Auriga equos incitat.

the horse

Breakdown of Auriga equos incitat.

• auriga: the driver
• incitare: to urge on; spur

Questions & Answers about Auriga equos incitat.

How do I know that auriga is the one doing the action?

Because auriga is in the nominative case, which is the case normally used for the subject of the sentence.

In this sentence:

• auriga = the subject, the charioteer
• equos = the direct object, the horses
• incitat = drives/urges on

Latin often shows each word’s job by its ending, not mainly by word order.

Why does equos end in -os?

The ending -os shows that equos is accusative plural.

That tells you two things:

• accusative = it is the direct object
• plural = it means horses, not horse

The noun is equus in the nominative singular, but when it becomes a plural direct object, it changes to equos.

A quick comparison:

• equus = horse
• equum = horse as a singular direct object
• equi = horses
• equos = horses as a plural direct object

Why does auriga end in -a if it means a man?

That is a very common question. In Latin, nouns ending in are often , and many first-declension nouns are feminine. But not all of them are.