The Latin Passive Voice

This set of lessons explains how to recognise and how to use the passive voice in Latin. It begins with an explanation of how the passive voice works in English, and then applies what is already known, if not always completely understood, to Latin. All the passive forms are given in what are hoped to be user-friendly tables and carefully distinguished from their active forms. It will be seen – note the impersonal future passive construction here! – that the forms of the passive are generally based on the forms in the active voice. The final lesson covers how the passive voice is used in Latin. There is also a set of accompanying PowerPoint slides that can be downloaded and used.

The lessons form part of a growing set of courses that will eventually cover all the main grammar of Latin, together with syntax. There will be additional courses on the scansion and reading of the most common meters in Latin verse, together with lecture courses on various aspects of Greek and Roman history. Once these are in place, I will start work on a parallel set of courses to cover the main elements of Greek.

I use the videos already made with my language classes, where they are very popular supplements to live teaching and aids to revision. I hope they will be equally useful for impersonal learning.