Genitive with Verbs of Accusing and Condemning

Classical verbs of accusing, prosecuting, convicting, condemning, and acquitting commonly take a genitive of the charge: eum furtī accūsat, “he accuses him of theft.” The person prosecuted is not genitive. In an active clause that person is normally accusative; in the passive, the person becomes the subject. Verbs of condemning may also name a penalty, but penalty expressions have a more mixed genitive–ablative system.

The basic judicial frame

The common governing verbs include accūsō “accuse,” arguō/coarguō “charge, prove guilty,” īnsimulō “charge,” postulō “prosecute,” damnō/condemnō “condemn,” and absolvō “acquit.” These are (formal) legal constructions, though authors also use them metaphorically outside court.

Senātōrem is the accused person, so it is accusative. Pecūlātūs is genitive singular of the fourth-declension noun pecūlātus “embezzlement,” and names the charge.

English places “of” before the offense. That resemblance is convenient but not causal. Latin dē also translates “of” in many contexts, and English “for murder” can represent the same Latin genitive. The dependable test is the judicial predicate plus the semantic role “charge.”

The construction in the passive

When the verb is passive, the defendant is nominative because that participant has become the grammatical subject. The genitive charge remains unchanged.

In pecūniae pūblicae, adjective and noun agree in the genitive. The phrase is a charge, not a fine: “public money” identifies what was misappropriated. The more compact legal noun pecūlātūs expresses the same general offense.

Acquittal verbs preserve the same government:

Both caedis and prōditiōnis are genitive singular and remain so beside the accusative defendant eum. Coordination does not change the case government.

Fixed and elliptical charge expressions

Roman legal language contains forms whose missing head noun can still be felt historically, though a learner should acquire the expressions as wholes.

Reus “defendant, accused” can itself take a genitive charge. Repetundārum is a substantivized feminine plural gerundive, conventionally understood with rērum: “of things to be recovered.” Its morphology preserves the history of the legal action even though “extortion” is the natural English translation.

Charge versus penalty

A charge answers “of what offense was the person accused or convicted?” A penalty answers “to what loss or payment was the person sentenced?” With damnō and condemnō, context must distinguish them.

Caedis names the offense; duplī names an indefinite multiple as penalty and belongs to the same historical sphere as the genitive of value. Capitis damnāre is an established (formal) legal idiom that can mean conviction on a capital charge or condemnation involving one’s caput—civil status and, in context, life. Classical authors also use ablative capite damnāre for “sentence to capital punishment.” There is no benefit in pretending this inherited terminology is perfectly tidy.

When the penalty is a definite sum or concrete forfeiture, the ablative is normal.

The ablative here measures the imposed loss. It is related to the ablative of price; an exact monetary penalty is not converted into a genitive merely because English says “a fine of one thousand.”

Competing legal formulas

Classical legal language also uses dē + ablative in established accusations: dē vī “on a charge of violence,” dē ambītū “for electoral bribery,” and dē pecūniīs repetundīs “for extortion.” Inter sicāriōs “under the assassination court / among the assassins” is another idiom.

The variation is lexical and institutional. It does not mean that genitive and dē + ablative are universally interchangeable after every verb and with every offense. For active Classical composition, use an attested legal phrase or the productive genitive charge pattern.

Later prose increasingly uses ad or in + accusative for penalties such as ad mortem “to death” and ad metalla “to the mines.” These are important for post-Classical reading but should not displace the Classical constructions on this page.

Parsing diagnostics

1. Identify the judicial word: verb such as accūsō or adjective/noun such as reus.
2. Mark the defendant: accusative in an active clause, nominative in a passive clause.
3. Ask whether the remaining phrase names the alleged offense or the imposed punishment.
4. Parse an offense genitive as the charge unless an established dē formula is present.
5. For punishment, distinguish inherited genitives such as duplī and capitis from definite ablative fines or forfeitures.

Common Mistakes

1. Putting the defendant in the genitive

2. Putting the charge in the accusative

3. Leaving the defendant accusative in a passive clause

4. Putting a definite fine in the genitive

Key Takeaways

In the core (formal) legal pattern, the defendant is accusative with an active verb or nominative with a passive verb, while the charge is genitive. Condemnation adds a second system: some indefinite and inherited penalties are genitive, but definite fines and forfeitures are ablative. Fixed Roman formulas such as dē vī and repetundārum must be learned as legal vocabulary, not generated from English prepositions.