Heavy Construction

Possessive Pronouns.

302.

• haec órnámenta sunt mea (Val. iv. 4), these are my jewels. [mea is neuter plural, though the speaker is a woman.]

  

• meí sunt órdinés, mea díscríptió (Cat. M. 59), mine are the rows, mine the arrangement. [mea is feminine, though the speaker is Cyrus.]

  

• multa in nostró collégió praeclára (id. 64), [there are] many fine things in our college. [nostro is neuter singular, though men are referred to.]

  

• Germání suás cópiás castrís édúxérunt (B. G. i. 51), the Germans led their troops out of the camp.

a. To express possession and similar ideas the possessive pronouns are regularly used, not the genitive of the personal or reflexive pronouns (§ 343. a): -

• domus mea, my house. [Not domus mei.]

  

• pater noster, our father. [Not pater nostri.]

  

• patrimónium tuum, your inheritance. [Not tui.]

NOTE 1: Exceptions are rare in classic Latin, common in later writers. For the use of a possessive pronoun instead of an Objective Genitive, see § 348. a.

NOTE 2: The Interrogative Possessive cûius -a, -um, occurs in poetry and early Latin: as, - cûium pecus (Ecl. iii. 1), whose flock? The genitive cûius is generally used instead.

b. The possessives have often the acquired meaning of peculiar to, favorable or propitious towards, the person or thing spoken of: -

• [petere] ut suá clémentiá ac mánsuétúdine útátur (B. G. ii. 14), they asked (they said) that he would show his [wonted] clemency and humanity.

  

• ígnórantí quem portum petat núllus suus ventus est (Sen. Ep. 71. 3), to him who knows not what port he is bound to, no wind is fair (his own).

  

• tempore tuó púgnástí (Liv. xxxviii. 45. 10), did you fight at a fit time?

NOTE: This use is merely a natural development of the meaning of the possessive, and the pronoun may often be rendered literally.

c. The possessives are regularly omitted (like other pronouns) when they are plainly implied in the context: -

• socium fraudávit, he cheated his partner. [socium suum would be distinctive, his partner (and not another's); suum socium, emphatic, his own partner.]

d. Possessive pronouns and adjectives implying possession are often used substantively to denote some special class or relation: -

• nostrí, our countrymen, or men of our party.

  

• suós continébat (B. G. i. 16), he held his men in check.

  

• flamma extréma meórum (Aen. ii. 431), last flames of any countrymen.

  

• Sullání, the veterans of Sulla's army; Pompêiání, the partisans of Pompey.

NOTE: There is no reason to suppose an ellipsis here. The adjective becomes a noun like other adjectives (see § 288).

e. A possessive pronoun or an adjective implying possession may take an appositive in the genitive case agreeing in gender, number, and case with an implied noun or pronoun: -

• meá sólíus causá (Ter. Haut. 129), for my sake only.

  

• in nostró omnium flétú (Mil. 92), amid the tears of us all.

  

• ex Anniáná Milónis domó (Att. iv. 3. .3), out of Annius Milo's house. [Equivalent to ex Anní Milónis domó.]

  

• nostra omnium patria, the country of us all.

  

• suum ipsíus régnum, his own kingdom.

For the special reflexive use of the possessive suus, see §§ 299, 300.