The chapter of the gerund. Latin could already say volāre, “to fly”; here it learns to say the art OF flying, ready FOR flying, tired OF flying — that is, to decline the action itself.
What this chapter will never ask you to type: it brings līber, lībera, līberum “free” (long ī), written like liber, librī “book” (short i, capitulum II). Our marking never punishes a missing macron; this pair will therefore only be put to you in reading, where the eye sees the difference.
1. The gerund: what it is
- It is a neuter singular noun of the 2nd declension, made out of the verb.
- It is made in one syllable: present stem + -nd- + the ending.
- It has only four cases, and the book really exercises only three of them.
- It never agrees with anything: it stays as it is, whatever stands around it.
- And above all: it stays a verb. It keeps its object, its adverb, its negation.
| conjugation | infinitive | gerund |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | levāre | levandum, levandī, levandō |
| 2nd | docēre | docendum, docendī, docendō |
| 3rd | legere | legendum, legendī, legendō |
| 3rd mixed | effugere | effugiendum, effugiendī, effugiendō |
| 4th | invenīre | inveniendum, inveniendī, inveniendō |
- Two traps, and both are vowels. The 3rd does not make *legandī but legendī. The 4th and the mixed insert an i the stem did not show: inveniendī, effugiendī, quatiendī.
- It owes nothing to the supine, which is why it always exists: quatere in Ørberg has neither past nor participle, and yet it has its quatiendō.
2. The gerund: what it does
Three uses, and there are no others in this chapter.
| case | what it gives | example |
|---|---|---|
| accusative after ad | purpose | In hortum exit ad ambulandum. — he goes out into the garden to walk |
| genitive | belonging, after a noun or an adjective of desire | ars canendī · tempus legendī · cōnsilium effugiendī · studiōsus discendī |
| bare ablative | means | Litterās legendō discimus. — it is by reading that we learn |
- With in + ablative, the same form gives circumstance: in effugiendō, “while escaping”.
- The dative exists, but the book itself brackets it: no sentence of the chapter uses it, and none of our exercises requires it.
3. Why it had to be invented
- The infinitive can be a subject — volāre difficile est — but it does not decline: it can follow neither a preposition nor a noun.
- The gerund cannot be a subject — the nominative is already taken by the infinitive — but it can do all the rest.
- The two share the work, and that is why neither replaces the other.
Nēmō nātūram suam mūtāre potest: ars mūtandī hominī nōn datur. Nobody can change his nature: the art of changing is not given to man.
The two forms of the same verb follow one another in that sentence: mūtāre depends on a verb, mūtandī on a noun.
4. How to tell it from a gerundive
- Later on (capitulum XXXI) you will meet a form written exactly alike, in -nd-, which does agree.
- In this chapter the rule is simple: if the -nd- word does not move, it is a gerund.
- And it keeps its object in the accusative: ad cēram molliendum, terram dēspiciendō.
5. celer, celeris, celere — the only three-ending adjective
- The course already had two endings (brevis, breve, cap. XII) and a single ending (dīves cap. XIX, pār cap. XXIV). Here is the third profile, and it is the course's only one.
- The stem is read off the feminine: celer-. The masculine keeps a prop vowel, like pulcher.
| m | f | n | |
|---|---|---|---|
| nominative sg | celer | celeris | celere |
| accusative sg | celerem | celerem | celere |
| ablative sg | celerī | celerī | celerī |
| nominative pl | celerēs | celerēs | celeria |
| genitive pl | celerium | celerium | celerium |
- The trap: celeris looks like a masculine nominative, like brevis. It is not.
- Superlative celerrimus, with two r's.
Two others come with it, with a single ending, whose stem is read off the genitive:
- audāx, audācis → audācem, audācī, audācium, audācia
- ingēns, ingentis → ingentem, ingentī, ingentium, ingentia (the e is short outside the nominative)
6. summus and īnfimus: two superlatives with no positive
- They mean “highest” and “lowest”, and so they are not compared: *summior does not exist.
- And they do not mean what one expects: summus mōns is not “the highest mountain” but “the top of the mountain”.
In summō monte nix est, in īnfimō flōrēs. On the top of the mountain there is snow, at the bottom flowers.
The pair of directions goes with them: sūrsum [↑] and deorsum [↓], two words learnt only together.
7. vidērī: “to seem”
- It is the passive of vidēre, with a sense the active does not have.
- The person to whom the thing seems goes in the dative; what it seems to be goes in the nominative.
Fabula longa mihi vidētur. — The story seems long to me.
It is the direct ancestor of “it seems to me”.
8. Three traps in the vocabulary
- accidit is two forms at once: present and past are written alike, without even a macron. It is the convertit of capitulum XXIV — only context decides. The verb wants the dative: quod puerō accidit.
- persequī is not cōnsequī: the first gives the effort (pursuing the man who flees), the second the result (overtaking him). The book sets them in one sentence so that it can be seen.
- paene is not prope, despite the book's gloss: paene states a degree (paene mortuus, almost dead), prope a place (prope mare, near the sea). The mnemonic is in the chapter itself: paenīnsula, “almost an island” — not an island nearby.
9. Five small words that change the tone
| haud | a drier negation than nōn, bearing on a word, never on a verb alone: haud facile |
| paene | almost — of degree |
| quidem | stresses the word before it, and never stands first: carcer quidem clausus est |
| tamquam | as if — the unreal comparison, where sīcut compares two real things |
| vērum | a stronger “but” than sed: nōn sōlum… vērum etiam… |
And two conjunctions, plus a preposition:
- quoniam gives a cause already granted (“since”), where quia gives a new one.
- sīn opens the second limb of an alternative and never stands alone: sī… sīn…
- trāns + accusative crosses and comes out the other side, where per goes through without leaving.
10. Three homographs not to confuse
| this chapter | what you already knew |
|---|---|
| līber, lībera, līberum “free” (long ī, adjective) — hence lībertās | liber, librī “book” (short i, noun, cap. II) — whose e drops at the genitive |
| opus, operis “work”, with its whole table | opus est “there is need” (cap. XIX), which had one form only |
| vērum “but” (indeclinable) | vērum, vērī “the truth” (noun, cap. XV) |
11. Latin names its own form once more
gerundium, from the verb gerere “to carry on, to do”: what is to be done. After perfectum (cap. XXI) and plūsquamperfectum (cap. XXIV), it is the third word by which the language describes itself — and this one English took over unchanged.
12. What you will meet without having to produce it
- The future imperative in -tō, once only, at line 81: Cautus estō!, “be cautious, and stay so”. It is an order for later, where es! is an order for now. The book only tabulates it in capitulum XXXIII, and our exercises will not ask it of you.
- quisquam, “anyone at all”, which Ørberg himself glosses with ūllus homō. In its place we give you nēmō and ūllus, which say the same thing.