# The orator said all citizens ought to obey the laws



## Lamb67

The orator said that all citizens ought to obey the laws
Orator dixit parendi leges esse omnibus civitibus


----------



## jazyk

I think it should be:

Orator dixit omnes cives parituros esse legibus.

I don't think you can put pareo, parere in the gerundive because it's not, as far as I know, a transitive verb.


----------



## Starfrown

_Orator dixit omnes cives debere legibus parere._
The orator said that all citizens ought to obey the laws.


----------



## jazyk

Yep, I thought of that one as well, but wasn't sure that debere was Latin enough or already too Romance.


----------



## Starfrown

jazyk said:


> Orator dixit omnes cives parituros esse legibus.
> 
> I don't think you can put pareo, parere in the gerundive because it's not, as far as I know, a transitive verb.


 
Your sentence is grammatically correct, but reads:

"The orator said that all citizens _were about to/would_ obey the laws."

It might be possible to make Lamb's original suggestion work, but it would require an impersonal construction--the only construction possible with the gerundive of an intransitive verb. I think it should be:

_Orator dixit parendum esse legibus ab omnibus civibus._

(Note that _ab_ is used in this sentence because the impersonal gerundive takes an indirect object in the dative.)


----------



## jazyk

> Your sentence is grammatically correct, but reads:
> 
> "The orator said that all citizens _were about to/would_ obey the laws."


Not according to what I know. 



> _Orator dixit parendum esse legibus ab omnibus civibus._
> 
> (Note that _ab_ is used in this sentence because the impersonal gerundive takes an indirect object in the dative.)


I don't think intransitive verbs can be placed in the gerundive.


----------



## Starfrown

jazyk said:


> Not according to what I know.


The future active participle (e.g. _pariturus_), unlike the gerundive (which is sometimes called the future passive participle), *does not* *suggest obligation*, but rather _relative_ _futurity _(that is, the action it describes takes place after that of the main verb).

With a main verb in the past tense it will be rendered into English as "would (do)," "was/were about to (do)," or "was/were going to (do)."



jazyk said:


> I don't think intransitive verbs can be placed in the gerundive.


As I said earlier, they can be placed in the gerundive, but they must then be used _impersonally_. The third person singular passive forms of Latin intransitive verbs were regularly used in this manner.

Read 2 on the gerundive here. 

Note that some say the impersonal gerundive to be instead the gerund, but I personally find it hard to subscribe to that argument since the gerund lacked a nominative form and its accusative form was mostly used as an object of _ad_. Besides, other impersonal usages are well established. Indeed, one might even argue that the gerund is a sort of impersonal form of the gerundive, as the author does here (bottom of the last page).


----------



## XaLeX

Starfrown said:


> It might be possible to make Lamb's original suggestion work, but it would require an impersonal construction--the only construction possible with the gerundive of an intransitive verb. I think it should be:
> 
> _Orator dixit parendum esse legibus ab omnibus civibus._
> 
> (Note that _ab_ is used in this sentence because the impersonal gerundive takes an indirect object in the dative.)



I think he got it.
"The orator said that laws have to be obeyed by all of the citizens" i.e. "The orator said all citizens have to obey the laws"


----------



## Starfrown

XaLeX said:


> I think he got it.
> "The orator said that laws have to be obeyed by all of the citizens" i.e. "The orator said all citizens have to obey the laws"


 
By "he," do you mean me or Lamb?

There is no doubt that Lamb's original suggestion was incorrect, because the gerundive of an intransitive verb will never appear in any case other than the neuter nominative and accusative singular.

The truth is that there will be no direct Latin equivalent--at least not when using the intransitive _pareo--_to the English:

"The orator said that laws have to be obeyed by all citizens."

My recommendation with the impersonal gerundive:

_Orator dixit parendum esse legibus ab omnibus civibus._

is impossible to translate literally into English, but the meaning of the Latin might be conveyed by the following:

"The orator said that obeying the laws was to be done by all citizens."

Note that it emphasizes the action above everything else, as all impersonal passive constructions do.


----------



## XaLeX

Starfrown said:


> By "he," do you mean me or Lamb?


Oh, I didn't notice it was ambiguous. I meant you


----------

