Two Accusatives with Teaching and Asking

A small group of Latin verbs meaning “teach,” “ask,” or “demand” can govern two accusatives at once: an accusative of the person and an accusative of the thing. In magister puerōs litterās docet, both puerōs and litterās depend on docet, but they play different semantic roles. This construction is lexical, not a general permission to replace English “to,” “from,” or “about” with a second accusative.

The core pattern

With doceō “teach,” the person taught and the subject matter taught may both be accusative:

Traditional grammar calls the person the direct object and the thing the secondary object. That terminology is convenient, but the construction is possible precisely because doceō combines two perspectives: “instruct a person” and “show or teach a thing.” Both participants are closely tied to the verb.

With rogō “ask,” the person questioned and the requested information can likewise both appear in the accusative:

English happens to permit two objects in “teach the boys their letters,” but often inserts “for,” “from,” or “about” with verbs of asking. Latin does not choose its case from that English wording. In mē sententiam rogāvit, sententiam is not introduced by dē merely because a natural translation could be “she asked me about my opinion.”

Which verbs license it?

The pattern occurs in Classical authors with the following verbs, but their preferences are not identical:

This list must be learned. English allows “ask someone something,” but Latin quaerō does not simply copy the double accusative: it normally marks the person with ab, ex, or dē. Likewise, petō normally has the thing sought as its object and the source-person with ab.

There is no logical shortcut that predicts every verb’s government. Memorize aliquem aliquid rogāre but aliquid ab aliquō petere and aliquid ex aliquō quaerere.

A thing or a whole question?

The second accusative is normally a noun phrase: nōmen “name,” sententiam “opinion,” causam “reason,” multa “many things.” If the requested information is a complete question—what happened, why someone came, whether a report is true—Latin normally uses an indirect question with the subjunctive.

Here eum is the accusative person governed by rogāvī; quid vīdisset is a clause, not a second accusative noun phrase. Compare:

The first packages the requested content as a noun; the second reports the content as a question. See indirect questions for mood and sequence.

What happens in the passive?

The two-object pattern produces some genuine difficulty. Since either participant can be construed as central to the verb, Classical Latin shows more than one passive alignment.

With rogō, the person can become the passive subject while the thing remains accusative:

With verbs of teaching, a retained accusative of content is also found, especially with compounds such as ēdoceō “inform thoroughly”: (formal/literary) Cicerō cūncta ēdoctus est means “Cicero was informed of everything.” This retained accusative belongs to the inherited construction; it is not a general rule that passive verbs take direct objects.

With most asking verbs, prose often promotes the thing requested to subject and expresses the source-person with ab + ablative:

Not every pair of accusatives is the same

In magister puerōs litterās docet, the two accusatives refer to different participants: people and content. That differs from a predicate accusative such as Cicerōnem cōnsulem creāvērunt “they elected Cicero consul,” where Cicerōnem and cōnsulem name the same person. It also differs from an accusative subject of an infinitive, where one accusative belongs inside an infinitival clause.

Word order is flexible. Sententiam mē rogāvit still means “she asked me my opinion.” Animacy and lexical meaning often make the roles obvious, but endings alone do not label “person” and “thing.” If both accusatives could denote people, context and the verb’s sense must decide.

Register and historical range

The construction is ordinary Classical Latin with doceō and rogō: it occurs in prose, literary texts, and dialogue without being intrinsically formal. The broader list of asking verbs contains lexical variation: an author may prefer ab + ablative in the same semantic situation where another attested construction has two accusatives. Later Latin increasingly expands prepositional alternatives, but the Classical double accusative remains important for reading.

Do not add dē merely to make Latin look like English “ask about.” Use dē when the Latin construction itself presents a topic—dē bellō rogāre “ask about the war”—and the second accusative when the verb directly frames the requested item as its content.

Common Mistakes

1. Putting the person taught in the dative

2. Copying the construction onto petō

3. Treating a complete indirect question as a noun object

4. Choosing roles from word order

Key Takeaways

The construction is person accusative + thing accusative, licensed chiefly by doceō, rogō, and a limited set of related verbs. English prepositions do not determine either case. Distinguish a noun expressing requested content from an indirect-question clause, learn the competing ab/ex/dē constructions verb by verb, and treat passive patterns with care because either participant can become structurally prominent.