I just started the Bradley’s Arnold Latin Prose Composition, and after reading through the lengthy beginning I arrived at the first sentence of the first exercise.
“I have been elected consul by the votes of the Roman people; you are favoured by the enemies of the human race.”
It seems like a nice and simple sentence…but then you translate it into Latin, get to the answer key and find this answer.
“Ego populi Romani suffragiis consul sum factus, tibi ab hostibus humani generis favetur.”
It all makes sense except for “favetur.” Why is it third person singular rather than second? I can’t find a reason.
it’s used impersonally, like tibi ignotum est, “you are forgiven”
Ahhh. I see. Ok. Thank you so much!
Verbs that take oblique cases ( these include verbs that take the dative, such as parco, credo, pareo, and, faveo) can never be used passively with a person other than an impersonal third person. This is due to their nature. They need to have their object in the dative. When you flip a verb from active to passive, normally the accusative in the active sentence becomes the nominative subject in the new passive sentence. This cannot work with verbs like faveo. Therefore such verbs become impersonal. ‘ego tibi faveo’, becomes ‘a me tibi favetur’, ‘it is trusted to you by me’.