The chapter of the shut door. It teaches the vocabulary of thresholds and hinges, but it chiefly does something far larger: it turns the Latin verb round and shows that it rests not on one stem but on three.
What the book teaches and the course now serves:
- the supine, in -um after motion (venit monitum) and in -ū after an adjective (facile dictū). The generator now has both cells, and the exercises distinguish them from the participle and infinitive;
- the active present of ferre: ferō, fers, fert, ferimus, fertis, ferunt. The four persons held in reserve in capitulum XII are now open and drilled here.
What remains out of reach:
- the pronoun iste, ista, istud, whose table our generator does not have. hic and ille carry the demonstration alone;
- the compound forms of the perfect (pulsus est, a passive rūpisse, the future infinitives). Our generator produces none of them, by decision: one cell is worth one word, and pulsus est is worth two. The participle is learnt here, alone and declined; welding it to esse is capitulum XXI's charge.
1. The verb has three stems
This is the point of the chapter, and it changes how a dictionary is read.
- A verb entry gives not one form but three: pellō, pepulī, pulsum.
- Each commands a whole family:
- the present stem (pell-) gives pellit, pellēbat, pellet, pellere;
- the perfect stem (pepul-) gives pepulit, and all the completed past;
- the supine stem (puls-) gives the perfect participle pulsus, pulsa, pulsum.
- To know a Latin verb is to know its three stems. None can be deduced from the others.
2. The second stem cannot be guessed
The chapter is its catalogue, and deliberately so: Ørberg gathers verbs here on purpose, so that the rule you thought you held breaks.
| process | examples |
|---|---|
| reduplication | pellō → pepulī · mordeō → momordī |
| lengthened vowel | rumpō → rūpī · prehendō → prendī |
| -s- | cēdō → cessī · vinciō → vīnxī · admittō → admīsī |
| -u- | moneō → monuī · terreō → terruī · fremō → fremuī |
| dropped nasal | scindō → scidī |
| nothing at all | solvō → solvī — the perfect differs from the present in its ending alone |
Two traps worth keeping:
- prehendit is the present, prendit the perfect: the -he- drops.
- vincīre is “to bind” (vīnxī, vīnctum); vincere is “to conquer” (vīcī, victum). Nothing connects them.
3. The perfect participle
- It comes out of the third stem, and it declines exactly like bonus: vīnctus, vīncta, vīnctum.
- It says what the noun has undergone, and agrees with it in gender, number and case.
- It needs no auxiliary to work. Canis territus saluit — “the dog, frightened, leapt”. The participle is simply set beside the noun.
4. The ablative absolute
- A noun and a participle, both in the ablative, detached from the rest of the sentence.
- They state the circumstance, and then the sentence starts afresh with its own subject.
Catēnā ruptā, canis forās cucurrit. — “The chain once broken, the dog ran out.”
Cane vīnctō, iānitor forēs clausit. — “The dog once bound, the doorkeeper shut the door-leaves.”
Neither catēnā nor ruptā depends on cucurrit: it is from that independence that the name absolute, “loosed”, comes.
5. Relative time in the infinitive
- The present infinitive says the thing happens at the same time as the verb carrying it.
- The perfect active infinitive — rūpisse, accessisse, cessisse — says it happened before.
- And this holds whatever the main verb's tense: the infinitive marks not a moment but an order.
Faber canem catēnam rūpisse dīcit. — the craftsman says the dog has broken the chain.
6. Material adjectives
From a name of matter, Latin draws a quality, with the suffix -eus (the -e- is short):
- aurum → aureus, aurea, aureum — golden
- lignum → ligneus — wooden
- ferrum → ferreus — of iron
They are perfectly ordinary first-class adjectives, and they agree with their noun like any other: catēna aurea, cardō ferreus, forēs ligneae.
7. ferōx, one nominative for three genders
- ferōx serves the masculine, the feminine and the neuter.
- The stem is read not off the nominative but off the genitive, ferōcis, exactly as with a third-declension noun.
| masc. / fem. | neuter | |
|---|---|---|
| nominative sg. | ferōx | ferōx |
| accusative sg. | ferōcem | ferōx |
| ablative sg. | ferōcī | ferōcī |
| nominative pl. | ferōcēs | ferōcia |
8. Inside, outside
Two prepositions and two adverbs, on the same idea.
- extrā and intrā demand the accusative, always: extrā vīllam, intrā iānuam. They are built on the same -trā as contrā.
- forās and forīs differ only in their ending, and motion is what separates them:
- forās — towards the outside, with motion: forās īre, to go out;
- forīs (long ī) — outside, where one stands: forīs stāre, to wait outside.
This is exactly the opposition of in + accusative and in + ablative, frozen onto two words. And take care: foris, with a short i, is something else entirely — it is a noun, the leaf of a door.
9. Three constructions to keep
- cēdere and resistere call for the dative: one does not yield someone, one yields to someone — canī cēdit, canī resistit. The two verbs say opposite things and are built alike.
- cavēre takes in the accusative the thing to be guarded against: Cavē canem, the very sentence Romans wrote at their door.
- arbitrārī is a third verb with a passive shape and an active sense, after those of capitula XVI and XVII: arbitror, arbitrāris, arbitrātur. The one who judges is not being judged.
10. quis, quid, in another use
You have known quis since capitulum I, where it asks a question. After sī, nisi, num and nē it asks nothing: it means “someone”, “something”, shortened from aliquis.
The forms are exactly the same. Only the sense changes, and it is the little word in front that warns you.