Talk:Ablative (Latin)

Prepositions
Although some grammars state (e.g. Kennedy §174) that super takes the ablative when it denotes rest, this isn't actually true. For example, Livy writes sita est urbs super Peneum amnem 'the city is situated above the river Peneus' (you can't get much more stationary than a city). Similarly Cicero writes super Lunam sunt aeterna omnia etc. Instead, when super is used with the ablative it means 'concerning' or 'about': hac super re scribam at te Regio (Cicero) 'I'll write to you about this matter from Regium'. There are many other examples. I have therefore corrected this statement.

in Italiam rather than ad Italiam is more usual; e.g. ille, ut aiebat, supra Maleas in Italiam versus navigaturus erat (Cicero).

The statement that only singulars can use an ablative meaning 'from' without a preposition is not true, e.g. cum ... cessisset Athenis et se Rhodum contulisset (Cicero), so I have deleted this.

I have also changed in casa and in casam (since there is only one example of each in the Perseus corpus) to the more commonly met with in urbe and in urbem (363 and 267 examples), and Aeneas to cives, since it is hard to imagine a situation in which Aeneas would have fled. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:46, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The phrase magna cum celeritate does not occur anywhere in Latin literature (and even magna celeritate occurs only in Seneca) so I have changed it. Kanjuzi (talk) 16:52, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Ablative of agent
The paragraph Ablative of agent in §&thinsp;Instrumental ablative does not make much sense and is needlessly confusing. The example rēx armīs mīlitum interfectus est is a clear example of the ablative of means; it does not make sense to call the weapons of the soldiers an "agent". There is a paragraph Ablative of personal agent in §&thinsp;Ablative proper that describes precisely what is called "Ablative of agent" in Allen and Greenough, where it is specifically noted that the agent need not actually be a person but can also be the name of a thing or quality conceived as performing an action. Therefore I propose to (1) delete the entire paragraph Ablative of agent in §&thinsp;Instrumental ablative; and (2) rename the paragraph Ablative of personal agent in §&thinsp;Ablative proper to "Ablative of agent". Comments or objections? (This was spurred by a question at the Reference desk:. --Lambiam 08:36, 31 August 2023 (UTC)


 * In The Everything Learning Latin Book by Richard E. Prior, Chapter 14: Grammatical Voice, there is a section on the ablative of agent on page 189. It provides two example sentences in both English and Latin. The first sentence is “Fenstra saxō fracta est (The window was broken with a rock)” and the second is “Fenstra ā puerō fracta est (The window was broken by the boy)”. It then goes on to note that the doer in the first example (a rock) is an inanimate object, which takes the ablative of means without a preposition. Finally, it explicitly says “The ablative use called the ablative of agent requires the preposition ā, a people word, and a passive verb.” Primal Groudon (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * A&G has an example in which the agent noun after ā or ab is not a person in the conventional sense but, in a manner, personified: nē virtūs ab audāciā vincerētur (Pro Sestio 92). A contribution to the thread at the Reference desk mentions a canibus dilaceratus; I also see uses of ab urso laceratus, ab leone devoratus, a vipera occisus, and Susan C. Shelmerdine's Introduction to Latin has "Ablative of Agent — With a passive verb, the person (or animal) by whom something is done is expressed with the preposition ā/ab plus an animate object.", so "people word" is overly restrictive. --Lambiam 18:45, 31 August 2023 (UTC)