concesserunt

Concesserunt is the 3rd person plural perfect active indicative form of the Latin verb concedere, meaning “to yield,” “to give up,” or “to grant.” The base verb combines preposition con- (“together, toward”) with the root dedere, which itself comes from dē- (“away”) + dēre (“to carry, to put”), conveying the idea of putting something away or letting go. Concedere is a regular verb of the first conjugation, with the infinitive ending -ere. In the perfect tense, the stem becomes conced- and the endings -erunt, -eritis, etc. Thus concesserunt literally translates as “they yielded” or “they granted.”

The form appears throughout Roman literature in contexts where a group makes a concession or grants a request. For example, in Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico he writes “Livii, cum ita transmisserat, concesserunt.’’ Here the verb signals a collective decision to allow or give ground. Livy also uses concesserunt when describing the Senate’s responses to a plea: “multum peccati, concesserunt pietas.” The phrase serves as a concise way to record political or military negotiations.

Concesserunt is often found together with other past participles or with present tense continuatives to describe ongoing agreements. In legal or ecclesiastical texts it can denote the formal granting of privileges or rights. The verb’s relatives include concessio (noun: concession), concedere (present active), and contemptere (to take cheap). In modern Romance languages, the Latin root survives in words such as French concessé, Spanish concedido, Italian concesso, and Portuguese concedido, all meaning “conceded” or “granted.”

Overall, concesserunt is a straightforward perfect plural form that records the act of yielding or granting in Latin prose. Its usage is widespread in historical, literary, and legal documents, and it remains a key lexical item for students of Latin and historians of Roman customs.