# vivendi doctrina



## sweetkang

quoniam vitiorum emendatricem legem esse oportet commendatricemque virtutum, ab ea vivendi doctrina ducatur.

it is from Cicero, my question is can "*vivendi* doctrina" be replaced by"*viventis* doctrina"? I donot know why Cicero use vivendi(*future passive participle gen*.) while not viventis(*present active particile gen*.)

Thank you!


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## Scholiast

salve Sweetkang!

Your difficulty here is that _vivendi_ is not a participle at all, it is a *gerund* (and there is in any case no such thing as a "future passive participle" - future participles are always active). But you are right, it is genitive.

I do not know what grammar-book(s) you are working from, but there are certainly online resources for the grammar of this. Briefly, a gerund is a noun formed from a verb. So _doctrina__ vivend_i is "the discipline of living", or "the philosophical principles by which one lives".

I hope this makes sense.


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## XiaoRoel

Sólo para ampliar:
La semántica de un verbo expresada en forma de substantivo forma una declinación de género neutro de la que el *infinitivo* es el caso del sujeto y del objeto directo (nominativo-acusativo), y el *gerundio* ofrece un acusativo complemento circunstancial de verbos de dirección o regido por preposiciones de acusativo, un genitivo complemento de nombre y un dativo-ablativo para complementos circunstanciales (y para objetos indirectos).


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## sweetkang

Grarias vobis. 
(and there is in any case no such thing as a "future passive participle" - future participles are always active).
 there exist future passive participleres.stem+-ndus,nda,ndum.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once again



> there exist future passive participleres.stem+-ndus,nda,ndum



Sorry, Sweetkang, the -_ndus_ (_-a_/-_um_) forms are indeed passive (or intransitive) in sense, but they are not participles: they are gerundives, conveying a sense of duty, obligation or necessity:
_
fugiendum est mihi_: "I must run away"
_ira principis timenda est_: "The anger of the emperor is to be feared/must be feared"

A famous example, cited by nearly all the textbooks is
_
Carthago delenda est_: "Carthage must be destroyed" (Cato the Elder).

A remarkable passage of Caesar (_BG_ II 20) strings together about half a dozen in a single sentence - have a look (in Perseus if you haven't a printed text to hand).

Best wishes.


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## Cagey

Variations in terminology can be confusing.  The -_ndus_ forms are usually labeled as '_future passive participles_' in introductory grammar books.  If that is what you are being taught, that is what you will call them in class, and how you will hear your teacher speak of them.  

This is apart from what they may be called when people are interested in a more sophisticated linguistic analysis. 

In this particular case, I believe another source of confusion is that in Latin -_ndus_ forms are used to name actions [as well as infinitives].  And in English we use an _-ing_ form to name actions [and we also use infinitives], and we use the same form for a participle functioning as an adjective.  Thus '_vivendi_' is translated as '_of living'_,  and '_vir vivens_' is translated as  '_living man_'. The fact that Latin forms are translated as same word in English can give the impression that they are the same grammatical forms in Latin. 

 [_A side note_: At one time, the English noun form (gerund) had a distinct ending as well, but over time there was a conflation of the participle and the gerund endings, and both forms came to use the same ending.     (There is a thread on this somewhere in the forum, but I haven't been able to find it.)]


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## sweetkang

Thank you very much! it is taken as participles in Wheelock which I am reading now.


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## Scholiast

Good day again

Well, well. Thank you, Cagey (#6). A copy of Wheelock, acquired many years ago in a second-hand bookshop, has been gathering dust on my shelves without being consulted more than a handful of times - and, having blown the dust off it I see that yes, it does indeed term  "future passive participles" what I was taught (and have always myself taught) are gerundives.

I know that Wheelock's is a highly respected and widely used handbook, but to be candid I don't think his treatment of the gerundive in particular is entirely satisfactory, and I think this terminology is potentially misleading for students such as Sweetkang. So to clarify:

A future active participle has the force, in English, of "going-to-do" something. Consequently it is possible to form a periphrastic future with _esse_:

_quid facturus es?_ ("What are you *going to do*?")

Logically, then, a "future passive" participle would mean "going-to-be-done", and Cato's famous utterance

_Carthago delenda est_

would have to mean "Carthage is _*going to be*_ [will be] destroyed". Semantically this is wrong, however, as the gerundive comports the idea of necessity or obligation, "Carthage _*must*_ be/_*has to be*_ destroyed".*

And at the start of the famous passage of _BG_ which I cited in my previous post,

_Caesari omnia uno tempore erant agenda_ 

means

"Everything had to be done by Caesar at once"/"Caesar had to do everything at once"

(not: "everything was _*about to be done*_ by Caesar").

Sweetkang, I hope this is helpful.

*Footnote: it would also make a nonsense of the (perfectly grammatical) _Carthago delenda erit_, "Carthage will have to be destroyed".


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