PAU Latin II (Balearic Islands / UIB) key terms

Grammatical category showing the syntactic role of a noun, pronoun or adjective: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative, plus vestigial locative. Catalan and Spanish lost case endings, keeping only pronoun remnants such as jo/me or yo/mí.

Set of endings a Latin noun or adjective takes according to its stem vowel, giving five main patterns. Recognising the declension from the genitive singular is the first step before translating any prose passage.

Four regular verb patterns plus the mixed type, identified by the infinitive ending (-āre, -ēre, -ĕre, -īre). Each has its own tense and person endings, essential for parsing verbs in a text before translating.

Two aspect stems of the Latin verb. Infectum covers unfinished action (present, imperfect, future); perfectum covers completed action (perfect, pluperfect, future perfect). Aspect, not absolute time, decides which stem a form uses.

Construction where a noun or pronoun in the ablative plus a participle in the ablative form a phrase grammatically detached from the main clause. It usually translates with a subordinate clause: his dictis, 'after these things were said'.

Rules governing tense choice in subordinate subjunctive clauses, depending on whether the main verb is primary (present, future) or historic (past). It explains why an imperfect subjunctive follows a perfect main verb.

Latin mood expressing wish, potential, command, purpose, result or indirect question, and obligatory in many subordinate clauses. It has four tenses; identifying the clause type is needed to choose the right translation.

Conjunctions introducing subjunctive clauses: ut marks purpose, result or indirect command; ne marks negative purpose or prohibition. Context and the presence of correlatives like ita or tam decide the reading.

Use of cum with the imperfect or pluperfect subjunctive to mean 'when', 'since' or 'although'. The mood distinguishes it from the plain temporal cum with the indicative, which simply states a time.

Verbal adjective with tense and voice: present active, perfect passive, future active (and future passive in gerundive). Latin uses participles far more than Romance languages, so they often become relative or temporal clauses in translation.

The gerund is a verbal noun in the neuter singular oblique cases; the gerundive is a passive verbal adjective expressing obligation or worth. Confusing them changes the meaning of a sentence from 'of doing' to 'must be done'.

Verbal noun with only two forms: accusative in -um after verbs of motion (expressing purpose) and ablative in -ū after certain adjectives. Rare but tested in set texts and grammar questions.

Case marking possession, partitive quantity, or the object of certain verbs and adjectives. Its singular ending is the key to identifying a noun's declension, and it survives in Romance possessives and in constructions like 'causa de'.

Reported speech using accusative plus infinitive for statements and subjunctive for commands and questions. Shifting a direct quotation into it requires changing pronouns, moods and tenses systematically.

Construction where a verb of saying, thinking or perceiving takes an accusative subject and an infinitive verb. In Catalan and Spanish it becomes a que-clause: dicit Caesarem venire, 'diu que Cèsar ve'.

The architecture of a Latin sentence: main clause, subordinate clauses, and the position of the verb, often last. Recognising the skeleton before translating avoids word-by-word renderings that lose the original emphasis.

Deliberate separation of words that belong together, usually an adjective from its noun, often framing a phrase. Common in prose and verse; in translation the displaced element is reunited with its head word.

Figure placing words of similar sound but different meaning side by side, a favourite of Sallust and of comic and rhetorical prose. It creates emphasis and can be hard to reproduce in translation.

Stylistic ideal of concise expression, especially associated with Sallust and Caesar: omission of connectives, abrupt transitions, archaic vocabulary. Recognising it explains why certain passages read as clipped.

Genre of Roman historical writing, from Caesar's commentarii through Sallust and Livy to Tacitus. It mixes narrative, speeches and moral judgement, and its conventions shape how passages are commented on in exams.

Genre of memoirs or campaign notes, written in third person by Caesar, presented as plain records rather than polished history. Its apparent objectivity is itself a rhetorical strategy worth noting in commentary.

Art of persuasive speech, taught in Roman schools through progymnasmata and the works of Cicero and Quintilian. Its figures and structural conventions (exordium, narratio, argumentatio, peroratio) inform both oratory and historiographical speeches.

Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), author of the Bellum Gallicum and Bellum Ciuile. His commentaries are the standard first prose text in Latin courses and a frequent source for translation exams.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), orator, statesman and prose stylist whose speeches, letters and philosophical dialogues define classical Latin prose. His periodic style is a standard model for syntactic analysis.

Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86-35 BC), historian of the Catilinarian conspiracy and the Jugurthine War. His terse, archaic style and moralising prefaces make him a frequent commentary text.

Titus Livius (59 BC-AD 17), author of Ab Vrbe condita, a history of Rome in 142 books. His narrative style and speeches are often used for translation and literary commentary.

Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BC), author of the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid. The Aeneid is the central epic of Latin literature and a standard set text for verse commentary.

Vergil's twelve-book epic on Aeneas' journey from Troy to Italy, linking Roman origins to Homeric legend. Its themes of pietas, fatum and imperium are standard commentary topics.

Genre of long narrative poetry in hexameters on heroic deeds, gods and national origins. Its conventions (invocation, in medias res, similes, epithets) guide commentary on Vergil and later epic poets.

Year-by-year records kept by the pontifex maximus, later the model for Roman historical narrative. The term also names works structured chronologically, such as Tacitus' Annales.

Roman value of dutiful respect towards gods, family and fatherland, embodied by Aeneas. It is a key cultural concept for interpreting epic and for explaining Roman religious and civic norms.

The unwritten ancestral customs that legitimised Roman political and social behaviour. Appeals to it recur in speeches and historiography, and understanding it explains much of the moral vocabulary of Latin prose.

Literally 'the public thing', meaning the Roman state and its constitution before the principate. Translating it as 'republic' or 'state' depends on context and period.

Supreme military and civil authority held by consuls, praetors and later emperors, distinct from mere potestas. The term also underlies the modern word 'empire' and the notion of Roman dominion.

Study of word origins and how Latin forms survive in Catalan and Spanish. Exam questions often ask which Latin root underlies a modern word, or which phonological changes explain a doublet.

Pair of outcomes for a Latin word: popular (patrimonial) forms that evolved phonetically, and learned (cultisme) forms borrowed later from written Latin. Both may coexist, as with 'llibre' and 'librari'.

Change in word meaning over time, by narrowing, widening, metaphor or pejorative shift. Latin 'caput' becoming 'cap' and 'cabeza' illustrates how meaning and form diverge across Romance languages.