Chapter 396Allen and Greenough's Latin GrammarDickinson CollegeChristopher Francese
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Idiomatic Uses
Some
verbs of asking
and
teaching
may take two accusatives, one of the Person (
direct object
), and the other of the Thing (
secondary object
):—
mē sententiam
rogāvit
,
he asked me my opinion.ōtium dīvōs
rogat
(Hor. Od. 2.16.1)
,
he prays the gods for rest.haec praetōrem
postulābās
(Tull. 39)
,
you demanded this of the prœtor.aedīlīs populum
rogāre
(Liv. 6.42)
,
to ask the people
[to elect]
œdiles.docēre puerōs elementa
,
to teach children their A B C's.
This construction is found in classical authors with
ōrō
,
poscō
,
reposcō
,
rogō
,
interrogō
,
flāgitō
,
doceō
.
Some
verbs of asking
take the ablative of the person with a preposition instead of the accusative. So, always,
petō
(
ab
),
quaerō
(
ex
,
ab
,
dē
); usually
poscō
(
ab
),
flāgitō
(
ab
),
postulō
(
ab
), and occasionally others:—
pācem
ab Rōmānīs
petiērunt
(B. G. 2.13)
,
they sought peace from the Romans.
quod quaesīvit
ex mē
P. Apulêius
(Phil. 6.1)
,
what Publius Apuleius asked of me.
With the passive of some verbs of asking or teaching, the
person
or the
thing
may be used as subject (cf.
c.
N.2):—
Caesarsententiam rogātus est
,
Cæsar was asked his opinion.id
ab eō flāgitābātur
(B. C. 1.71)
,
this was urgently demanded of him.
The accusative of the
thing
may be retained with the passive of
rogō
, and of verbs of teaching, and occasionally with a few other verbs:—
fuerant
hōc
rogātī
;
(
Cael. 64
),
they had been asked this.
poscor meum
Laelapa(Ov. M. 7.771)
,
I am asked for my Lælaps.
Cicerō
cūncta
ēdoctus
(Sall.
Cat. 45
),
Cicero
,
being informed of everything.
But with most verbs of asking in prose the accusative of the thing becomes the subject nominative, and the accusative of the person is put in the ablative with a preposition: as,
—nē postulantur quidem vīrēs ā senectüte(Cat. M. 34)
,
strength is not even expected of an old man
(asked from old age).
The verb
cēlō
,
conceal
, may take two accusatives, and the usually intransitive
lateō
,
lie hid
, an accusative of the person:—
nōn
tē
cēlāvī
sermōnem
T. Ampī
;
(
Fam. 2.16.3
),
I did not conceal from you the talk of Titus Ampius.
nec latuēre dolī
frātrem
Iūnōnis
(Aen. 1.130)
,
nor did the wiles of Juno escape the notice of her brother.
The accusative of the person with
lateō
is late or poetical (§
388
.
c.
N.1).
All the double constructions indicated in §
396
arise from the wavering meaning of the verbs. Thus
doceō
means both to
show
a thing, and to
instruct
a person;
cēlō
, to
keep
a person
in the dark
, and to
hide
a thing;
rogō
, to
question
a person, and to
ask
a
question
or a
thing.
Thus either accusative may be regarded as the direct object, and so become the subject of the passive (cf.
b
above), but for convenience the accusative of the thing is usually called secondary.