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Archive for June, 2012

The “madness” of the emperors: Nero II Posted by on Jun 29, 2012

Claudius

As we said in the previous post, at first Nero’s government was totally dominated by the imposing presence of his mother. The new emperor was a docile and timid boy who ruled in the shadow of his mother. Nero was also fascinated by the festivities so much that any occasion was an excuse to organize…

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The “madness” of the emperors: Nero I Posted by on Jun 23, 2012

Senaca, philosopher and teacher of Nero

Did you know that it is suspected that the origin of the “madness” of certain Roman emperors such as Nero or Caligula, was due to the ingestion of residual lead from the welding plates and glasses? Lead is a very harmful metal for health. Among the Roman emperors there were many insane people and dangerous as…

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Non-personal verbal forms Posted by on Jun 15, 2012

The verb forms which do not have personal ending are known as non-personal verbs or noun-verbs. These verb forms simultaneously have nouns’ characteristics (they are nouns or adjectives) and verbs’ characteristics (tense, voice…). In Latin we have three verbal nouns (infinitive, gerund and supine) and two verbal adjectives (participle and gerundive). Morphology is as follows…

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Verbal morphology II Posted by on Jun 10, 2012

Active voice Time characteristics of time and mood for active personal forms are:   PRESENT TENSE Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Present 1st conjugation: -e- 2nd, 3rd, 4th conjugations: -a- Past imperfect -ba- -re- Future 1st & 2nd conjugations: -b- 3rd, 4th conjugations 1st singular person: -a- Rest of persons: -e-   The imperative has no temporal…

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Verbal morphology I Posted by on Jun 2, 2012

calamus and writing objects

General characteristics of the Latin conjugation Latin conjugation is distributed in two voices: active and passive. How to set out and how to determine the conjugations: The statement of a verb consists, in that order, of the following forms: First person singular indicative present. Second person singular indicative present. Present infinitive. First person singular indicative…

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