(a) Why this lesson exists
Lesson 5 covered the subjunctive of intent (purpose, command). Today is the subjunctive of uncertainty: questions folded inside statements, worlds that didn't happen (conditions), and descriptions by type rather than fact. Pliny's escape narrative (6.20) happens to be a museum of all three — because a seventeen-year-old fleeing a volcano lives entirely in whether, what if, and the kind of people who…
The map:
| Construction | Signal | Mood logic |
|---|---|---|
| Indirect question | question word (quis, quid, an, quos, uter…) after a knowing/asking verb | the question is reported → subjunctive |
| Double indirect question | …an… ("whether X or Y") | both halves subjunctive |
| Future-less-vivid / contrary-to-fact conditions | si/nisi + subjunctive | imperfect subj. = present unreal; pluperfect = past unreal |
| Conditions inside indirect statement | si + subj., apodosis = infinitive | the apodosis obeys L4; the protasis keeps subjunctive |
| Relative clause of characteristic | sunt qui / erant qui + subj. | describes a type, not identified individuals |
(b) Drilled on your syllabus — one night, one letter
Set 1 — indirect questions (Ep. 6.20.1, 5):
cupere cognoscere, quos ego Miseni relictus … non solum metus verum etiam casus pertulerim. … Dubito, constantiam vocare an imprudentiam debeam — agebam enim duodevicensimum annum.
1. quos … pertulerim — what makes this an indirect question rather than a relative clause? Identify the head verb and translate. 2. Dubito, constantiam vocare an imprudentiam debeam — a double indirect question compressed: what are the two alternatives, and what's Pliny's sly point in offering them? (His age, supplied in the dash, is the answer key he hands you.)
Set 2 — direct conditions, quoted speech (Ep. 6.20.10): the Spanish friend confronts mother and son.
'Si frater' inquit 'tuus, tuus avunculus vivit, vult esse vos salvos; si periit, superstites voluit. Proinde quid cessatis evadere?'
3. Both protases (vivit, periit) are indicative. What kind of conditions are these, and why is the indicative exactly right for the friend's rhetoric? (Either way, you should run — the logic of a man with no time for subjunctives.)
Set 3 — conditions folded into reported speech (Ep. 6.20.12): the mother's plea.
Tum mater orare hortari iubere, quoquo modo fugerem; posse enim iuvenem, se et annis et corpore gravem bene morituram, si mihi causa mortis non fuisset. Ego contra salvum me nisi una non futurum; dein manum eius amplexus addere gradum cogo.
4. orare hortari iubere — three infinitives with no subject expressed and no -bat in sight. What's this construction (common in urgent narrative), and what does it do to the pacing? 5. quoquo modo fugerem — door check (L5): indirect command or indirect question? Translate. 6. The mother's argument is all reported: posse enim iuvenem … se … bene morituram, si … non fuisset. Untangle: (i) what can the young man do? (ii) what will she do "well," and under what unreal condition? (iii) what tense/mood is fuisset and what does it tell you about how she sees herself? 7. salvum me nisi una non futurum — Pliny's counter, still in reported speech. Supply the omissions and translate. What does the double negative (nisi … non) accomplish?
Set 4 — the famous climax (Ep. 6.20.17):
Possem gloriari non gemitum mihi, non vocem parum fortem in tantis periculis excidisse, nisi me cum omnibus, omnia mecum perire misero, magno tamen mortalitatis solacio credidissem.
8. Possem … nisi … credidissem — identify the condition type(s). (Watch the mixed tenses: possem imperfect, credidissem pluperfect.) 9. Inside the nisi clause sits an indirect statement: me cum omnibus, omnia mecum perire. Translate it, and explain the chiasmus (the mirrored word order) — what is it doing emotionally? 10. Put it together: what is Pliny claiming about his own courage, and what's the confessed truth underneath it?
Set 5 — the type-clause and the Vergil condition:
(Ep. 6.20.14) erant qui metu mortis mortem precarentur … (Aen. 2.54–56) et, si fata deum, si mens non laeva fuisset, / impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras, / Troiaque nunc staret, Priamique arx alta maneres.
11. erant qui … precarentur — why subjunctive? What's the difference between this and erant qui precabantur? 12. The Vergil condition is the most discussed in the poem: protasis fuisset (pluperfect subj.), apodoses impulerat (pluperfect indicative!), staret … maneres (imperfect subj.). Sort out the time-frames, and explain the scandalous impulerat. 13. maneres — second person?! Whom is the narrator suddenly addressing, and what is this device called?
(c) The trap gallery
- Indirect question vs. relative clause: quos … pertulerim — if the qu- word follows a verb of knowing/asking and the clause answers "what?", it's a question (subjunctive, translated with "what/which…"). A true relative has an antecedent to lean on.
- Reported conditions keep their protasis subjunctive but trade their apodosis for an infinitive (#6, #7). When you see si + subjunctive next to an infinitive, you're inside someone's reported reasoning — find the speaker.
- Historical infinitives (#4) look like indirect statement with no head verb. In rapid narrative (orare hortari iubere), they're main verbs in disguise — translate as vivid imperfects: "she begged, urged, ordered."
(d) Summary drill (skill 1.C)
One English sentence each: (i) the friend's ultimatum (§10); (ii) the mother-son standoff and its resolution (§12); (iii) Pliny's claim-and-confession (§17).
(e) Answer key
1. Head verb cognoscere ("to learn") inside cupere: "(you desire) to learn what fears and what disasters I endured, left behind at Misenum." quos has no antecedent; it asks. Subjunctive pertulerim seals it. 2. "I don't know whether I should call it steadiness or foolishness" (deliberative debeam inside an). The alternatives are flattering vs. honest; the dash — "I was in my eighteenth year" — quietly votes for foolishness. Self-deprecation by syntax. 3. Simple (factual) conditions, present and perfect indicative: "If your brother is alive, he wants you safe; if he has died, he wanted you to survive." The friend refuses speculation: in both real worlds the conclusion is identical — so move. Indicative = no hedging, the rhetoric of urgency. 4. Historical infinitives — main-verb infinitives in breathless narrative: "my mother begged, urged, commanded…" Dropping person and tense markers strips the scene to pure verb: panic in grammar form. 5. Indirect command (content of the begging): "that I flee in whatever way I could." (quoquo modo = "by whatever means" — the desperation is in the indefinite.) 6. (i) The young man can (escape) — posse iuvenem; (ii) she, "heavy with years and body," would die well — bene morituram [esse] — if she had not been the cause of my death — si … non fuisset; (iii) pluperfect subjunctive: past contrary-to-fact as seen from her imagined future — she pictures herself dying and rules the death "good" only in the world where it didn't drag her son down. The grammar carries her whole moral calculus. 7. "(I replied) that I would not be safe except together (with her)" — salvum me [esse] non futurum [esse] nisi una. The double negative makes refusal absolute: there is no version of "safe" that doesn't include her. Then he grabs her hand — argument over. 8. Past contrary-to-fact, mixed: "I could (now) boast … had I not believed…" — possem (imperfect: present-time unreality) + credidissem (pluperfect: past-time unreality). The boast is unavailable now because of what he believed then. 9. "that I was perishing with all things, and all things with me." The chiasmus (me cum omnibus ↔ omnia mecum) is a closed loop — boy and cosmos locked in mutual annihilation. Emotionally it converts terror into totality: nothing survives to grieve for, which is precisely the "wretched yet great consolation." 10. Claim: he never groaned, never said a cowardly word. Confession: only because he thought the entire world was dying with him — courage as cosmic misunderstanding. The sentence gives with the apodosis and takes away with the protasis; expect Q3-style questions on exactly this tension. 11. Relative clause of characteristic: "there were (people) of the kind who prayed for death out of fear of death." Subjunctive = a type, not a census. precabantur (indicative) would claim specific known individuals did so; precarentur paints the psychology of the crowd. 12. Time-frames: fuisset — past unreal ("if the gods' fates, if (our) mind had not been perverse"); staret/maneres — present unreal ("Troy would now stand…"). The bomb is impulerat — pluperfect indicative where rules demand subjunctive (impulisset): "he had (already) driven us to defile the Greek hiding-place." The indicative says it as good as happened — Laocoön's spear-cast had actually done the work; only fate unsaid it. Vergil breaks the grammar to show how close the other world came. ⭐ The most quotable grammar note in Book 2 — and exam-favorite territory. 13. Apostrophe: the narrator (Aeneas, mid-tale) turns to address the citadel itself — maneres, "you would still stand." Epic grief breaking the fourth wall; expect it again with Camilla (Book 11).
Summary models (d): (i) "Live or dead, your uncle would want you to survive — so why are you standing here?" (ii) "His mother begged Pliny to escape alone and let her die rather than slow him; he refused to be safe without her and forced her along by the hand." (iii) "Pliny says he could boast that he never groaned — except that his calm rested on believing the whole world was ending with him."
⭐ Exam strategy: conditions are Q2 gold — the protasis and apodosis are usually separate scored segments, and "would have stood" vs. "would stand" vs. "stood" are three different segment scores. Before translating any si-sentence, write its time-stamp in the margin: PAST-UNREAL, PRESENT-UNREAL, or REAL. Three labels, no exceptions, full segments.