The original Proto-Indo-European instrumental case — the one that showed something that goes from beginning to end alongside an action — survives in the Latin ablative case in six important ways. Those six ways fall into two groups. One group you could call the “with” group. It almost always appears in English with the preposition “with.” The other group is a little more slippery. It basically points out in what respect something is true. We can call it the “respect” group.

The “With” Group

English phrases starting with the preposition “with” convey several different ideas. “With” can introduce a companion, as in “Ryan stayed with me the whole time.” It can show a tool that is used to accomplish something, as in “I fixed it with my hammer.” It can also describe the manner in which something is done, as in “They applauded the actors with great enthusiasm.” Although these ideas may sound all alike to you in English, they're actually quite different. Latin recognizes the differences and uses different grammatical constructions to express them.

Let's take a closer look at these distinctions that sound so alike in English. Consider this sentence: “The farmer was plowing the field with his son.” This sentence could mean two different things. Either Junior was helping Pop in preparing the field, or Pop was cruelly dragging Junior through the dirt. One understanding of the sentence makes a little more sense, even without a context. There are times, however, that you do need context to figure out what is meant.

Here is another example: “The master beat the slave with a stick.” It could mean two things, couldn't it? First, it could be that the master used the stick to beat the slave with. It could also be that of all the slaves, the one holding the stick got beaten. Latin has a grammatical way to clarify this confusion.

Different uses for the ablative case have formal names. The most common of these uses is the ablative of accompaniment. It uses the Latin preposition cum (with its object in the ablative case, of course) and shows exactly what its name suggests: accompaniment.

Not all ablative case uses are introduced by a preposition. Some uses never have any prepositions at all. They just appear all by themselves. The most common of these ablative uses that doesn't require a preposition is the ablative of means.

The phrase “ablative of means” doesn't indicate its use as well as many other ablative usage names do. It shows the “means” by which something is done; that is, the tool used.

The presence or absence of the preposition cum will guide your understanding.

There is one other ablative case use that usually employs the preposition cum. The ablative of manner shows the manner in which something is done.

There are two peculiarities of the ablative of manner that occur when the noun in the phrase has an adjective with it. First, the adjective usually comes before the cum. Second, when there is an adjective, the cum becomes optional. (Without an adjective, you have to have the word cum.)

The Respect Group

There are three ablative case uses that show in what respect something is true. The fact that none of these uses requires a preposition is something else that they have in common. What distinguishes them most is where they occur and how you translate them.

The “ablative of respect” is the most common use of the ablative case to show respect.

Another way to look at that example is that Titus was king with respect to his name, but not with respect to power.

The “ablative of comparison” is simply an alternate way to express something you learned in the last chapter:

In other words, Marcus was pretty tall compared to Lucius. Whether you use the ablative of comparison or quam, the meaning is the same.

The “ablative of degree of difference” is a frequent companion to the ablative of comparison. When a comparison is being made, it can give you specifics as to how different the two things are.

As often happens, a word-for-word translation of the Latin into English sounds horrible. This example would be much easier on the ear if we said “Marcus was much taller than Lucius.”

Forming the Ablative Case

Give the ablative case forms, singular and plural, for all the nouns in the vocabulary list in TABLE 8-4.

Table 8-4 Vocabulary