§440. Subjunctive Mood
The Hortatory Subjunctive is used to express a concession. 1 The Present is used for present time, the Perfect for past. The negative is nē.
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sit fūr, sit sacrilegus: at est bonus imperātor
(Verr. 5.4), grant he is a thief, a godless wretch: yet he is a good general. -
fuerit aliīs; tibi quandō esse coepit
(Verr. 2.1.37), suppose he was [so] to others; when did he begin to be to you? -
nēmō is umquam fuit: nē fuerit
(Or. 101), there never was such a one [you will say]: granted (let there not have been). -
nē sit summum malum dolor, malum certē est
(Tusc. 2.14), granted that pain is not the greatest evil, at least it is an evil.
For other methods of expressing Concession, see § 527.
For the Hortatory Subjunctive denoting a Proviso, see § 528. a.
Optative Subjunctive
J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.