Faxo, Ausim, and Archaic Subjunctives

Forms such as faxō, faxim, ausim, duim, siem, and fuam survive from older layers of the Latin verb. They are common enough in Early Latin comedy, traditional formulas, and later archaizing literature that an advanced reader must recognize them, but they do not make up one uniform “archaic subjunctive tense.” In particular, faxō is normally indicative, while faxim and ausim are subjunctive.

These forms are (archaic) or (literary). The safe neutral prose choices are usually faciam/fēcerō, fēcerim, audeam, dem, and sim. Recognition matters more than productive mastery.

The Sigmatic Forms of Faciō

The element -s- in faxō and faxim is called sigmatic because Greek sigma is the name of the letter s. Historically, fac- plus this marker underwent sound change to fax-. The forms do not come from the present stem by an ordinary Classical conjugation rule, and the principal parts faciō, facere, fēcī, factum remain essential for predicting the regular alternatives.

The tense terminology is genuinely difficult. The sigmatic indicative occupies territory associated with both future and future-perfect forms, while the subjunctive can behave like an old perfect subjunctive or like a prospective optative. Only the first-person singular visibly distinguishes indicative faxō from subjunctive faxim; the remaining forms can belong to either set, so clause type and discourse force must decide the analysis.

That overlap is not an editorial accident. A form such as faxit may be future indicative in a conditional or temporal clause but subjunctive in a wish or prohibition. Even carefully printed macrons do not remove every ambiguity. The reader must therefore ask what licenses the mood and whether the clause presents a future contingency, a desired outcome, or a forbidden act before assigning a regular equivalent.

In comedy faxō often introduces a brisk promise or threat: “I will see to it,” “just watch,” or “I assure you.” A following future verb states what the speaker guarantees.

These quotations preserve the spelling of their editions. Faxō does not govern an accusative-and-infinitive construction here; it works almost parenthetically, and erit, scībis, or potābis carries the promised result.

Faxim and Wishes

The subjunctive forms occur especially in wishes, prohibitions, cautious assertions, and fixed expressions. A traditional optative formula places faxint with a divine subject and an ut clause. It remains available even in Cicero's private correspondence:

Here dī is the nominative subject and faxint is third-person plural subjunctive. In a neutral nonformulaic sentence, dī faciant ut liceat would make the morphology transparent. The form is active, not passive, and it belongs to faciō, not to an otherwise unattested verb faxō.

This second-person form is prospective: the speaker rejects the contemplated act. Translating it “may you have done” merely because it resembles a perfect subjunctive misses the speech act.

Ausim: A Living Literary Potential

Ausim is the old sigmatic subjunctive associated with audeō, audēre, ausus sum “dare.” Historical paradigms can supply ausim, ausīs, ausit, ausīmus, ausītis, ausint, but Classical literary evidence especially requires recognition of ausim, ausīs, ausit, and ausint; the first- and second-person plurals are Old Latin rarities, not productive Classical alternatives. Unlike faxim, first-person ausim remains fairly recognizable in Classical prose, especially with a negative or limiting expression: vix ausim “I would scarcely dare,” haud ausim “I would not venture.” It is (literary/formal), not merely Plautine.

The excerpt preserves Livy's spelling rather than adding pedagogical macrons. The force is potential: the speaker presents the act as one he is reluctant to undertake.

The regular present subjunctive audeam, audeās, audeat is neutral. Ausim gives a compressed, inherited, often cautious tone. It need not mean “I have dared,” despite its historical relationship to the perfect stem seen in ausus sum.

Duim, Siem, and Fuam

Other remnants must be learned individually rather than extended by analogy.

The exact distribution varies by author and period. Siem belongs naturally to Early Latin and deliberate archaism; it is not an alternative a learner should scatter through Ciceronian prose. Fuam reflects an old present formation of sum, whereas the familiar fuī is perfect. Similar letters do not make the two forms the same tense.

A Reliable Diagnostic

First identify the lexical family: fax- belongs to faciō, aus- to audeō, du- to dō, and si-/fu- here to sum. Next identify the ending and mood. Finally inspect the clause: a promise with faxō, a wish with faxint/duint, and a cautious potential with ausim demand different translations. Only then choose an English tense.

For ordinary perfect-subjunctive forms and their overlap with the future perfect, see future-perfect and perfect-subjunctive homonymy.

Common Mistakes

Calling faxō a subjunctive

Inventing the form from an English gloss

Reading ausim as an ordinary completed past

Ignoring person and number in an old-looking form

Key Takeaways

• Faxō is an old sigmatic indicative, especially a comic promise or threat; faxim is unambiguously subjunctive, while forms from faxīs through faxint require syntactic disambiguation.
• Ausim is a literary potential subjunctive meaning “I would dare,” not simply “I dared.”
• Duim, siem, and fuam belong to restricted archaic or formulaic registers.
• Their time reference comes from construction and context; no single English tense label covers every use.
• Use the regular equivalents in neutral prose unless the older register is deliberate.