — “Livia sees her ball being caught by the dog.”

Subject in the accusative, verb in the infinitive. The book uses it from now on but will only explain it in capitulum XI: here, just learn to recognise it.

The 3rd declension, continued

The book adds four paradigms and tells you each time what they resemble:

Three of these nominatives hide their stem, and the book shows why: leō < leōn, vōx < vōcs, pēs < peds. homō, hominis is built like leō, leōnis — the book does not note it, but the genitive shows it.

Quantities to watch: pēs (long ē) but pedis, pedem, pedum (short e); āēr (two long vowels) but āeris, āere (short e); animal (short a, short i) but animālis, animālia (long ā).

Three neuters enter the vocabulary — flūmen, mare, animal — but the book itself defers their paradigm to capitulum XI. Just remember the pair that opposes them: mare gives marī in the ablative and marium in the genitive plural; flūmen gives flūmine and flūminum.

The -iō verbs

capere, facere, parere belong to the 3rd conjugation, but with an -i-:

capit but capiunt · facit but faciunt · parit but pariunt

Imperatives: cape! capite! — and the apocopated fac!, to be filed with dīc! and dūc!

Do not confuse parere (pariō, short a, “to lay eggs”) with pārēre (pāreō, long ā, “to obey”, capitulum IV): parit / pariunt against pāret / pārent.

Four connectives

• quod = quia, “because”, + indicative — distinct from the pronoun quod;
• cum as a conjunction + indicative, “when, whenever” — distinct from cum + ablative, “with”;
• enim “for, indeed” (= nam), never first: is enim = nam is;
• ergō “therefore” (= itaque), always first.

Finally nēmō < ne- + homō = nūllus homō: accusative nēminem, dative nēminī.

One line to remember: active infinitive in -re (-āre, -ēre, -ere, -īre), passive in -rī except a bare -ī in the 3rd; esse ≠ ēsse; potest, vult, audet + infinitive; necesse est + dative + infinitive; volant ≠ volunt; avium/piscium against leōnum/hominum/pedum/vōcum; capit but capiunt; enim second, ergō first.