Capitulum V — Vīlla et hortus

We leave the classroom and tour a house: atrium, impluvium, peristyle, bedrooms, garden. The setting is not decoration — it is there to install the one case still missing, the ablātīvus, and the plural everywhere: in nouns (accusative and ablative) and in verbs (imperative and indicative). This is the densest chapter so far: take it in two sittings.

The accusative plural

You already know the accusative singular (servum, rosam, cubiculum); here is its plural, one ending per gender:

Lȳdia multās rosās et multa līlia carpit. — Lydia picks many roses and many lilies.

The ablātīvus, the new case

The ablative answers “where?”, “with whom?”, “from where?”. Its mark is a long vowel in the singular and -īs in the plural — for all three genders:

Two traps, both unavoidable here:

1. rosa (nominative) and rosā (ablative) differ only by the macron — in speech, only by vowel length.
2. The plural -īs is shared by all three genders, whereas the accusative plural keeps -ōs and -ās apart. Do not confuse cum rosīs (with roses) and rosās (roses, object).

The five prepositions taking the ablative

The book gathers them into a single block — learn them as a closed list:

cum and sine form a pair of opposites, just like pulcher and foedus. Note that this chapter introduces only the forms ab and ex; the variants ā and ē come later.

The verb in the plural

Two new forms, symmetrical to the singulars you know: the imperative takes -te, the 3rd-person indicative takes -nt.

Two apparent irregularities worth memorising: the 3rd conjugation changes its vowel between the two numbers (carpe but carpite), and its plural indicative ends in -unt, not -ent; the 4th inserts an i (veniunt).

Venīte in hortum et rosās carpite, puerī! — Come into the garden and pick the roses, boys!

The plural vocative is always identical to the plural nominative: puerī!, ancillae!, līberī! — no special form to learn.

The neuter plural in -a

A neuter always has the same form in the nominative and the accusative; in the plural that form is -a: cubicula, ōstia, līlia, peristȳla. The verb, however, does go plural:

Cubicula parva sunt, sed peristȳla magna sunt.

pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum

A 1st-class adjective whose masculine ends in -er: the e drops as soon as an ending is added. Stem: pulchr-.

hortus pulcher — rosa pulchra — līlium pulchrum — multae rosae pulchrae

Never pulcherus or pulchera. Its opposite is foedus, -a, -um (“ugly”), which follows the ordinary bonus pattern. Note also sōlus, -a, -um (“alone”), presented here as a perfectly ordinary adjective.

is, ea, id: the paradigm opens up

You had is, eum, eam, eius. This chapter adds eleven cells at once, each one glossed in the margin by its antecedent:

The book itself gives both spellings, iī = eī and iīs = eīs: both are correct. Above all, remember the genitive plural used as a possessive: Dominus eōrum = “their master” (of the men), Domina eārum = “their mistress” (of the women).

One-line takeaway: accusative plural -ōs / -ās / -a; ablative -ō / -ā in the singular, -īs for everyone in the plural; in, ex, ab, cum, sine + ablative; plural imperative -te, plural indicative -nt (-unt in [3], -iunt in [4]); neuter plural in -a; pulcher, pulchra, pulchrum.