Prose Composition: To Find Out Where the Enemy Had Camped

Version (a) is the strongest. Miserunt or misit with a relative clause of purpose (qui cognoscerent) is idiomatic in prose, especially with verbs of sending: the scouts are sent who were to find out. Cognoscerent is imperfect subjunctive in secondary sequence after misit, which fits the purpose. Ubi hostes castra posuissent is an indirect question depending on cognoscerent, and the pluperfect subjunctive is correct because the enemy had pitched camp before the scouts were sent to find out. Version (b) is not impossible: ut cognoscerent is a standard purpose clause. But qui is more natural with mittere, and ponerent is the decisive weakness: it would mean were pitching or were to pitch, not had pitched. Version (c) uses ad cognoscendum, a purpose expression that is grammatical, but it is less precise with a verb of sending and can sound like for the purpose of finding out in the abstract; it also does not express the subject of the finding out as clearly as the relative clause. All three have the right main clause, but (a) best combines idiom and tense sequence.

Misit is a secondary tense, so the subordinate subjunctives follow secondary sequence: imperfect for contemporaneous or subsequent action, pluperfect for prior action. Since the camping happened before the sending, posuissent is correct. If the main verb were changed to the primary tense mittit, the sequence becomes primary. Prior action in an indirect question would then be expressed by the perfect subjunctive: ubi hostes castra posuerint. If the intended sense were that the enemy were camping at the same time, the present subjunctive ponant would be possible. The candidate should not simply keep posuissent after mittit, because that mixes secondary sequence with a primary main verb. This is exactly the kind of control the mark scheme rewards: the tense of the subordinate clause is not chosen in isolation but by reference to the main verb and to the time relation between the actions.

There are two problems. First, cognoscere, a bare infinitive, is not the normal prose way to express purpose after misit; it belongs to poetry or to a few fixed idioms. Prose expects a purpose clause with ut/ne, a relative clause of purpose with qui plus subjunctive, or ad plus gerund/gerundive. Second, ponerent is the wrong tense relation: the enemy had already pitched camp before the scouts were sent, so prior action in secondary sequence requires the pluperfect subjunctive posuissent. A corrected version is consul exploratores misit qui cognoscerent ubi hostes castra posuissent. If the candidate prefers an ut clause, consul exploratores misit ut cognoscerent ubi hostes castra posuissent is also acceptable, though the relative clause is idiomatic with verbs of sending. The correction should preserve both the purpose idea and the prior time of the camping.