01.09.24: Follow-up; Level 2; Perseus cartoon [1]; passive - present, imperfect, future

Referring to: https://adckl.blogspot.com/2024/07/010924-level2-story-of-perseus.html

The cartoon uses an adapted story from Ritchie. This book, first published in 1884, was titled “Fabulae Faciles (simple stories): A First Latin Reader”. The words “first” and "simple" tell you a lot about the amount of time devoted to the teaching of Latin when the book was initially published. Nowadays, I doubt very much that “Fabulae Faciles” could ever be considered an easy book for beginners. However, looking back through the posts both here and on the other site, it is certainly a book for those reaching the end of Level 2.

At this stage I only want to comment on one aspect of Latin that is in the text: the passive. I’ll divide this into two posts. The entire text is in the third person i.e. talking about what a person or people did. For our purposes that makes it easier to handle: we’re dealing with parts of the jigsaw, not all of them.

The opening sections give you an overview; we’ll look in this post at the first two:

[1]

Present passive

Poēta fābulam nārrat. │ The poet tells a story.

This is an active sentence i.e. the subject (poēta) is performing the action.

Now we turn it around:

The story [i] is told │ [ii] by the poet.

This is a passive sentence i.e. [i] the subject (fābula) is not performing the action but experiencing the action and [ii] the person by whom the action is performed – known in grammar as the passive agent – is expressed by ā / ab + the ablative case.

Fābula ¦ ā poētā ¦ nārrātur.

For the 3rd person singular and plural present tense, all that happens is that -ur is added to the verb.

From the entire text:

Image #1: Haec nārrantur ¦ ā poētīs ¦ dē Perseō. │ These (things) are told ¦ by the poets about Perseus.

Image #2: Dum haec geruntur, fremitus terribilis audītur; simul mōnstrum horribilī speciē procul cōnspicitur. │ While these things are happening [= literally: are being carried out], a terrible roar is heard; at the same time a monster of terrible appearance is spotted from afar.

This is a feature of Latin that is common in the literature i.e. the use of the present tense rather than the past to make the action appear more vivid. In the cartoon, the translation uses the past tense even though the verbs are in the present.

The same applies to this example from the text:

Mare autem intereā undique sanguine īnficitur. │ Meanwhile, however, the sea is [transl. was] contaminated everywhere with blood.

[2] The addition of -ur to the 3rd person present tense also applies to [i] the imperfect tense and [ii] the future tense

Poēta carmen scrībēbat. │ The poet was writing a song.

Carmen ¦ ā poētā ¦ scrībēbātur. │ A song was being written ¦ by the poet.

Image #3: Avus eius Ācrisius appellābāt¦ur. │ His grandfather was called Acrisius.

[ii] Although there are no future passives in the text, the same rule applies i.e. add -ur to the 3rd person singular or plural of the future tense:

Poētae multās fabulās dē Perseō nārrābunt. │ The poets will tell many tales about Perseus.

> Multae fābulae dē Perseō nārrābunt¦ur│ Many tales will be told about Perseus.