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Lines 105–107 of chapter XXIV of Lingua latina per se illustrata. Familia Romana reads (emphasis mine):

Cēterum facile tibi est frātrem tuum reprehendere, dum ipse hīc in mollī lectulō cubās. Tūne ipse semper bonus discipulus es?

In a Latin-Italian dictionary, I've read that the pronoun ipse can be used together with other pronouns in expressions such as ego ipse, tu ipse, is or hic or iste ipse to convey "me myself" or "me personally", "you yourself" or "you personally", "he himself" or "he personally", "she herself", "she personally"... However, I don't understand why in the previous excerpt it's ipse hīc. What is the pronoun hīc referring to? Shouldn't it be ipse tū in the same way as in the next sentence tū(ne) ipse is used?

brianpck
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Charo
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1 Answers1

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The pronoun ipse refers to the implicit pronoun tu. While ipse can be used with personal or other pronouns like you list, it is also often used on its own even when referring to actors that are referred to with those personal pronouns. You could well insert a tu in that sentence but you need not.

The word hic is the adverb "here", not the pronoun "this", and is thus related to in lectulo.

Joonas Ilmavirta
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