Questions & Answers about Fama de bello cives terret.
What case is fama, and what is it doing in the sentence?
Fama is nominative singular. It is the subject of the verb terret.
So structurally:
- fama = the thing doing the frightening
- terret = frightens
- cives = the people being frightened
Because fama is singular, the verb is singular too.
Why is cives not the subject?
A learner might first think cives is the subject because it comes right before the verb, but Latin does not rely mainly on word order the way English does.
Here is the key point:
- terret is singular
- cives is plural
A plural subject would normally take a plural verb, such as terrent. Since the verb is singular, cives cannot be the subject here.
So cives is the direct object: the ones being frightened.
What case is cives here?
Here cives is accusative plural, the direct object of terret.
This can be confusing because cives can also be nominative plural. In other words, the form by itself is ambiguous. You tell which it is from the rest of the sentence: