39. A fresco painting from the House of the Baker in Pompeii. Pistor in tabernā pānem ēdit; the baker in his shop gives out bread.

Explōrātiō Duodēvīcēnsima (XVIII) Adventure Eighteen

Where and When Are We Today?

Relative Clauses

Independent and Subordinate Clauses

Relative Clauses Defined

Antecedents

English Relative Pronouns

Latin Relative Pronouns

Vocabulary

Masculine Singular Relative Pronouns

Feminine Singular Relative Pronouns

Exercise 1

Translating Masculine and Feminine Relative Pronouns

Exercises 2-6

Neuter Singular Relative Pronouns

Exercises 7-9

Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter Plural Relative Pronouns

Exercises 10-12

Position of the Antecedent, Distinguishing Clauses

Exercises 13-17

Vocabulary

Exercises 18-22

The Irregular Verb possum, posse, potu-ī

Vocabulary

Present Tense Forms of possum, posse, potu-ī

Imperfect and Future Tense Forms of possum, posse, potu-ī

Exercises 23-27

Relative Clauses, Continued

Relative Pronoun Forms: Singular and Plural, All Genders

Unexpressed Antecedents

Exercises 28-29

Interlaced Word Order

Exercises 30-31

Where and When Are We Today?

Mōns Capitolīnus, Rōma

Mēnsis September

M’. Aemiliō Lepidō T. Statiliō Taurō cōnsulibus

Capitoline Hill, Rome

September, 11 CE

The moment I arrived in Rome it immediately felt like something had gone wrong. I was standing in a packed farmer’s market, surrounded by people shouting and bargaining, and although I scanned the crowd in front of me, I did not see Latinitas anywhere. After turning all the way around, I finally saw a thin old man with a smile on his face advancing toward me. Tūne mē quaeris, he said, then added, in English, “Are you looking for me?” which put my panic to rest. “It’s me,” he, or she, said; “I had to disguise myself today for the purposes of our visit. I thought you might use your Latin to get your bearings here, but I guess you’re not ready for that yet. Oh well; malum est cōnsilium quod mūtārī nōn potest, a plan which can’t be changed is a bad one. Anyway, hoc aliquid quod tibi comparāvī, cape, here’s something that I bought for you; take it.”

She placed in my hands a slightly charred triangular flatbread covered with what looked like an herb-and-cheese spread. She frowned at me when I folded it in half – my pizza-eating habit – but I did not care, partly because of the scare she had just given me, and partly because it was delicious – like a panini made with fresh pesto, extra rich in cheese, bright salt, and sharp pepper, with strange hints of bitter and sour.

Thif if fo tafty, I said with my mouth full. Where did you get it?

“Morētum vocātur. Illī vendidēre. It’s called a morētum; they sold it.” She pointed to the morētum vendors: an elderly woman at a table, and, behind her, an old man who was making another batch of spread with a mortar and pestle. I silently saluted their culinary talent, and moved on.

I soon realized there was something else strange going on: Latinitas had a child with her. A young boy of about ten, he had a very serious look on his face and a head full of wild, curly hair. He wore a large colored stone on his necklace; called a bulla, it is supposed to protect against the evil eye. He was carrying a set of wax tablets and a stylus to write with, while Latinitas held a scroll that she would give him later on. The boy seemed to know where we were going and took the lead. As we followed, Latinitas dropped back to explain.

“This headstrong boy whom you’re looking at, whose name you are wondering about, is Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Seneca. I have morphed into his tutor Sotion and given him the day off so I can take him up to the Capitoline hill myself. Seneca recently arrived in Rome from Cordoba, Spain, where he lived since he was born. I told him you were a foreigner studying Latin, so don’t worry about staying out of sight.”

We left behind the Forum Holitōrium – The Vegetable Sellers’ Market – and climbed up another of Rome’s seven hills, the Capitoline. Like the Palatine, this lay near the Roman Forum, but unlike the Palatine, it was dominated by a single enormous building, the temple of Iuppiter Capitolīnus. If you can picture in your mind the famous Parthenon at Athens in its original condition, that might give you a sense of its general size and appearance. On its roof there was a metal statue of Jupiter riding in his chariot. Inside the temple there were statues of Jupiter, and Juno – Jupiter’s wife, and the queen of the gods – as well as Minerva, their daughter, the Roman equivalent of Athena.

Latinitas told me that the temple was very old and had decorations made of terracotta, which is baked clay. Octavian – who I should probably call by his new name and title, the emperor Augustus – had recently refurbished the building, and it was in beautiful condition. Despite what you see in pictures, many of the temples in ancient Rome were in rather bad shape; not this one, though. Today, however, little trace of it remains except for a few pieces of statuary and foundation stone that you can see in a museum.

We joined a crowd that was seated on the temple steps listening to a man deliver a speech in a clear, almost musical voice. He was one of the contestants in a public-speaking competition. The way the competition worked was that the organizer would name a person, living or dead, real or imaginary, who was facing a difficult decision – like, should Alexander the Great keep marching his army further into India, or turn back? – and the contestants had to take a position on it and make a speech pretending to offer the person advice.

When we arrived, the organizer came running over to us and tousled young Seneca’s hair; it was his father, Latinitas said, who was also called Seneca; we call him Seneca the Elder. His son did not seem very interested in what was going on; instead, he opened the scroll Latinitas gave him so he could take notes on his writing tablets. Respecting his youthful self-discipline, I gave him room. When Latinitas turned her attention to me, I was not sure whether to feel honored that I was studying Latin next to a boy who would grow up to be a famous Stoic philosopher, or embarrassed that this little kid was so far ahead of me.

“He’s not that far ahead of you,” Latinitas said. “Right now he’s copying out memorable sayings from the mimes of Publilius Syrus, just like you did a few days ago. I’ll show you what he’s been writing when he’s done. But first you have to learn about something called relative clauses.”

Relative Clauses

Independent and Subordinate Clauses

“A complete sentence has at least one clause. A clause has a subject and a verb; in sentences with more than one clause, they can be connected by a coordinating conjunction, like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’, etc.:

The boy studies Latin, and the stranger eats a sandwich.

The two clauses – (1) The boy studies Latin, (2) the stranger eats a sandwich – could each stand as their own sentence. So, we would say there are two independent or main clauses here.

Other times, one clause is ‘subordinated to’ or made ‘dependent on’ the other by using a subordinating conjunction, like ‘while’, ‘if’, ‘when’, etc.:

The boy studies Latin while the stranger eats a sandwich.

Now, the second clause (while the stranger eats a sandwich) is the subordinate or dependent clause – meaning it could not stand alone as a complete sentence – and the first clause (The boy studies Latin) is the main clause.

Relative Clauses Defined

A relative clause is a subordinate clause that starts with a relative pronoun. In English, ‘who’, ‘whose’, and ‘which’ are common relative pronouns. Take this example:”

‘A plan which cannot be changed is bad.’

“The relative clause is ‘which cannot be changed’ (it is a subordinate clause); the rest – ‘A plan… is bad’ is the main clause. Here is a sentence that contains a main clause and five relative clauses:”

The boy on the road who was leading us, whose name you do not know, to whom you were yielding, whom you were following, about whom you were thinking, is Seneca.

“Here the main clause is just ‘The boy on the road… is Seneca’.”

Antecedents

“The relative pronoun refers to (and takes the place of) a noun or pronoun that is usually expressed in the main clause. In English, the relative usually comes after the noun or pronoun that it refers to, and it often does so in Latin as well:

a plan (noun) which no one can change

the boy (noun) who was leading us

“The noun or pronoun that a relative pronoun refers to – the plan, or the boy – is called its antecedent.”

English Relative Pronouns

“Now let me ask you a question about English: when do you say ‘which’ rather than ‘who’ in a relative clause?”

You say ‘which’ for a thing.

“That’s right; you say ‘which’ when the antecedent is a thing. A plan is a thing, so we say a plan ‘which we made’. Now I have another question for you: in English, when do you say ‘who’, ‘whom’, or ‘whose’?”

When it’s a person.

“That’s right. Here are the rules that tell you which form to use in English:”

1. ‘Who’ is used for the subject of the verb in the relative clause. So, ‘who’ is the subject of ‘was leading’ in the example ‘who was leading us’.

2. ‘Whom’ is for the object of the verb or of a preposition in the relative clause. So, ‘whom’ is the object of ‘were noticing’ in the example ‘whom you were noticing’; ‘whom’ is the object of the preposition ‘about’ in the example ‘about whom you were thinking’.

3. ‘Whose’ is the possessive of a noun in the relative clause. So, ‘whose’ is the possessive of ‘name’ in the example ‘whose name you do not know’.

Latin Relative Pronouns

“Relative clauses in Latin are a lot like relative clauses in English, except there are more relative pronoun forms: all the usual case forms, for all three genders. Remember: a relative pronoun must agree with its antecedent noun in gender and number.”

Vocabulary

Relative Pronoun

Latin Pronoun	English Meaning
quī, quae, quod	who; which (whose; to/for whom; whom, etc.)

Masculine Singular Relative Pronouns

“Here are the masculine singular forms in the five cases. These are used when the antecedent is masculine and singular:”

Masculine Singular Relative Pronoun Forms

Case	Latin Form	English Translation
Nom.	quī	who/which
Gen.	cuius	whose/of which
Dat.	cui	to/for whom/which
Acc.	quem	whom/which
Abl.	quō	f.w.i.b. whom/which

“Using these pronoun forms, you could render the sentence about Seneca like this:”

Masculine Singular Relative Pronouns, Illustrated

The boy in the road	Puer in viā
who was leading us,	quī nōs dūcēbat,
whose name you don’t know	cuius nōmen nescīs,
to whom you were yielding,	cui cēdēbās,
whom you were following,	quem sequēbāris,
about whom you were thinking,	dē quō cōgitābās,
is Seneca	est Seneca.

Feminine Singular Relative Pronouns

“The feminine singular relative pronouns are used when the antecedent is feminine and singular. Notice that three forms differ from the masculine. The English translation is the same as for the masculine.”

Feminine Singular Relative Pronoun Forms

Case	Latin Form	English Translation
Nom.	quae	who/which
Gen.	cuius	whose/of which
Dat.	cui	to/for whom/which
Acc.	quam	whom/which
Abl.	quā	f.w.i.b. whom/which

“Suppose Seneca had a sister, Annaea. How would you translate this?”

Exercise 1

“Use the model sentence with Seneca as a guide, but use the corresponding forms of the feminine relative pronoun.”

1. The girl on the road who was leading us, whose name you do not know, to whom you were yielding, whom you were following, about whom you were thinking, is Annaea.

Translating Masculine and Feminine Relative Pronouns

“Good. Now let’s suppose the antecedent was the road, not Seneca, and the sentence read:

Puer in viā quae nōs ferēbat, quam sequēbāris, dē quā cōgitābās, est Seneca.

“Notice how the antecedent of the feminine singular relative forms quae … quam … quā must be feminine singular viā, not masculine puer. Notice, too, that we must here translate the relative pronouns using ‘which’, since the antecedent viā, ‘road’, is a thing rather than a person. By the way, it is also OK to use English ‘that’ to translate a nominative or accusative relative pronoun’.”

Exercises 2-6

“Now try to translate that sentence, plus a few more examples.”

2. Puer in viā quae nōs ferēbat, quam sequēbāris, dē quā cōgitābās, est Seneca.

3. Vir quem vīdistī pater meus est.

4. Fēmina cuius manūs habeō māter mea est.

5. Amor deus est cui omnēs cēdunt.

6. Bona est cīvitās in quā lēgēs servantur.

Neuter Singular Relative Pronouns

“The neuter singular relative pronouns are used when the antecedent is neuter and singular. As is usual with neuter forms, the nominative and accusative are the same:”

Neuter Singular Relative Pronoun Forms

Case	Latin Form	English Translation
Nom.	quod	which
Gen.	cuius	of which
Dat.	cui	to/for which
Acc.	quod	which
Abl.	quō	f.w.i.b. which

Exercises 7-9

“Now try these sentences.”

7. Cōnsilium quod audīvistī meum est.

8. The plan, which is good, is mine.

9. The plan, about which you asked, is mine.

Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter Plural Relative Pronouns

“Good. Now let’s move to plural relative pronouns. The nominative, genitive, and accusative plural forms have US-A-UM (1st and 2nd declension) endings, while the dative and ablative have 3rd declension endings. The neuter nominative and accusative plural, however, end in –ae. All the uses and translations are the same as above – but the antecedent will be a plural noun or pronoun:”

Masculine Plural Relative Pronoun Forms

Case	Latin Form	English Translation
Nom.	quī	who/which
Gen.	quōrum	whose/of which
Dat.	quibus	to/for whom/which
Acc.	quōs	whom/which
Abl.	quibus	f.w.i.b. whom/which

Feminine Plural Relative Pronoun Forms

Case	Latin Form	English Translation
Nom.	quae	who/which
Gen.	quārum	whose/of which
Dat.	quibus	to/for whom/which
Acc.	quās	whom/which
Abl.	quibus	f.w.i.b. whom/which

Neuter Plural Relative Pronoun Forms

Case	Latin Form	English Translation
Nom.	quae	which
Gen.	quōrum	of which
Dat.	quibus	to/for which
Acc.	quae	which
Abl.	quibus	f.w.i.b. which

“Notice that the neuter plural nominative and accusative, and feminine nominative singular and plural are all the same form: quae, which can sometimes be confusing. If there is no feminine antecedent, the word quae is usually neuter plural.”

Exercises 10-12

10. Aquae quās vidētis dulcēs esse videntur. “Romans call fresh water ‘sweet’.”

11. Mīlitēs quī bellum longum gessērunt populus laudat.

12. Nūmina quibus precāmur cīvitātem nostram servābunt.

Position of the Antecedent, Distinguishing Clauses

“One challenge of Latin relatives is that an antecedent may come after the relative clause. In English translation, you should always place the antecedent before the relative clause. It also helps to identify and keep separate the relative clause and the main clause. Study this example:”

I. Quī bellum longum gessērunt mīlitēs timēmus.

II. Quī (masc. nom. sg. / pl.) bellum longum (nom. / acc. sg.) gessērunt (3rd pl. perf. act.) mīlitēs (masc. nom. / acc. pl.) laudō (1st sg. pres. act.). Rel. clause: Quī … gessērunt; main clause: mīlitēs laudō. Antecdent of quī: mīlitēs.

III. I praise (1st sg. pres. act.) the soldiers (acc. pl. d.o.) who (nom. pl. subj.) waged (3rd pl. perf. act.) the long war (acc. sg. d.o.).

Exercises 13-17

13. Quī nōs accipit puer vocātur Seneca.

14. Quam sequēbāris puella vocātur Annaea.

15. Quōs laudāmus mīlitēs bellum longum gessērunt.

16. Malum est quod rēx fēcit iūdicium.

17. Parcēmus quī ante nōs stant hostibus.

Right then a huge flock of pigeons roosting on the roof of the temple suddenly took off, interrupting one poor orator in mid-speech. Seneca got up and walked away, leaving behind his writing tablet. Latinitas picked it up; she said I had to learn these vocabulary words before we could look at it:

Vocabulary

I-Verb (Third Conjugation)

Latin Verb	English Meaning
perdō, perd-ere, perdid-ī	to ruin; destroy; lose

Second Declension Neuter Nouns

Latin Noun	Noun Gender	English Meaning
beneficium, benefici-ī	n.	favor; benefit
officium, offici-ī	n.	duty
perīculum, perīcul-ī	n.	danger

Third Declension Noun

Latin Noun	Noun Gender	English Meaning
sapiēns, sapient-is	m.	wise man

Adverb

Latin Adverb	English Meaning
quam	how (with an adjective) “Be careful: quam could also be the feminine accusative singular relative pronoun. If quam is not followed by an adjective, then it is probably the relative pronoun.”

“Now let’s see what sentences Seneca chose to copy out of Syrus’ mime.”

His handwriting was tiny and neat. The sentences were:

Exercises 18-22

18. Sapiēns nihil facit, quod nōn dēbet. “Remember facit can mean ‘does’.”

19. Quam miserum officium est, quod successum nōn habet! “Guess the meaning of successum.”

20. Heu dolor quam miser est quī in tormentō vōcem nōn habet! “Heu is a cry of grief; tormentum, tormenti-ī, n. is an ‘instrument of torture,’ or simply ‘torture’.

21. Perīcula timidus etiam quae nōn sunt videt. “Timidus (nom. sg.) means ‘a timid man’.”

22. Beneficium accipere lībertātem est vendere. “The I-verb vendō, vend–ere, vendid-ī means ‘to sell’.”

The Irregular Verb possum, posse, potu–ī

“Let’s revisit another of Syrus’ sayings: malum est cōnsilium quod mūtārī nōn potest. It contains a new verb, potest, which means ‘he, she, it is able’.

Vocabulary

Irregular Verb

Latin Verb	English Meaning
possum, posse, potu-ī	to be able; can

“You know this verb from the phrase sī fierī potest, which means ‘if it is able to happen’ or ‘if it is possible’. This verb is a compound. The first element is pot-, which means ‘able’. The second is the verb sum. If you combine pot– with the forms of sum, you have a verb that means ‘to be able’. However, the t in pot– turns to s before a second s. So. the forms of the present tense look like this:”

Present Tense Forms of possum, posse, potu-ī

Present		English Translation
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
possum	possumus	I am able	we are able
potes	potestis	you are able	you all are able
potest	possunt	he, she, it is able	they are able

Present Infinitive of possum, posse, potu-ī

“The infinitive is posse, ‘to be able’.”

Imperfect and Future Tense Forms of possum, posse, potu-ī

“In the imperfect and future tense, all the forms of possum are like those of sum: pot– plus the forms eram, erās, etc. and erō, eris, etc.:”

Imperfect Tense Forms of possum, posse, potu-ī

Imperfect		English Translation
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
poteram	poterāmus	I was able	we were able
poterās	poterātis	you were able	you all were able
poterat	poterant	he, she, it was able	they were able

Future Tense Forms of possum, posse, potu-ī

Future		English Translation
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
poterō	poterimus	I will be able	we will be able
poteris	poteritis	you will be able	you all will be able
poterit	poterunt	he, she, it will be able	they will be able

Exercises 23-27

23. Mala sunt cōnsilia quae homō mūtāre nōn potest.

24. Malum est quod homō mūtāre nōn potest cōnsilium.

25. Amor etiam deōs movēre potest.

26. We were able to plan, and they will be able to follow.

27. Nec mortem effugere quisquam nec amōrem potest. “Another one from Syrus; effugiō, effug-ere, effūg-ī means ‘to escape’.”

Relative Clauses, Continued

“Let’s review the forms of the relative pronoun, then go over a few more things about relative clauses.”

Relative Pronoun Forms: Singular and Plural, All Genders

Singular	Masc.	Fem.	Ntr.
Nom.	quī	quae	quod
Gen.	cuius	cuius	cuius
Dat.	cui	cui	cui
Acc.	quem	quam	quod
Abl.	quō	quā	quō
Plural
Nom.	quī	quae	quae
Gen.	quōrum	quārum	quōrum
Dat.	quibus	quibus	quibus
Acc.	quōs	quās	quae
Abl.	quibus	quibus	quibus

Unexpressed Antecedents

“Sometimes the antecedent of a relative pronoun is not expressed in Latin. When that happens, you must supply a pronoun or a suitable noun in English translation like ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘the things’, so that your translation begins ‘he who’, ‘she who’, ‘the thing which’, ‘they who’, etc.:”

I. Quī ōdisse scit, et scit amāre.

II. Quī (nom. masc. sg. / pl.) ōdisse (inf.) scit (3rd sg. pres. act.), et scit (3rd sg. pres. act.) amāre (pres. act. inf.). Rel. clause: Quī ōdisse scit. Main clause: et scit amāre. Quī: no expressed antecedent, so supply ‘he’ because the pronoun is masculine and the verb is singular.

III. He who knows how to hate also knows how to love.

Exercises 28-29

28. Quī dēbet, līmen crēditōris nōn amat. “The noun līmen, līmin-is, n. means ‘threshold’; crēditōr, crēditōr-is, m. is like the English.”

29. Quam miser est quī excūsāre sibi sē nōn potest.“The pronoun sibi (dat.) means ‘to himself’ and sē (acc.) ‘himself’. Try to guess what excūsāre means.”

Interlaced Word Order

“Finally, words that belong inside the relative clause sometime appear before the relative pronoun.”

Really?

“Really. Here is an example, again from Syrus. Read it out loud. The first two words belong inside the relative clause, even though they come before the pronoun:”

I. Fortūna nimium quem fovet, stultum facit.

II. Fortūna (nom. sg.) nimium quem (acc. sg. masc.) fovet (3rd sg. pres. act.), stultum (acc. sing. masc. / ntr.) facit (3rd sing. pres. act.). Rel. clause: Fortūna nimium quem fovet; main clause: stultum facit; quem: no antecedent experessed. (The verb foveō, fovēre means ‘to favor’; nimium ‘too much’; stultus, -a, -um ‘stupid’.)

III. The man whom Fortune favors too much, she (Fortune) makes stupid.

Exercises 30-31

30. Mūtāre quod nōn potes, tolerāre dēbēs. “The infinitive tolerāre means ‘to tolerate’.”

31. Bona mors est hominī, vītae quae extinguit mala. “The verb extinguō, extingu-ere, extīnx-ī means ‘to exstinguish’.”

As I finished, the crowd was giving a round of applause for the last speaker, for he had persuaded an imaginary Alexander the Great that he should turn back from his conquests and go home. And then – with absolutely no warning – the ground began to shake. At first, I thought someone was kicking the stones I was sitting on, but it quickly became obvious that everyone around us was feeling the same thing. A small piece of terracotta molding cracked off the temple and fell to the ground, where it exploded in a cloud of dust. Everyone who was sitting outside was safe, but people in the temple came rushing out to avoid being struck by falling debris. And then, just as quickly as it had started, it stopped; the world was stationary again. People calmed down and looked over their bodies, as if to make sure they were all there. One young man who had what looked like a broken leg was being carried out of the temple, but otherwise there were no injuries, just a bit of damage to the building.

The flock of pigeons circled the temple and settled on the roof again. And then we saw him – Seneca, returning from wherever he had gone, a look of angelic calm on his face. He could not contain himself, and began chatting excitedly with Latinitas, who, you’ll recall, he thought was his tutor Sotion, the philosopher. I caught the beginning of it – Spīritus terram mōvit; est opus fātī et deī, ‘A breath moved the earth; it is the work of fate and the god’ – but then he lost me. signum… aqua… was all I could make out.

“He says that when he saw the pigeons take off, and feral dogs looking alarmed, he knew it was a sign of an earthquake.”

I didn’t see any dogs.

“There were three of them near the altar chewing on bones. Then, once he saw ripples in that puddle, he knew a quake was imminent. He went into the temple because he wanted to see whether the statue of Jupiter would move.”

Did it?

“It shook just like everything else did. ‘Now’, he just said to me, ‘Neptune, the god of earthquakes, cannot shake his brother, can he? It is absurd. This shows that the god does not live in the statue. The true dwelling of the god is not in the statue, or the temple, but tōtō mundō, the entire world.’”

Seneca had returned to his notetaking. Strange kid! He was already a young philosopher, and pretty smart. But then I compared his notebook to mine. In the time we had been sitting there, I had taken ten times as many notes. Little Seneca was smart, but he could work on his speed, I thought.

40. A denarius coin from 78 BCE depicting the aedēs of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline, quae magnās columnās habuit quattuor, which had four large columns (in reality, the temple almost certainly had more).