Breakdown of Fama falsa cives terret.
Questions & Answers about Fama falsa cives terret.
The subject is fama.
You can tell because fama is in the nominative singular, the case normally used for the subject of a sentence. So fama falsa means false rumor or false report, and that whole phrase is the subject.
Cives is the direct object: it is the thing being frightened.
It is the accusative plural form of civis, meaning citizen. So cives means citizens here.
Even though it comes before the verb, it is still the object because Latin uses case endings, not mainly word order, to show grammatical function.
Falsa is an adjective agreeing with fama.
In Latin, adjectives must agree with the nouns they describe in:
- gender
- number
- case
Here:
- fama = feminine, singular, nominative
- falsa = feminine, singular, nominative
So falsa means false and matches fama perfectly.