Talk:Cato's Calendar Commentary (Nova Roma)

Latin

I'm pretty sure that "hodie est..." is wrong. hodie is an adverb, not a noun, so it cannot take the subject spot. I sustect that hodiernus dies est... would satisfy the grammar. Agricola 11:37, 11 June 2007 (CEST)

My feeling is that "hodie est" is probably okay, since one can read "est" in the phrase as "it is", so that "hodie" is not the subject noun of the verb but an adverb indicating the time when the action takes place.

"Hodiernus", incidentally, is normally an adjective meaning "modern" or "happening today", so I'm not sure it would really work as the subject of "est", if that's what you have in mind.

I do share your slight unease about the grammar of the sentence as a whole since it looks like it treats the "ante diem..." phrase as if it were a noun, like an English date, rather than a prepositional phrase, but strictly speaking I can't fault it. If one can legimately say "hodie sum ante rostras", as I think one can, then one ought to be able to say "hodie est ante diem quartum".

Just conceivably the sentence would be a little less troubling if it were something like "Dies est hodie ante diem...".

- Cordus 18:45, 16 June 2007 (CEST)