1.5 caesar translation

This is a minor note about a grammatical anomaly.

Reading Leonard Palmer&#;s classic book The Latin Language (, reprinted in ), I came across a point about a fossilised form of Early Latin.

It turns out that the -as ending of Pater familias (&#;Father of the family/household&#;) is actually an archaic genitive (p).

Probably this explains why Familia either does not decline in this set phrase (for instance, it has an attested genitive form of Patris familias, and of Patrem familias as accusative), or, when it does, it declines as any other first declension feminine noun (i.e.

as -ae, etc.); and why it does not decline the way Latin nouns ending in -as in the nominative singular tend to  do (that is, as third declension nouns; in this case, as *Patris familiaris in the genitive).

Pater familiae is also attested.

Itappears for example in Caesar&#;s De Bello Civili:

Quibus rebus accidit, ut pauci milites patresque familiae, qui aut gratia aut misericordia v