The chapter of the past behind the past. Since capitulum XXI, Latin has been able to say what happened; here it learns to say what had already happened when that happened. It is the first tense of the course that measures itself not against the moment of speaking but against another moment in the past — and it is also, by way of reward, the most regular of them all.
This chapter's limit, stated rather than hidden: it brings two words separated by a single quantity from words you already know — os, ossis “bone” (short o) against ōs, ōris “mouth” (long ō, capitulum XI), and latus, lateris “side” (short a) against lātus, lāta, lātum “wide” (long ā, capitulum XII). Our marking never punishes a forgotten macron; these two pairs will therefore never be asked of you at the keyboard, only in reading, where the eye can see the difference.
1. The active pluperfect: a single rule
Take the perfect stem (capitulum XXI) and stick onto it the imperfect of esse (capitulum XIX). That is all.
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | flēveram I had wept | flēverāmus we had wept |
| 2nd | flēverās you had wept | flēverātis you had wept |
| 3rd | flēverat he had wept | flēverant they had wept |
The six endings are the same in all four conjugations and in the irregulars, without a single exception:
frēgerat · percusserat · converterat · recubuerat · cupīverat · ignōrāverat
And esse, which then contains the idea of being twice over — once in the stem, once in the ending:
fu*eram, fuerās, fuerat, fuerāmus, fuerātis, fuerant*
2. A tense that never stands alone
“He had wept” says nothing until you say when. The pluperfect always waits for a second moment to measure itself against, and Latin supplies it: iam, nōndum, postquam, cum.
Cum māter vēnit, puella iam flēverat. When the mother came, the girl had already wept.
Two verbs, two moments: the mother arrives at a point in the past, and the weeping lies behind that point. If both verbs had the same ending, the sentence would no longer say that one precedes the other — it would set them side by side.
That is why this chapter gives you eight adverbs at once. A story with two storeys needs to range its moments:
| prīmō | at the outset, as opposed to what followed |
| dēnuō | anew, from the beginning, as though nothing had happened |
| subitō | suddenly — nothing announced it |
| continuō | at once — nothing came in between |
| certō | for certain |
| valdē | very, greatly · aliter otherwise · intus inside |
3. The two-word passive — you already know the move
In capitulum XXI you learnt that vocātus est uses two words for a single idea. Here only one of those two words changes:
| medicus vocātur | he is being called (now) — one word |
| medicus vocātus est | he was called — two words |
| medicus vocātus erat | he had been called — two words |
The division of labour has not shifted an inch:
- the first word agrees with the subject like an adjective — vocātus, vocāta, vocātum;
- the second carries person, number and moment — est or erat.
Ossa frācta erant. The bones had been broken. — frācta ends in -a because ossa is a plural of things; erant is plural because there are several bones. Each of the two does its own job, and one alone is never enough.
The full table, as the book gives it:
vocāt*us eram · vocātus erās · vocātus erat · vocātī erāmus · vocātī erātis · vocātī erant*
4. Deponents in the perfect: same frame, active sense
The verbs of capitulum XVI have no active form at all. To state their past they therefore borrow the two-word frame — and keep their active meaning:
mīrāta est — she was amazed (not: she was admired) passa erat — she had endured (not: she had been endured)
This is the chapter's only difficulty that is not one of form but of sense. Two new deponents enter here, and they carry the point: mīrārī to wonder, patī to endure.
5. nōvī means “I know”
nōscere is to get to know. When the getting to know is over, one knows — so that this verb's past states a present:
- nōvī — I know (not: I knew)
- nōverat — he knew (not: he had known)
The sense steps back one notch as the form steps forward one tense. It is the only verb in the chapter whose -erat is not translated with “had”. Its opposite is given at the same time: ignōrāre, not to know — not to be mistaken, but never to have learnt.
6. convertit, the word that is two forms
In convertere, the present and the past of the third person singular are written exactly alike — convertit — without even a macron to part them. Only the new tense decides:
convertit (he turns or he turned) · converterat (he had turned)
An unexpected argument in favour of the tense you are learning here.
7. The rest of the chapter
pār, paris and impār, imparis — two 3rd-declension adjectives with a single ending, like dīves and pauper (capitulum XIX). The stem is read off the genitive, never off the nominative: pār but parem, parī, parēs, paria, parium.
strepitus and tumultus — two 4th-declension masculines, on the model of gradus and manus (capitulum XII). With cornū and genū (capitulum XXI), the declension is complete. Careful: strepitus (one) and strepitūs (several) are parted only by the length of a u.
Three words for noise, and they are not interchangeable: sonus is noise without judgement, strepitus noise that is too loud, made by things, tumultus the disorder made by people.
iūxtā — preposition + accusative: right up against, the room next door.
etsī (et + sī) concedes: “even if”. cēterum reserves: “for the rest”.
plūsquamperfectum — Latin at last names the tense it has just taught, “more than complete”, after imperfectum and perfectum (capitulum XXI). Our English word is only its shortening.
8. What the chapter does not do yet
The imperative of deponents (sequere!, loquere!): one of our sources places it here, but Ørberg's own index dates it to capitulum XXV. None of its forms appears in this dossier.