Adjectives and Adverbs in a Sentence

Consider this passage from Book II of the Iliad

With this he led the way from the assembly, and the other sceptred kings rose with him in obedience to the word of Agamemnon; but the people pressed forward to hear. They swarmed like bees that sally from some hollow cave and flit in countless throng among the spring flowers, bunched in knots and clusters; even so did the mighty multitude pour from ships and tents to the assembly, and range themselves upon the wide-watered shore, while among them ran Wildfire Rumour, messenger of Jove, urging them ever to the fore. Thus they gathered in a pell-mell of mad confusion, and the earth groaned under the tramp of men as the people sought their places. Nine heralds went crying about among them to stay their tumult and bid them listen to the kings, till at last they were got into their several places and ceased their clamour. Then King Agamemnon rose, holding his sceptre.

So far we've talked about how to tell what pattern a sentence has by identifying the subject and predicate verb, then deciding whether there is a complement of some sort (if you need to review, go here)

For example:

With this he led the way from the assembly, and the other sceptred kings rose with him in obedience to the word of Agamemnon; but the people pressed forward to hear.

There are three basic parts to this sentence.

he led the way (S/V/DO)
kings rose (S/V)
people pressed (S/V)

Now I find the prepositional phrases and put them in parentheses -- remember there will be a "position" or relationship word, and a noun:

(With this) he led the way (from the assembly), and the other sceptred kings rose (with him) (in obedience)( to the word)( of Agamemnon); but the people pressed forward to hear.

"To hear" is not a prepositional phrase because "hear" is a verb -- what the people are doing. So it is an infinitive verb.

Does that make sense so far?

There are only a few words left now in the sentence.

"other sceptred" -- these describe the kings. Words that describe nouns are called adjectives.

"forward" -- this describes how the people are pressing to hear -- it modifies a verb or action. Words that modify or describe verbs are called adverbs.

There are a few words still left in the sentence:

"the"

"the" is technically an adjective since it modifies "king" or "word" or "people" -- but we call words like "the" and "a" and "an" articles. You probably remember that in Latin, articles are very seldom used in a sentence.

"but", "and"

These are called conjunctions or "joining words" because they link words together. We will talk about them in more detail in a future lesson.

For now just remember that words that tell about a noun are called adjectives and words that tell about a verb are called adverbs. Read this page.

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