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Fear Clauses Be afraid. Be very afraid The Dreaded Fear Clause • Fear clauses are the last major category of Latin subjunctive subordinate clauses. They are also notoriously topsy-turvy. • A little attention to the way the Romans thought about the logic of fear clauses helps a great deal. Construction • Fear clauses, once again, are introduced with ut/ne, like purpose clauses and indirect commands. • You would rarely mistake one for a purpose clause or indirect command, because the main verb is always some variation on “to be afraid”. English Examples • These are the sentences that mean something like English, “I’m worried that my computer will time out before I finish this test”, or “He was afraid that the teacher wouldn’t get his email.” Backwards Conjunctions! • The tricky thing about fear clauses is that, from an English point of view, they seem to use the “opposite” conjunction from what would be logical. So you introduce a positive fear clause with ne, and a negative fear clause with ut. The Method to the Madness • However, there is a way of thinking about this that does actually make sense. If you have a positive fear clause, like Cicero timet Catilinam rem publicam vertat (Cicero is afraid that Catiline will overturn the government), then the thing the subject is afraid will happen is BAD. • This works as a mnemonic. Bad thing that might happen=ne (prevention). The Other Way Round • This makes sense of negative fear clauses as well. If you have a sentence like, Ovidius timet ut puella aegra valescat (Ovid is afraid that his sick girlfriend won’t get better), then your subject is fearing that a GOOD thing WON’T happen. • Good thing=ut (desired result) Summary • So, if you’re afraid of something bad happening (like the government collapsing), you use ne. Like how it means “prevention” in purpose clauses. • If you’re afraid of something good not happening (like your girlfriend getting over a cold), you use ut. Like how it means “what you want” in purpose clauses. Sequence of Tenses • Fear clauses follow sequence of tense rules like all other subjunctive subordinate clauses. • They can have the full range (you could logically be afraid that something has already happened that you just don’t know about yet). Honors Note • You can sometimes also write a negative fear clause with ne non rather than ut. So, Ovidius timet ne puella sua non videat (Ovid is afraid he won’t see his girlfriend.) • Once again, in Latin this is logical. Double negatives aren’t a grammar error like in English. Two negatives make a positive (like in multiplication.)