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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Roman Collector, post: 3239089, member: 75937&quot;]Matri is dative -- &quot;to/for/by mother&quot;; Mater is nominative -- used as the subject of sentences or in titles (as a nominative absolute).</p><p><br /></p><p>And as for that source calling Deum a gerund? Erroneous and I don&#039;t just argue semantics here. A gerund is a term from English grammar to refer to a verb in its participle form that serves as a substantive (noun). For example, run is a verb. Running is its participial form. When used as a substantive, such as in &quot;running is good exercise,&quot; then it&#039;s a gerund. It&#039;s not a gerund if used as an adjective, such as &quot;hot and cold running water.&quot; That&#039;s just a participle. Same with using it as a verb along with a helping verb, as in &quot;we were running fast&quot; -- not a gerund.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, lest you think I&#039;m being pendantic, the term can only refer to verbs. Deus (god) is never a verb in Latin. Only a noun. It can&#039;t be a participle and it certainly can&#039;t be a gerund. I think that the author is confusing the grammatical term &quot;gerund&quot; with &quot;genitive&quot; because if (hypothetically speaking) deum were &quot;the archaic conjugational use of the genitive&quot; of deus in the singular, than it really would mean &quot;god&#039;s mother.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>But deus has one genitive singular: dei, as in agnus dei. It DOES have two alternative plural genitive forms: deorum and deum. Deum is also singular accusative, but the context of the coin inscription and the tomb inscription described in The Golden Fleece is not compatible with it being an accusative.</p><p><br /></p><p>Moreover, I wrote Bill Welch and he said that he took one year of Latin 55 years ago and he thanked me for correcting him.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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