'Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?' — the most famous opening in Latin oratory. This passage is the gold standard for rhetorical analysis: anaphora, rhetorical questions, and periodic sentence structure. Use Philologus to translate, assess your version, and master Cicero's prose style.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?
Citation: Cic. Cat. 1.1.
How long, Catiline, will you continue to abuse our patience? To what end will your unbridled audacity flaunt itself?
Key vocabulary: abutor (to misuse, exhaust); patientia (patience, endurance); effrenatus (unbridled, unrestrained); audacia (boldness, audacity).
Grammar focus for this passage: Rhetorical question structure and apostrophe; Future indicative vs. present in oratory; Anaphora and tricolon crescens; Key vocabulary: abutor, patientia, audacia, effrenatus, furor; Second-person address and political register.
What case is 'patientia' here? — Ablative — it's the object of the deponent verb 'abutor', which governs the ablative.
Is 'abutere' present or future? — Future indicative — the -re ending is an archaic/poetic alternative to -ris. Cicero asks 'how long will you abuse…'
Why is this passage important for exams? — It appears on virtually every Latin prose syllabus. Understanding its rhetorical structure is key to scoring well on style and analysis questions.