Moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative, Infinitive
Mood is the speaker's stance toward the action. Indicative says the thing happened: Caesar venit, "Caesar came." Imperative tells you to do it: venī! — "come!" Subjunctive hedges, hopes, plans, doubts, or hangs off another clause: veniat, "may he come" / "let him come." Infinitive turns the verb into a noun: venīre dulce est, "to come is sweet."
Indicative and imperative are easy to spot. The two that swallow most of the AP exam are the subjunctive — Latin's busiest mood, used in main clauses AND nearly every interesting subordinate clause — and the infinitive, which carries indirect statement and complements possum, dēbeō, volō.
Use this hub as the map; each mood gets its own deep-dive spoke.
Mood = how the speaker frames the action: as real, as wished/hedged, as ordered, or as a noun-thing.
Subjunctive is the one to drill — it owns most subordinate clauses (purpose, result, cum, indirect question, fear, conditions) AND four main-clause uses.
See It In Action
— Verg. Aen. i. 1
Canō is indicative — Vergil simply asserts what he is doing. No hedging, no wish, no command. The default mood for stating a fact about the present.
— Cic. Cat. iv. 3
Three imperatives stacked. Cicero is addressing the Senate directly: no ut, no velim, no softening — the rawest form of the speaker's command.
— Cic. Lig. 33
The polite Ciceronian negative command. Nōlī is itself an imperative; the action you're forbidding sits in the infinitive. This is the template the AP exam expects you to recognize.
— Sall. Cat. 21
The historical infinitive: a bare infinitive doing the work of an imperfect indicative, with its subject in the NOMINATIVE. Sallust loves it for racing through narrative.
translate straight: "X did/does/will Y"
venit → "he comes" / "he came" (tense decides)
imperative or polite "please": "Y!" / "do Y"
venī → "come!"; nōlī putāre → "don't suppose"
add an English modal: "may / let / would / should / am to"
eāmus → "let us go"; velim → "I would wish"; quid faciam? → "what should I do?"
translate as the conjunction expects — usually as English indicative or infinitive
vēnit ut videat → "he came TO SEE" (purpose); rogō quid faciat → "I ask what he IS DOING" (indirect Q)
"to Y" — or, in indirect statement, "that X is Y-ing"
amāre → "to love"; dīcit eum amāre → "he says that he loves"
Same conjunction can take either mood. The mood tells you whether Latin treats the clause as fact or as something colored by the main verb's purpose, doubt, or sequence.
states the clause as factual
cum venit, vīdī
when he came (and he did), I saw him
purpose, characteristic, circumstance, or indirect question
cum venīret, vīdī
when he was coming / since he came, I saw him
Tip: Ask: is the clause reporting an independent fact, or is it bent to the main verb's intent / circumstance / doubt? Bent → subjunctive.
In Caesar dīxit Gallōs venīre, what is venīre doing?
Study Tips
- •When you parse a verb, name the mood FIRST. It tells you what kind of work the verb is doing in the sentence — fact, command, hypothesis, or noun.
- •Memorize the four main-clause subjunctives by the acronym JOHD: Jussive/hortatory, Optative, Hortatory/Heuristic, Deliberative — wishes, exhortations, doubting questions.
- •When you hit a subordinate clause with a subjunctive verb, ask: what conjunction triggered it? ut, cum, nē, quī/quae/quod, an indirect question? The conjunction names the construction.
- •For prohibitions, drill the formula nōlī/nōlīte + infinitive (the polite form) — it's the one Cicero uses, and it shows up constantly.