Lesson video

I hope you remember those prepositions from the previous grammar lesson, especially that tricky one in, because we're going to be practising them in this translation lesson, and it's about the first Roman emperor, who's a guy called Augustus, at a dinner party.

Let's have a look.

Practise translation, The Emperor and the Eels.

Discenda, our learning objectives are, can I translate fluently a Latin passage containing prepositional phrases with the accusative and ablative? And have I consolidated previous core vocabulary? Press pause if you need to, to go and get these things.

If not well done.

Right, let's move on.

And the first thing we're going to look at is that vocab.

These are the 14 either most frequent or most difficult words that are going to be coming up in the passage for translation today.

You must know every single one.

But don't worry, if you don't know them now, 'cause I'm going to give you a loads of help.

And the first thing we're going to look at are, we're going to have a close look at these four words here.

Cado means, or the derivations are words like casualty or cadence.

I'm going to tell you the translation.

Cado means I fall.

If you did that story about the dog, the acting dog, then you will have sung cado already.

But if not, don't worry.

Let's have a look at it again.

So, you might go to casualty if you've fallen over maybe.

Or a musical term cadence is to do with the rising and falling of pitch, all right, of notes.

So now it's got this tricky perfect tense, which duplicates, which is cecidi meaning I fell.

which is a noun change there.

So cecidi I fell, Cado is whoop, is I fall, all right? Puto is potentially new.

And our derivation is what I'm using right now, a computer.

Now a computer is literally a thing, the machine that thinks with you.

Com means with, yes? So it's this machine that thinks with you.

Puto is I think.

So computer is a thinking machine and puto is I think.

Don't confuse that for a second with peto which is where we get words like appetite and impetus.

Peto is I beg or I seek, or I ask, or I attack.

We're going to do lots of work on peto in a sec.

And we did some stuff on this if you did the grammar lesson, but let's go over again quickly.

Ab if you abscond or you abdicate or you're absent, that's all to do with being away from somewhere else, from.

So ab or a is from.

Don't confuse that with ad meaning to, or towards.

Ad, Ab, Ad, Ab.

Cado.

Yeah? All right.

Ante, again we've done it before, in lessons like this, but I'm going to run over it all right.

Again, the abbreviation of the acronym AM in English to describe time before midday is actually the Latin for ante meridiem.

Meridiem means midday, therefore ante means before.

It can be both spatial and temporal.

So ante meridiem is temporal, it's to do with time.

However, here, I've mentioned this before, we've got.

The pen is before, i.

e.

, in front of the teacher.

So it can be before or in front of used in terms of space.

Let's have a look now.

First thing I'm going to ask you to do is to pause here and just read these words.

Do not worry if you don't remember them all from reading, we're going to practise them loads.

But pause here have a look at those 14.

Okay, let's have a time for couple of little quizzy questions.

What's the difference between res and terra? I can't remember.

Good, so terra is terrain, isn't it? It's the ground.

Whereas the res is to do with reality, what's real, is a thing or a matter.

What's the difference between, come on, you've got this, fine.

Ab and ad, what's the difference? Lovely.

Ab is from, away.

Ad, if you advance, you go to or towards something.

Ante and post, what's the difference? Right, ante AM, all right, it's before midday, whereas PM, post meridiem is after midday.

In terram, now, do remember this from our grammar lesson.

You've got in here coming into or on.

This on is, is that one, the accusative? Maybe it is.

What do you remember? What do you think? Let's have a look.

In plus accusative is motion towards, so that's onto the ground.

Whereas in plus ablative, this one, is going to be staying still.

So that's just on the ground, all right? If that caused you a bit of confusion, if you didn't remember that, you will see this loads of times so just take a good look at this now.

We're going to see this, these two phrases pop up all the time in this lesson, in terram onto the ground, in terra on the ground.

Cado, fugio and iaceo all to do with the movement, or maybe not.

What do we think? Okay, let's have a look.

Cado, if you have an accident, you've got a casualty.

is going to be, I fall.

Fugio is I flee.

Then iaceo, this tough one here is I lie not as in I tell a fib, not I tell porkies.

Iaceo is I lie down, all right? You might lie down in terror.

Yeah, that's probably going to come up isn't it? Okay, de.

It means what? And it might mean more than one thing.

What do you think? Let's have a look.

De is down or about.

You descend, so you go down or you describe, you write about something.

Ante rem it means what? Good, nice and quick.

Ante before, before the matter.

De re.

What was de? De re is going to mean what? Now, technically it could mean both, but what do you think is the best translation of these two? I think it's going to be about the matter.

You can't really go down from matter can you? Now, puto and peto easy.

Come on.

You've got it.

Puto and peto.

What's the difference? Computer.

What's it help you do? Let's have a look.

Puto, a computer is a thinking machine.

Peto can be I seek or I beg.

What's the, I've tried to catch you out here, haven't I, look? Puto.

I put.

But what is I put? It is puh, puh, puh Hmm.

De re puto.

What was puto just now? What was de re? What's that going to mean? Okay, so de, let's scroll back up day.

De re was about the matter.

Puto is I think, so there you go.

I think about the matter.

A one, two, three, ready, ♪ V-U-X-S-I ♪ ♪ Ed, ed, ed, ed, ed ♪ Your turn.

♪ V-U-X-S-I ♪ Petivit versus putavit.

V,v,v, something, something, something.

We know the difference between these two.

Put a v in what happens? Go! Let's have a look.

Petivit, he begged.

Putavit, he thought.

V, ed, v, ed.

Tenuit means what? ♪ V-U-X-S ♪ Ed, ed, ed, ed.

He held.

Misit, it's going to be ♪ V-U-X-S-I ♪ Ed, ed, ed, ed, But it's not an ed, it's not an ed.

You wouldn't say sended, but yeah, he sent, Remember that's tough, we said he sent Jacebat.

When I say bar, you say something, bar, bar was a work.

And fugit.

♪ V-U-X-S-I ♪ Ed, ed, ed, ed, fled! Lovely! Okay, cecidit means what? It's going to be, he or she something.

He's somethinged.

He.

Can you mime it for me? Why not? Let's mime.

I'm going to come in.

He, whoa, he fell, isn't it.

Right? That thing I just did when I cecidi, I fell didn't I.

In terram cecidit will mean what? Good, really specific here.

This is plus accusative, so you're going to go for he fell onto the ground.

You might think that he fell on the ground makes sense.

But actually you need to get this sense of motion in there.

Don't you? Right? What that means in English is that you were on the ground and then you fell again, which doesn't make sense.

He fell onto the ground.

In terram cecedit.

Can you mime for me last final little push.

Can you mime ab? Ab, is it going to be this one or that one? This one or that one? Ab, what do we think? In two and it's going to be from, if your absent, you abscond, ab.

What's ad mean, therefore ad's going to be, if you advance, you go to, towards or at.

Ante, mime ante.

Is it going to be that, is it going to be? It's it going to be.

Before ante meridiem, before or in front of.

De can mean two things.

Mime them.

Good.

So either going to have you descend, it'll be down, or it will be about.

If you think about something.

Great! Okay, we ready? Let's have a look.

Getting ready to test yourself in two and go! Write one to 14 down the margin.

What do those words mean? Okay.

Now switching to a different colour pen.

That's find out how we did.

There you go.

Great.

Okay.

How do we do? I think you probably did really well.

What'd you think nodding heads, shaking heads.

Up here really well, in the middle, down there? Was up there, wasn't it.

You did fine.

If there are any words you didn't know, I would circle them in that colour pen and just make sure that you do get them when we come in.

So let's have a look at our context with this story.

When we see them again on that passage they've got a bit of context.

This is a character who we are actually going to see a bit in the next module, if you do that on Cleopatra.

All right, there's this guy called Augustus.

Augustus, now he is imperator and it's a word that looks like what it is.

We've seen it before.

He is an emperor.

So he's the first Roman emperor.

And how he got to that role is involved with Cleopatra, and another guy called Mark Anthony, we're looking at and then next units.

But do make sure you watch those, or do those lessons.

But once he became emperor, Augsustus had this problem, because his rise to becoming monarch, to becoming the one person in charge, in doing that, he had quite a few people who helped him, and a lot of them were morally dubious.

A lot of them were sort of quite evil people who weren't liked by the rest of Rome.

And one of those people was this guy called Vedius Pollio.

When you see his name, you're just going to see it as Vedius, Vedius.

Vedius.

Now this is a story about the emperor, Augustus, going to dinner.

He's become an established well-liked emperor now, but he goes to dinner with this guy who used to help him out and helped him in his rise to power, but who now is still extremely immoral and cruel and awful person.

And he goes to dinner with him.

And Vedius is the hospes, he's the guest of the person who's giving the dinner party to Augustus.

There's two things you need to bear in mind in this story, and they are these two things.

Murenae, which is eels.

All right? One that looks like that on a mosaic there and crystalla, crystalla.

Which this is a plural form here, Which means crystal cups.

Made out of a sort of very precious form of glass, all right? Or as like a goblet.

Okay? Which of these ones is the emperor, is the first Roman emperor point at his name in two.

And Augustus.

Did Augustus like this guy? Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs up, thumbs down.

We were going to go for, let's go somewhere in the middle.

I ,mean really, I mean, he was, you know, uncomfortable about the fact that Vedius still existed, was still in operation.

Did Romans like this guy? Thumbs up, thumbs down.

Going to be thumbs down.

Okay.

So let's have a look at this translation practise.

The text we are about to read, contains reference to abusive behaviour specifically towards slaves.

If this is a sensitive topic for you, you may want to do the rest of the lesson, with a trusted adult to support you.

This is the second paragraph of the story, and it's going to be the one that you'll be doing as the main task.

You will be translating this paragraph, in a matter of minutes, There is one particularly tricky grammatical issue at stake, which is the use of two prepositional phrases in a sentence.

And we're going to have a little look at that now and have a practise together.

I'm not going to give you the exact same sentences 'cause that would be me doing it for you.

I'm going to change them a bit.

Just bear in mind that you're going to see sentences that look like this one, which has one mistake in it.

Let's have a look.

Mistranslated one mistake.

As the slave fled from Vedius to the emperor.

What's gone wrong here? 10 seconds.

Three, two, one, and stop.

Okay, let's have a little look at this together.

So we'll follow the steps and we'll see where we get to a problem.

So is there a word for slave, yes there is.

Is there a word for from, there is.

There's a word for Vedius, yeah.

There's a word for emperor.

So there's word for emperor there.

There's a word for ad which is to and there's a word for fled.

Great.

So actually step one technically is done.

This person did translate each of the word beginnings successfully.

Word endings, particularly now, mm hmmm, this is where things are going to go issue this prepositional phrase issue.

Now, what I'm trying to get you to think about here is that when you encounter sentences with two prepositional phrases, ab imperatore, ad Vedium, you make sure you don't split them up.

Don't swap anything around.

I know sometimes in Latin you can, you're meant to jump around in terms of the sentence structure, but the cast iron rule for prepositional phrases is that they stay within, they cannot be split up.

They stay in their own little group.

They stay in their own circle.

See that, okay.

So the issue we've got here well done for identifying it is it shouldn't be the slave fled from Vedius from Vedius to the emperor, but it's got to be, stays within that circle.

The slave fled from the emperor to Vedius.

Okay, from the emperor to Vedius.

Now, one thing this person did do right, was they caught a number of things Translated fugit correctly as the perfect tense.

♪ V-U-S-X-I fled, fled, fled, fled, fled.

♪ Alright.

And then another thing was, they didn't write, ugh, they didn't write to Vedium.

Yeah, do we see that? We see that? Where you're going to see characters' names in cases other than the nominative, when you do see that when you're translating, you put them into the, sort of the us or the a form All right.

So if you see your Augustus's name with Augusto or Augustum, he's called Augustus.

Vedium is called, that means Vedius.

Call them their names in the form that I've taught you in that slide a couple of minutes ago.

This next example has two mistakes.

Two okay.

Are you ready? Let's have a look.

Hmm, two mistakes in that translation.

10 seconds.

What do you think? Three, two, one.

And let's have a look.

So step one, have they included every word? Did they do all the word beginnings.

You got slave there, in the first transaction is on, could be some other things, but at least there's an effort there.

Terro, ground, ante is before.

Augustus is Hmm.

What have we got here? Good.

So really well done.

If you spotted this.

Before Augustum won't cut it.

going to be before, what's his name? He's called before Augustus.

Thank you.

So that's your first mistake, but there is another one.

Did we get the second one? Next well, cecidit, this person did translate fell.

So step one is done.

Step two, we look at our endings and we're looking at this prepositional phrase here.

Now I've already done a bit with you on in terram, ma, ma, ma, ma.

And how do you translate in terram? Do you translate it? This is what case? This is going to be.

Is this accusative or ablative in terram Accusative or ablative? It's going to be with me, it's going to be accusative.

♪ And what letter do singular acoustics and an M.

♪ All right, so that's accusative.

So it's going to be into or onto, and lo and behold, what have we got here? Oh, we've just got on.

No! So we're going to have to change that to onto.

Now, actually, technically it's a bit of English literacy here.

Technically writing the slave fell on, or anyone fell on the ground is actually bad English.

You need to give a direction when you're describing someone falling.

Does that make sense? In Latin, this would make no sense if this was in terra.

that would make no sense.

'Cause it implied that someone was on the ground and then fell again.

All right.

They were sort of staying still.

You need to give the sense of movement in your translation.

In terram is onto the ground.

And Augustum, if you see it you translator as Augustus.

Similarly with, Vedium into Vedius.

Do we get the Idea? Of course we do Mr. Ferber.

Well, let's have a look in terra versus in terram.

What's the difference? Good.

In terram onto the ground.

In terra on the ground.

What about with aqua? How is it going to be now? In aqua.

This is you ablative.

This is your accusative that's motion towards, into the water.

This is staying still in the water.

Let's have a look at that first paragraph Right.

Once, erat first word, he was once There was.

I'm going to bring me in and to put myself in this corner.

Once there was a vir, a vir, a man, who was scelestus, an evil wicked man called Vedius Pollio.

Now in villa, into the house? Is that going to be into the house, in villa.

That's going to be into or in? It's going to be in.

So in his house Vedius, U V-U-X-S, he had many res, many possessions, many things.

Now in triclinio.

Into or in? Triclinio.

Into or in? It's going to be in as well.

Okay? Because there's no M on the end.

That would be in triclinium would be into the dining room.

In his dining room he had crystalla.

He had now more than one.

He had crystal cups.

In horto: into or in? That way, round, into or in? In horto.

Now in triclinio was in the dining room, in horto is going to be in the garden.

So in his garden, he had a propriam, his own or his special, piscinam, pool.

Because in aqua, now, if we're getting an idea in aqua, into or in, in aqua into, or in we just did this, right.

In aquam is going to be whoop, we're going to be into the water.

In aqua is just in the water.

Erant first word, they were or good there were, Now, what did he have in that pool? He had to murenae anthropophagi.

He had man-eating eels.

Remember I showed you those murenae earlier, Is that going to be good to.

He invited Augustum, is that his name? We did this, come on.

Invited Augustus to dinner.

I'll read the rest.

Okay.

Right.

So, Augustus has gone to Vedius's house for dinner per cenam, per, to be through the dinner or throughout the dinner, you might say.

Vedius, when I say bar, you say was or what he was eating, and he was ride, He was laughing cum Augusto, with Augusto? With Augustus.

Bibebant, they were drinking wine from the crystal cups, but post, posts your ante post.

After the dinner a slave, demisit, dropped one of the crystal cups What's going to happen? And what is Augustus's role going to be? Let's have a look.

So have a look at this main task for me, translate this middle paragraph, pressing pause to do so in two and go.

And if you want to do the challenge, it is this, it's to finish translating that story, looking at the last paragraph.

Here we go, off you go.

So switching to a different colour pen, let's see how we did.

I'm going to get rid of myself, actually, sorry.

The crystal cup fell to, well done, towards or to the ground Now and here your subject is a thousand pieces.

A thousand pieces were lying on the ground.

So not onto, but on the ground, well done.

The angry Vedius shouted.

I will accept Vedius angrily shouted or Vedius shouted angrily.

He said "Throw the slave into the pool." The slave fled from his master or from the master to Augustus.

He fell onto the ground before the emperor, the slave petivit, the slave begged from, well done if you got this, he begged from the emperor, He said "Rescue me from the eels." Augustus thought about the matter.

Then the emperor held, you might say picked up something like that, a second crystal cup and sent, well remembered if you know misit is sent, I will also accept threw and threw it to the ground.

So what's just happened? Let's have a look.

So the second cup, cecdit, we got our verb with the end it, fell ante behind Vedius, in front of Vedius with a noise and a big din, pew Now Vedius, he non misit.

He did not send or throw the imperatorem, the emperor, into the water, the word water with the eels in right igitur, therefore he did not throw the slave.

Vir scelestus, that's just a wicked man.

Lacrimavit, he cried, or he wept pro for his crystallis, both his lost, is destroyed you might say, this is a yeah, it's lost cups and also has lost authority.

Right? Okay.

All that's left now is for you to complete the exit quiz once you've marked and created your answers.

And once you've done that, all that's left after that, it's for us to say valate to one another.

It's going to be preposition plus accusative is towards prepositions plus ablative staying still you're going back in plus accusative towards in plus ablative is , sorry, into and in plus ablative is just in or on.

Valete.

I'll see you for the next module for future lessons.

Goodbye.

Well done.