Breakdown of Dum pluvia cadit, populus ante portam exspectat; deinde omnes per portam intrant.
Questions & Answers about Dum pluvia cadit, populus ante portam exspectat; deinde omnes per portam intrant.
Dum means while (or as long as) and introduces a temporal clause:
- Dum pluvia cadit = While the rain is falling / While it is raining.
It sets the time frame for the main action: populus ante portam exspectat (the people wait in front of the gate). In Classical Latin, dum with a present indicative often corresponds to an English progressive tense (is falling, is waiting).
Latin does not have a special continuous or progressive tense like English (is falling, are waiting). The simple present often does the same job.
- cadit = falls / is falling
- exspectat = waits / is waiting
With dum, the present very often implies an ongoing or simultaneous action, so English naturally translates it with is falling or is raining.
Yes. Latin commonly uses the impersonal verb pluit = it is raining / it rains.
- Pluit and pluvia cadit both describe rain, but:
- pluit is more compact and standard.
- pluvia cadit is a bit more literal or descriptive: the rain falls.
Both are correct; which one is used depends on style and context.
Populus (nominative singular) means people in the sense of a people, a nation, or a crowd (a collective group). Here it is:
- populus = the people / the crowd (grammatically singular but referring to many individuals).
Latin often uses a collective singular where English might use a plural. So:
- populus ante portam exspectat
Literally: the people waits in front of the gate
Natural English: the people wait… / the crowd waits…
Grammatically, populus is singular, so the verb exspectat is also singular.
Those endings mark person and number:
exspectat:
- stem: exspecta-
- ending: -t = 3rd person singular
- meaning: he/she/it waits or the people (singular) waits.
intrant:
- stem: intra-
- ending: -nt = 3rd person plural
- meaning: they enter.
So:
- Singular subject (populus) → exspectat (3rd person singular).
- Plural subject (omnes) → intrant (3rd person plural).
The subject of intrant is omnes (all). The structure is:
- populus ante portam exspectat — the people waits in front of the gate
- deinde omnes per portam intrant — then all (of them) enter through the gate.
Omnes refers back to the same group (the populus) but is itself plural, so the verb is plural: intrant.
Omnes here is:
- case: accusative plural
- gender: masculine or feminine (depending on who the people are; context decides)
- function: pronoun/adjective meaning “all (people)”
In this sentence, omnes is the accusative plural subject of an implied verb in some analyses, but more straightforwardly you can take:
- omnes as a substantive (used like a noun: “all of them”)
- intrant as the finite verb agreeing in number (plural) with omnes.
Latin often uses omnes on its own to mean everyone / all the people.
Portam is accusative singular of porta (gate, door).
Both ante and per take the accusative case:
- ante + accusative = before / in front of
- ante portam = in front of the gate
- per + accusative = through
- per portam = through the gate
So -am here marks accusative singular, required by those prepositions.
Latin has no articles (no the, no a/an). The nouns:
- pluvia = rain (could be the rain or just rain)
- populus = people / crowd
- porta = gate
The context decides whether English should use the or a. In this sentence, English naturally uses the:
- Dum pluvia cadit → While the rain is falling or simply While it is raining
- populus ante portam exspectat → the people wait in front of the gate
Deinde is an adverb meaning then, next, afterwards.
It is fairly flexible in position. Here it stands at the beginning of the second main clause:
- deinde omnes per portam intrant = then all (the people) enter through the gate
It can also appear later in the clause, but putting it near the front clearly marks the sequence of actions.
The semicolon is mainly a modern editorial choice to separate two closely related main clauses:
- Clause 1: Dum pluvia cadit, populus ante portam exspectat
- Clause 2: deinde omnes per portam intrant
Ancient Latin manuscripts did not use punctuation the same way modern editions do; editors add punctuation to make the structure clearer for us. You could also see a comma or a period in different editions.
Latin word order is flexible compared with English. Basic patterns exist (verb often toward the end), but elements can move for emphasis or style.
- populus ante portam exspectat
- populus exspectat ante portam
Both are understandable. The first keeps the prepositional phrase ante portam right before the verb, slightly highlighting where they are waiting. English relies heavily on a fixed subject–verb–object order; Latin relies more on endings than on position to show grammatical roles.
Yes. That is a natural and accurate rendering:
- Dum pluvia cadit → As long as it is raining / While it is raining
- populus ante portam exspectat → the people wait in front of the gate
- deinde omnes per portam intrant → then they all go in through the gate
Latin allows some freedom in how you capture nuances like while vs as long as, and enter vs go in, as long as the core meaning is preserved.