PART I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. IN translating from English into Latin, the first thing to do is to find out exactly what the English means. The next thing is to put the thought (not the words) thus grasped into Latin form. An 66 a Latin differs from English fundamentally in regard to the arrangement of the words in a sentence. ordinary English sentence, in the great majority of cases, has the following order: Subject, Verb, Object, Adverbial Modifier. So in short phrases there is a regular order for instance, when an adjective modifies a noun it almost invariably precedes the noun; as, warm day," "that easy lesson"; when a prepositional phrase is connected with a noun, adjective, or verb, it follows these parts of speech; as, "the temple of Saturn," "good for ten days," "have you been to the Vatican?" In Latin, on the other hand, the words have no such fixed order based upon their grammatical relations to each other. They are arranged according to their relative importance in the thought, the most important word standing first, the next most important next, and so on. In short, simple expressions, the most important word corresponds to the word which we call the emphatic word of the expression and upon which we put the greatest stress of voice in spoken English. Thus if a Roman wished to indicate what we mean by saying "a brave man," he put the words in the order 1 66 FORTIS VIR; if he meant a brave man," he said VIR 66 a NOTE. The pupil should acquire an exact idea of what is meant by different degrees of emphasis or relative importance, namely, that when we emphasize a word, we call particular attention to the idea denoted by it, as either (1) positively contrasted with some other idea of the same class, or (2) as negatively contrasted with other such ideas in general. Thus, when we say brave man," we are either contrasting "brave" as a quality positively and sharply with some other quality, as "cowardly," or we are calling especial attention to the idea “brave" as distinguished from other possible ideas of quality. So if we emphasize “man,” we either contrast that kind of being with some other, as woman or angel, or we call particular attention to that kind of being from among all possible beings. It will easily be seen that very delicate shades of meaning can thus be distinctly indicated in Latin by the mere arrangement of the words, when in English the form of the expression often has to be changed, or some mechanical device like italics or underlining has to be employed. Such different arrangements as the following should be carefully studied: (1) puer heri in portu mecum navigavit. The pupil should observe that while the first arrange- A fifth, we SAILED rather than swam. But he should also learn to feel the more subtle differences of meaning involved in arranging the later words of the sentence in different ways. This becomes easy after a little practise in trying to understand the Latin without translating it. THE PERIOD. The Romans were especially fond of a periodic structure of sentences; that is, of long, artistically moulded sentences, consisting of a main clause and several subordinate clauses, the parts all carefully balanced, and the whole closing with the principal verb. Strictly speaking, the period should begin also with some word belonging to the main clause, but we may call any sentence a periodic sentence in which the sense is not completed until the last word is reached. Now the verb, from its nature, completes the sense unless the preceding words indicate that something else is necessary. Therefore in a periodic structure of sentences: (1) the verb tends to stand last in its clause; (2) most subordinate clauses precede the main clause, or are inserted between the first word or words of the main clause and the rest of that clause; (3) clauses of result, however, generally stand after the word on which they depend, as do other clauses which like them are prepared for by the preceding context and are necessary to its completeness. We may note here that this periodic structure should not be abused so as to produce a great piling up of verbs at the end of a sentence, or to leave a solitary word of the main clause far away from all the other words with which in idea it is intimately connected. CONTINUOUS WRITING. Another very important difference between English and Latin is seen in continuous writing. In English, roughly speaking, each of the main ideas which contribute to the thought as a whole is put into a sentence by itself. These sentences are sometimes loosely joined together by words like "or," "but," "and"; sometimes succeed each other without any connective. In Latin, on the other hand, some one idea is seized as a central point and expressed in the main sentence, while all the other ideas are grouped about it in more or less subordinate relations according to the periodic construction described above. As regards the order of the clauses it should be remembered, that a clause grammatically less important than another may have more importance in the thought, and therefore stand earlier in the period. Common ways of expressing subordinate relations are the Ablative Absolute, the Participles of Deponent Verbs, the Secondary Tenses of the Subjunctive with cum, the Perfect Indicative with ubi or postquam, and the Present Indicative with dum. The differences in these constructions are too subtle to be profitably discussed here. Practically the student may be recommended to choose, in any given case, the construction which makes the sentence smoothest, not forgetting that variety is an excellent thing. Successive sentences in Latin are furthermore linked together by choosing for the emphatic first place of each sentence after the first that word which, by bringing out a contrast with the end of the previous sentence, most smoothly and closely welds the combined thought together. This linking of sentence with sen |