籬 magalia · Prose Composition families grammar
籬廬 magalia · Prose Composition · Unit 6/6

Unit 6 · Indirect statement (continuous prose)

reported speech: Latin acc.+inf. ∥ Greek ὅτι-clause (saying) and infinitive (thinking)

Render into Latin and Greek:
“The messenger reports that the enemy are approaching the walls. The general thinks that the city is safe.”

Model Latin

Nūntius hostēs ad mūrōs appropinquāre nūntiat. Dux urbem tūtam esse putat.

Model Greek

ὁ ἄγγελος λέγει ὅτι οἱ πολέμιοι τοῖς τείχεσι προσέρχονται. ὁ δὲ στρατηγὸς νομίζει τὴν πόλιν ἀσφαλῆ εἶναι.

Grammar focus

Idiom watch: English 'reports/thinks THAT…' splits two ways. Latin ALWAYS uses acc.+inf. with no word for 'that' (hostēs … appropinquāre; urbem tūtam esse). Greek splits by verb: SAYING (λέγει) takes ὅτι + finite verb (retained pres. προσέρχονται); THINKING (νομίζει) takes acc.+inf. like Latin. The connective δέ links the second Greek sentence — Greek joins with particles where Latin and English merely juxtapose.

Attested in the corpus

Real instances of this construction, mined from the PROIEL dependency treebanks (Herodotus · Cicero) — the model you are imitating, attested in the wild:

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Authored pedagogical model answers, proofread for grammatical correctness in both languages. Not from a single source edition.