Gerundive

Latin Learning Latin
1

Are both the following sentences correct?:

1.Virtus amanda est.
2.Virtutem amandum est.

Could they be translated: 1. Virtue should be loved; 2. One should love virtue?

Thanks.

2

I’m fairly sure that #2 is not correct. Passive periphrastics only come in the nominative case, and even if they could come in the accusative, it would be “amandam” (f. s. acc.)

I think that #1 could be traslated either

  1. Virtue should be loved.
    or
  2. One should love virtue.
3

Latin often does some things with impersonal passives that are hard to express exactly in English, e.g.

ventum est Romam

Could be used to mean “they came to Rome,” although it is literally something more like “it was come to Rome (by them)” or “there was coming to Rome” - there is no way to translate exactly this Latin idiom into English. And of course we all know of “nunc est bibendum” (“now it must be drunk”, i.e. “now is the time for drinking”)

But I don’t think even Latin could extend these impersonals so far as “amandum est virtutem”, because, even if we take ‘amandum’ as a neuter nominative impersonal, you wouldn’t have an accusative object with a passive verb. That said, I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if such a construction existed somewhere in the Latin corpus.