Maxime autem inter animalia anulosi corporis viget in aranea sensus tactus. Unde residens in telae suae medio, subito sensit muscam telam in parte remotissima contingentem, quam subito invadit, et aggreditur tanquam hostem, de qua si triumphare potuerit, eam ne evadat, inter telae suae fila multipliciter circumvoluit, et primo capiti insidens eius humiditatem sugit, et de tali muscarum venatione vivit, nam eius gustabile proprie est talis humor, sicut gustabile apis est mel, sicut dicit idem Aristoteles.

Objective and Subjective Genitives
The “objective genitive” is used when the genitive expresses the object of a verbal idea expressed by a noun. For example:

De tali muscarum venatione vivit. It lives off such hunting of flies.

The flies are the object of the verbal idea venatio (from venor, venari), so this is a case of the objective genitive.

The “subjective genitive” is similar to the objective genitive, but is used when the genitive expresses the subject of a verbal idea expressed by a noun. To get a sense of the complementary way the subjective and objective genitives work, let's flip the last statement around to see it from the fly's point of view:

Propter talem aranearum venationem musca occidit. The fly dies because of such spiders'hunting.

Here, the spiders are the subject of the verbal idea venatio, so this will be a subjective genitive.

Identify the genitives in the sentences below as objective or subjective.The easiest way to do this is to turn the noun that governs the genitive into a verb, and ask yourself if the word in the genitive is the subject or the object of that verb.

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