It might cause some confusion that in Latin, an adjective can function substantively, and that applies to gerundives, too. Since there's no noun in the verse for a gerundive nascendo to modify, it seems unlikely that it's meant as a gerundive. In the case of nascendo, though, since nascor is deponent and intransitive, I'm not sure there's any difference in meaning between understanding it actively or passively. Cato isn't recommending that Carthage do some destroying he's recommending that Carthage be destroyed. Unlike the gerund, the gerundive is passive. = And lastly, I say that Carthage must be destroyed. It changes case to agree with the noun that it modifies, like this:Ĭeterum censeo Karthaginem delendam esse. For example, in:ĭelenda is an adjective modifying Karthago. The gerundive has the same form as the gerund, but a gerundive is a participle, i.e. Since nascor is a deponent verb, nascendo takes an active meaning even though the verb is basically passive (or at least we think of it that way in English: to be born, being born). The person doing the praying is Aeneas, i.e., the person being addressed. = Stop hoping to bend the will of the gods by praying. For example, in:ĭesine fata deum flecti sperare precando. "Being born happens early in a person's life." A gerund has the active voice. Notice that English has the same construction, also called "gerund", in which a verb plays the role of a noun. In the ablative case, nascendo means by being born. It's in the ablative case to mean that it's by being born that the Maker takes on human form.Ī gerund in Latin is a verb functioning substantively, i.e., as a noun, in an oblique case. That is, it's functioning as a noun, not an adjective modifying some other noun. Nascendo here is a gerund, not a gerundive. Remember ( Memento), O founder/maker ( conditor) of things ( rerum), that ( quod) once ( olim), you took ( sumpserīs) the form ( formam) of our ( nostri) body ( corporis) by being born ( nascendo) from ( ab) the sanctified ( sacratā) womb ( alvo) of a virgin ( virginis). I have an English translation in hand, but given that this is a hymn and subject to rhyme and meter constraints, I do not expect it to follow very rigidly, and I really want to understand the Latin on its own terms. How does nascendo operate in this text?.Are any of my above assertions incorrect?.I suspect that the accusative formam is linked to the nostri. I have even less to work with in the fourth line, because I do not really understand the gerundive nascendo. I think nostri and corporis are linked together to mean of our body and that quod olim is a kind of parenthetical, subordinate adjectival clause: I'm fairly confident I understand the first and third lines, but let me attempt translation just in case I do not. I am pretty confident you people can straighten me out. I am still working through the Parvum Officium and I am having a little trouble parsing the first verse of this hymn.
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