Grammatica Capitulum XVI · Tempestās

The chapter leaves the house and takes to the sea. Three new things in the language appear here: a whole family of verbs that look passive and are not, a pair of words set apart that gives the sentence its setting, and a noun that keeps its i throughout. Two quieter turns of phrase come with them: the measure of a gap before a comparative, and the part taken from a whole.

1. The verbs that look passive

A whole family of verbs has only forms in -or, -ris, -tur, -ntur — and yet their meaning is active:

• Puer surgere cōnātur. — the boy tries to get up
• Gubernātor loquitur. — the helmsman speaks
• Nautae ventum opperiuntur. — the sailors wait for the wind

There is no cōnat, no loquit, no opperit. The ending therefore says nothing but the person. Proof that the verb acts: it takes an object, like any other — nauta gubernātōrem sequitur.

How to recognise them: their dictionary shape never ends in -re, but in -rī or -ī.

Many of them double a verb already known: laetārī = gaudēre, verērī = timēre, ēgredī = exīre, opperīrī = exspectāre.

And yet their participle is active: cōnārī gives cōnāns, orīrī gives oriēns — and from there comes the name of the east.

2. The pair of words set apart

Two words with matching endings, at the head of the sentence, attached to nothing:

• Ventō secundō nāvis ex portū nāvigat. — the wind being fair, the ship sails out
• Marī turbidō nautae nōn nāvigant. — the sea being rough, the sailors do not set out
• Sōle oriente nāvis ēgreditur. — at sunrise, the ship goes out

Neither subject nor object: they say under what circumstances the rest happens. Render them with “since…”, “when…”, “with…”. The second word may be an adjective (secundō, turbidō) or a verb form that agrees (oriente, flante).

3. The noun that keeps its i

puppis makes puppim in the accusative and puppī in the ablative, where nāvis makes nāvem and nāve.

Everything else is identical. Only a handful of nouns do this.

4. nauta: a word in -a that names a man

nauta, nautae, nautam declines like rosa — but a sailor is a man, and the word describing him takes the masculine ending:

• nauta bonus, nautae Rōmānī — never nauta bona

The shape gives the declension, the sense gives the gender.

5. fierī — to become

fit, fīunt, infinitive fierī. The verb of change of state, where esse names the state:

• Mare turbidum est. — the sea is rough
• Mare turbidum fit. — the sea turns rough

6. The sailor's sky

A sailor has only the sky for a map, and Latin names the sides of the world by what the sun does there:

• oriēns — “the rising [sun]”, the east; from the verb orīrī, sōl oritur (short i!)
• occidēns — “the falling [sun]”, the west; from the verb occidere, sōl occidit
• septentriōnēs — the seven plough-oxen, that is, the Great Bear: the north. Plural only.

7. dēpōnēns — the word that names the family

This is the book's term for the verbs of section 1, and it is an adjective of one termination: a single nominative word for all three genders.

• verbum dēpōnēns, nāvis dēpōnēns, nōmen dēpōnēns

Its stem is read not off the nominative but off the genitive, dēpōnentis — exactly as for a third-declension noun. Hence dēpōnentem, dēpōnentī, and the neuter plural dēpōnentia.

8. The chapter's small words

• propter + accusative — because of; not to be confused with praeter (cap. XIV), which excludes.
• simul — at the same time; iterum — a second time; vix — hardly, only just.
• tranquillus / turbidus — the two states of the sea, answering each other throughout the chapter. turbidus is the state turbāre has put it in.
• cernere — to see and recognise, more than vidēre (cap. III).
• servāre — to save; invocāre — to call someone to one's aid.

9. By how much? — the measure of the gap

Before a comparing word, a word in -ō says by how much the gap is wide:

• Hic mūrus paulō altior est. — this wall is higher by a little
• Hoc scūtum multō gravius est. — this shield is heavier by much

It is neither the subject nor what undergoes the action: it is a measure, and it stands right before the comparative. The two words used for this are multum (much) and paulum (a little), singular, in that one ending.

10. The part and the whole — the partitive genitive

A word of quantity is not enough on its own: you must say what the part is taken from, and that whole goes in the genitive:

• multum aquae — much of the water
• paulum aquae — a little of the water

This is already plēnus's construction (ch. VII), plēnum aquae, and implēre follows it:

• Puella pōculum aquae implet. — the girl fills the cup with water

11. Three more deponents, and the last words

• intuērī — to gaze at: puer mare intuētur
• cōnsōlārī — to console: māter puerum cōnsōlātur
• complectī — to clasp in one's arms: māter fīlium complectitur

The same family as unit 3: *intuet, *cōnsōlat, *complectit do not exist.

• appellāre — to give a name; haurīre — to draw (water); īnfluere — to flow into (fluere with in-).
• interesse — to be between, like adesse and abesse (ch. IV): intersum, interest, intersunt.
• sīve — two names for one thing, where aut (ch. VIII) chooses between two things.
• semper — always; praetereā — besides; vērō — indeed, and never first in its sentence.
• locus — the place; situs — set there; superus / īnferus — the upper one, the lower one.

Spelling traps

• oritur has a short i, but orīrī a long ī.
• āter, ātra, ātrum — the dull black of a cloud; niger (cap. IX) is the black that shines. āter's -e- never comes back.
• merx is written with an x, but everything else is built on merc-: mercem, mercēs.
• ōra (the coast) is neither hōra (cap. XIII) nor ōs, ōris (cap. XI).
• flūctus, portus, tonitrus are fourth declension: in the plural, flūctūs, with vowel length the only difference.
• altum (the open sea) is the neuter of altus (cap. XII) turned into a noun.
• paulum and praetereā hold diphthongs au, ae: never two syllables.
• cōnsōlārī has two long ō's; īnfluere a long ī in its prefix; vērō a long ō.