Please make your selection from the above CODEX menu options for Episode 3.1

-nt

Operative, in your immersions so far every verb has had a single person or thing as its subject. These are singular verbs. When more than one person or thing does the action, the verb must change to show it. These are plural verbs.

You already know the singular third-person verb ends in -t. The plural is just as straightforward: -nt. The verb groups you have met (1: ambulat, 2: rīdet, 3: contendit) are told apart by the vowel before the ending, and they still are in the plural, though the third group now shows -u- rather than -i-.

Watch for new verbs ending in -nt: they are plural and have more than one subject.

For greater attunement, operatives should view this video briefing courtesy of latintutorial.com:

-ae, -ī, -ēs

A plural verb needs a plural subject, so the nominative gains a new set of endings. You cannot pair a singular subject with a plural verb.

So the first-declension nominative -a becomes -ae; the second-declension -us becomes -ī; the third-declension nominative plural is -ēs.

One more piece of intel: the plural of est (is) is sunt (they are).

Operative, the Rome of 79 CE that Caecilius writes about is an empire, but it had not always been one, and not everyone agreed it should be.

For centuries Rome was a rēs pūblica, a "public thing." Power was shared: the Senate advised, two annually elected consuls held executive command, and the people voted to choose them. No one man ruled. That older arrangement is the one Caecilius sketches for you in his tablīnum.

It did not last. A century of civil wars, Romans fighting Romans, tore the Republic apart. Out of that bloodshed came Augustus, who ended the wars and gave Rome the pāx Rōmāna, a long stretch of internal peace. In return, Rome accepted the rule of one man. Augustus was careful never to call himself "king," but an emperor is what he was, and every emperor since has descended from his settlement.

This is where viewpoints split, and the split is your real cultural target for this episode. To a man like Caecilius, a banker, the bargain is obvious and good: peace means trade, ships in the harbor, money in motion, and a banker thrives. He will praise any emperor who keeps the peace. But others remembered the Republic with longing and saw the loss of elections and shared power as a real loss, however prosperous the empire became. When Caecilius asks you quid scītis dē Rōmā?, he is also, without quite saying so, asking which side of that argument you stand on.

The two emperors of the moment are Flavians, and confusingly both are named Titus Flavius Vespasianus: the father we call Vespasian, the son we call Titus. Vespasian rose to power in 69 CE and ruled about ten years; when he died in 79, Titus succeeded him peacefully, the calm transfer Caecilius reports in his letter. Their most famous monument is the Flavian Amphitheatre, which Vespasian began and Titus completed, and which we know today as the Colosseum.

For deeper attunement on how the empire began, operatives may view these briefings, the first courtesy of the American Institute for Roman Culture and the second from TED-Ed: