veni vidi vici /  by Anthony Gibbins

veni vidi vici I came, I saw, I conquered is among the very best known of Latin phrases, second only perhaps to et tu, Brute! It is attributed to Caesar by one historian, Appian of Alexandria, and two biographers, Suetonius and Plutarch. Let us look at what each had to say;

Appian:  Agitated by Caesar’s approach, [King Pharnaces of Syria] repented, and when Caesar was twenty-five miles away sent ambassadors to arrange peace, who took him a golden crown and foolishly offered him Pharnaces’ daughter in marriage. When Caesar discovered what the gifts were, he advanced with his army and walked forward in conversation with the ambassadors until he reached the defences of Pharnaces’ camp. Then he simply…leapt on his horse, and as soon as the war-cry was uttered, routed Pharnaces and killed a large number of his men, although accompanied by only about 1 000 cavalry who formed a vanguard with him… And his dispatch to Rome about the battle ran: ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Book II. 91

Suetonius: Caesar’s first and most glorious Triumphal Procession was for the victories he gained in Gaul; the next for that of Alexandria, the third for the reduction of Pontus, the fourth for his African victory, and the last for that in Spain; and they all differed from each other in their varied pomp and pageantry… Amongst the pageantry of the Pontic triumph, a tablet with this inscription was carried before him: I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED; not signifying, as other mottos on the like occasion, what was done, so much as the speed with which it was achieved. Life of Caesar, 37

Plutarch: On leaving that country and traversing Asia, he learned… that Pharnaces, using his victory without stint, and occupying Bithynia and Cappadocia, was aiming to secure the country called Lesser Armenia... At once, therefore, Caesar marched against him with three legions, fought a great battle with him near the city of Zela, drove him in flight out of Pontus, and annihilated his army. In announcing the swiftness and fierceness of this battle to one of his friends at Rome, Amantius, Caesar wrote three words: I came, saw, conquered. In Latin, however, the words have the same inflectional ending, and so a brevity which is most impressive. Life of Caesar, 50

Note that Plutarch, who wrote in Greek, admired how snappy veni, vidi, vici sounded in Latin. Each of them is the First Person Perfect Tense Form of these three verbs; venio, venire, veni, ventum - video, videre, vidi, visum - vinco, vincere, vici, victum. You may remember that the Third Principal Part of any Verb is the First Person Perfect Tense Form. vidi I saw appears on today’s page.

Miranda ran to Jessica without delay. ‘How do you have yourself [i.e. How are you?]’ she asked her. ‘What were you doing? I saw you descending from the roof.’

she accidentally let go of the rope /  by Anthony Gibbins

The story required Jessica to accidentally let go of the rope, but I was at first uncertain how to express this idea in Latin. Here is a little of the process that helped me arrive at an (I think) acceptable solution. I was comfortable with accidentally, which is commonly expressed with casu, the Ablative of casus. The historian Nepos wrote casu accidere to happen by accident and Tacitus wrote casu procidere to accidentally fall forwards. The Noun casus itself means a falling down, and by extension an accident. So I guess the Ablative casu might be considered an Ablative of Manner. How did it happen? It happened casu by accident, accidentally.

The expression to let go of took a little more work. It is, for starters, an expression that has a wide range of uses in English. You can let go of an animal that has been caught in a trap, let go of an idea that has been keeping you up nights, or let go of a rope that you are descending from a rooftop. I needed a phrase that expressed the last. Scouring dictionaries for various uses, it seemed that the most appropriate Verb would be resolvere to unbind, untie, loosen, open, release, free and that the full expression would be Jessica released the rope from her hands.

This was the bulk of the work done. The rope funis would be the Object of the Verb and would therefore be written in the Accusative Form, funem. And as Jessica released the rope from her hands, an Ablative would be required, manibus. Grammarians call this an Ablative of Separation. This left me with the final expression, funem manibus casu resolvit. All that now remained was to run the expression by a couple of people whom I much admire for their Latinitas Latin style, Latinity. I thank them for their help, and am happy to say that it passed their scrutiny.

Jessica, shocked by the unexpected shout, accidentally let go of the rope and fell to the ground. The stolen suitcase was lying beside her.

Banksy /  by Anthony Gibbins

The sides of a Lego modular kit are, as a rule, not as beautiful as their front and back. To use an expression my mother uses, they can look a little hodge-podge. You see, when putting interesting details on the inside of a room, the outside often pays the cost. Take a look at today’s picture. Inside the Montanus is an attractive block of black wall, upon which hang the cues for the pool table. It looks great! But it means that the same block of black wall must also exist on the outside, where it makes no sense at all. To be fair, the modular kits are made to be pushed up against one other, so this rarely causes a problem. But on occasions like this, it does.

Luckily we live in the age of digital manipulation. I was able to make a minifigure that looked more or less like the iconic Bansky piece of an anarchist throwing flowers. The flowers came with a Hippy minifigure I bought at a Lego fair about eight months back. The face mask came with the Lego Bank. I took the photo with my phone (I took it from above, the minifigure is actually lying on my desk), then ran it through about six of those drawify apps that you can get for your phone. I picked the best one, and voila! A Bansky.

But sliding down the rope, Jessica was sighted by our Miranda, guarding her town below. ‘Hey!’ Miranda shouted.

more than perfect /  by Anthony Gibbins

nisi fallor unless I am mistaken, today’s page contains the very first Pluperfect Verb to occur in a Legonium story. That Verb is celaverat and it means she had hidden. Pluperfect (pronounced ploo-perfect) is a syncopation of three Latin words, plus quam perfectum which mean plus more quam than perfectum completed. The Pluperfect Tense is used to describe an action that had already been completed at a moment is the past.

Episode Six of Legonium is the first to be told entirely in the Past Tense. Jessica lowered the rope which she had (previously) hidden on the roof. At that moment - in the past - when Jessica lowered the rope, the hiding of the rope had already been completed. The hiding was therefore plus quam perfectum or Pluperfect.

For the sake of comparison, I will rewrite the entire page in the Present Tense. Each of the Perfect Tense Verbs will become Present and the Pluperfect Verb will become Perfect. The truly observant will also note the change in Tense of the Subjunctive Verb descenderet in the Purpose Clause.

Jessica longum funem in tecto celavit. funem celeriter demittit quo facilius decendat. eheu! vir feminaque eam iam tandem conspiciunt.

Jessica has hidden (not: had hidden) a long rope on the roof. She quickly lowers the rope by-which-she-might (quo) descend more quickly. Oh no! The man and the woman catch sight of her now at last.

Jessica had hidden a long rope on the roof. She quickly lowered the rope in-order-to (quo) descend more quickly. Oh no! The man and the woman caught sight of her then at last.

the marvelous variety of Perfect Stems /  by Anthony Gibbins

Okay, this will be the last post for a while about Perfect Tense Verbs, I promise*. But I did think it might be of interest to compare the Present Stem and the Perfect Stem of a few Verbs, in particular those that appear on today’s page. By doing this we will see that there are numerous ways that a Perfect Stem might relate back to the Present Stem; there is no one pattern that works for all Verbs. This may not be good news, but at least if we know what we are up against we can brace for it.

But first, a quick refresher on how we find the Present and Perfect Stems of a Verb. When we look up a Verb in a dictionary we are given the Four Principal Parts; capio, capere, cepi, captum. If we take the endings off the First and Third Principal Parts we are left with the Present Stem cap- and the Perfect Stem cep- respectively. Now let’s compare the Present and Perfect Stems of each of the Verbs on today’s page, and a few more for good measure

Present Stem              Perfect Stem

cap-                            cep-                         take/took

curr-                           cucurr-                     run/ran

ru-                               ru-                           rush/rushed

conspic-                      conspex-                 catch sight of/caught sight of

sum (not a Stem)       fu-                            am/was

ambul-                        ambulav-                  walk/walked

pon-                            posu-                        place/placed

rid-                              ris-                            laugh/laughed

My advice? As you learn Latin Verbs try and learn their Perfect Forms as well. There are patterns, but some are more predictable than others. Pay attention as you go, and hopefully the patterns will begin to show themselves with time.

Jessica took the found suitcase without delay and ran out of the room. She rushed across the roof like a ghost, nor did the people catch sight of her. 

the Perfect Tense with a Purpose Clause /  by Anthony Gibbins

Back in early December, I wrote a post to explain the various ways of expressing Purpose in Latin. If you would like, you can check it out here;

http://www.legonium.com/blog/2016/12/6/finding-your-purpose.

One of those methods was a Purpose Clause. Here is what I wrote;

Purpose Clause: This is very common. The little Adverb ut has a myriad of uses. Included in these is signposting the coming of a Purpose Clause. A Purpose Clause also requires a change in the Mood of the Verb, which is as simple (and as complicated) as changing tradit to tradat. Marcellus ad argentariam it ut pecuniam Augusto tradat. Marcellus is going to the bank in order to hand over money to Augustus. 

This is an honest, but incomplete explanation. The Subjunctive Mood Verb tradat (which is classified as a Present Tense Subjunctive) is only appropriate when the Purpose is something that still may or may not be achieved. For example, Jessica cubiculum intrat (Present) ut sarcinam quaerat. Jessica is entering the room to search for the suitcase. Or Jessica cubiculum intrabit (Future) ut sarcinam quaerat. Jessica will enter the room to search for the suitcase.

If, however, the Purpose is no longer open to be achieved, we do not use a Present Tense Subjunctive in the Purpose Clause (such as quaerat) but an Imperfect Tense Subjunctive (such as quaereret). The grammatical terms are particularly unhelpful here, so let’s just see what this looks like. Jessica cubiculum intrabat (Imperfect) ut sarcinam quaereret Jessica was entering the room to search for the suitcase or Jessica cubiculum intravit (Perfect) ut sarcinam quaereret Jessica entered the room to search for the suitcase.

In our exploration of the Perfect Tense yesterday, we saw that Jessica cubiculum intravit could mean either Jessica entered the room or Jessica has entered the room. Look at how this comes into play when translating a Perfect Verb followed by a Purpose Clause. Jessica cubiculum intravit ut sarcinam quaereret Jessica entered the room to look for the suitcase. Jessica cubiculum intravit ut sarcinam quaerat Jessica has entered the room to look for the suitcase. The implication in the second example would be that Jessica is still in the room and still hoping to find the suitcase. Neat, hey!

The man and woman therefore exited out of the room to search the roof. Jessica meanwhile entered the room like-a-ninja [perniciter] to search for the suitcase given by the sailor.

well, that’s just perfect /  by Anthony Gibbins

Pardon the bad pun: now, let’s take a look at the Perfect Tense. The Perfect Tense is used to describe actions that have been completed in the past (indeed, perfectus in Latin means completed). Or actions that have already occurred from the vantage point of the present. To clarify, an example of the first might be Last year I read Moby Dick. An example of the second might by Of course I have read Moby Dick. To clarify further, I didn’t and I haven’t. But, as you can see, English has a clever way of distinguishing between the two. Latin does not. Instead, the distinction must be determined by context.

So what does a Verb in the Perfect Tense look like? Well, it begins with the Perfect Stem and ends (like The Planet of the Apes) with a Perfect Ending. To find a Verb’s Perfect Stem, we can look up said Verb in a dictionary. For example, the entry for audio is audio, audire, audivi, auditum. These four Forms of the Verb are called the Four Principal Parts. The third Principal Part, audivi, is the First Person, Singular, Perfect Tense Form, I heard or I have heard. If we drop that final – i, we are left with the Perfect Stem, audiv-. Using this method, you can find the Perfect Stem of any and every Latin Verb. euge!

From there we simply add the appropriate Perfect Ending. –i for I, -isti for you, -it for he, she or it, -imus for we, -istis for you (plural) and –erunt for they. For example; audivi I heard or I have heard, audivisti you heard or you have heard, audivit he, she or it heard or he, she or it has heard, audivimus we heard or we have heard, audivistis y’all heard or y’all have heard audiverunt they heard or they have heard. It really is that easy. On today’s page we see audivi and audiverunt. Context suggests that the intended meanings are I heard and they heard respectively.

Inside, these people heard the sound of the mechanical key (wrench). ‘I heard a sound,’ the woman said to the man. ‘It behooves us to investigate.’

validus viribus /  by Anthony Gibbins

One of my favourite moments in Book II of the Aeneid is the hurling of the spear by the Trojan priest Laocoon into the side of the wooden horse.

‘quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.'

sic fatus validis ingentem viribus hastam

in latus inque feri curvam compagibus alvum

contorsit. stetit illa tremens, uteroque recusso

insonuere cavae gemitumque dedere cavernae. 

I love so much about this. I love the image of the spear stuck tremens vibrating in the wood of the horse, like it might in some Hanna-Barbera cartoon. I love that the horse seems to be almost alive; it is ferus a wild beast, and as it is struck it gives out a gemitum groan. And I love how with one word, campagibus with joints, seams, fastenings, Virgil evokes the means of the horse’s construction. But above all, I love the strength that imbues validis ingentem viribus hastam in latus… contorsit. The spear is huge. And the vigour(s) powerful. And as Laocoon throws the spear he twists it, giving it the force to spin straight through the air towards its target - the latus side of the horse.

Jessica has the strength of a Laocoon. So, when she threw the wrench across the roof, she did so validis viribus with powerful vigour(s).

Jessica (for that is the name to the woman) suddenly hurled the wrench across the roof with powerful vigour. What was she doing?