another Boethius sentence

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hlawson38
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another Boethius sentence

Post by hlawson38 »

Boethius, Consolation, Book ii, prosa 2

Context: Philosophia, speaking for Fortune, argues that Fortune owes Boethius nothing.
Quouis iudice de opum dignitatumque me cum possessione contende et si cuiusquam mortalium proprium quid horum esse monstraueris ego iam tua fuisse quae repetis sponte concedam.
My translation:

Debate with me [ says Fortune ] before any judge about the possession of wealth and rank, and after you have shown that any of these truly belong to one of these mortals, I will agree willingly that the things you demand really were yours.

My biggest problem: the sequence "si cuiusquam mortalium proprium quid horum esse"

Here is my trial parse, with help from O'Donnell's commentary.

cuiusquam: pronoun, genitive singular, masc. fem. neut., translates "of any one"

mortalium: adjective, genitive plural, with noun force, translates "of those mortal beings"

proprium: adjective, accusative, singular, neuter, agrees with quid

quid: pronoun, accusative singular, translates "some thing", meaning something or other in the way of power, money, rank, and the other good things of life.

horum: genitive plural. I think the antecedent is "mortalium"

I'm also struggling with the sequence of tenses with respect to monstraveris and concedam.

monstraveris may be either perfect subjunctive, or future perfect indicative.
concedam, may be either present subjunctive, or future indicative.

I'm a little shaky here, but in this case I like:

monstraveris: future perfect indicative
concedam: simple future indicative
Hugh Lawson

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Re: another Boethius sentence

Post by Qimmik »

I think your analysis is right, except for one point: the antecedent of horum isn't mortalium, it's opum dignitatumque. horum is neuter plural; quid horum = "anything of these things". Si quid = "if anything".

Note: after si, quis/quid is usual instead of aliquis/aliquid.

si cuiusquam mortalium proprium quid horum esse monstraueris -- "if you will have shown [i.e., in idiomatic English, 'if you show'] that anything of these things [quid horum, i.e., opum dignitatumque] belongs to/is the property of [proprium esse] anyone among mortals [cuiusquam mortalium] . . .

The key point here that led to your uncertainty: horum is neuter even though its antecedents opum dignitatumque are feminine because opum dignitatumque are felt as vague abstractions, not really as feminines. Allen & Greenough describe something similar, where two or more abstract nouns of the same gender have a neuter plural predicate adjective:

A&G 2874a:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 99.04.0001

Here, the relative is neuter where the antecedents are two feminine abstract nouns--slightly different but the same principle.
monstraveris: future perfect indicative
concedam: simple future indicative


This is correct.

Mecum is usually written as a single word, "with me".

hlawson38
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Re: another Boethius sentence

Post by hlawson38 »

Thanks Qimmik. You nailed it on my choice of antecedent for horum. When I first read the sentence, I had a fair idea what it meant, but I couldn't make a word-for-word literal translation.

So parsed each problematic word, identifying part of speech, case-gender-number, agreement, and part of sentence. As you said, it was the M-N gender of horum vis-a-vis the F gender of ops and dignitas that governed my choice of antecedent. Thanks for the A & G reference. Those guys didn't miss much.

It was a helpful exercise working my way to identifying mortalium as an adjective with noun force; my dictionaries all listed mortalis as an adjective. I already consider this for present active participles, but for ordinary adjectives the process is not yet automatic. I just have to keep thinking, after Dryden, "None but the brave deserve the fair."

I'm shaky on these mood-and-tense verb problems. I kept looking in my grammars and textbooks until I found an apt example in John Morwood's _A Latin Grammar_, p. 115.:
si domum meam veneris [venio] , libenter te salutabo.
Unless I've blundered again, that is exactly on point. I could not find an apt example for the other possibilities.
Hugh Lawson

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Re: another Boethius sentence

Post by Qimmik »

In a future condition, Latin uses the future perfect in the protasis (the "if" clause) where the verb occurs before the verb of the apodosis (the main clause). In English, we would normally use the present tense in the protasis and the future tense in the apodosis, regardless of when the action of the protasis occurs relative to that of the apodosis.

Morwood's Oxford grammars are really good concise summaries, but this point is also addressed in A&G, 516c:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 99.04.0001

However, the discussion in A&G is somewhat difficult to follow, because they conflate a discussion of the two types of future conditionals--what they call "future more vivid" (future perf. indicative protasis + future indicative apodosis) and "future less vivid" (perf. subj. protasis + pres. subj. apodosis). This becomes a little more confusing because the future perfect indicative and the perfect subjunctive are identical in form except for first sing. and third plur.

The sentence in Boethius is a future more vivid conditional--as you correctly analyzed it, future perfect indicative protasis + future indicative apodosis.

mortalium as an adjective with noun force -- this is exactly like the English word "mortal." "What fools these mortals be."

hlawson38
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Re: another Boethius sentence

Post by hlawson38 »

Qimmik wrote:I
The sentence in Boethius is a future more vivid conditional--as you correctly analyzed it, future perfect indicative protasis + future indicative apodosis.
I didn't know how to apply the more/less vivid distinction. On the one hand, if the verbs were indicative Fortune seemed grammatically to be making a definite promise of the form, if you prove A, I will agree to B. On the other hand, Fortune, Philosophia, and probably the reader too, know that Boethius cannot prove A, which makes the promise empty.

So I thought I had at least to consider some kind of subjunctive. When I couldn't find one that fit the rules, I decided to use the Morwood example and hope for the best.

Can this be literary irony? Fortune is apparently making a definite promise about her future behavior, contingent upon what this mortal might do. But Fortune doesn't make deals with mortals, period; hence she doesn't bind herself with any promise.
Hugh Lawson

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Re: another Boethius sentence

Post by Qimmik »

She's not promising much: just to concede that what B. claims used to belong to him did in fact belong to him if the condition is fulfilled. But this "promise," which is equivalent to emphatically asserting that no one would ever agree that what Boethius claimed as belong to him--wealth and rank--really ever belonged to him at all, depends for its rhetorical effectiveness on the more emphatic future more vivid conditional.

hlawson38
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Re: another Boethius sentence

Post by hlawson38 »

Qimmik wrote:She's not promising much: just to concede that what B. claims used to belong to him did in fact belong to him if the condition is fulfilled. But this "promise," which is equivalent to emphatically asserting that no one would ever agree that what Boethius claimed as belong to him--wealth and rank--really ever belonged to him at all, depends for its rhetorical effectiveness on the more emphatic future more vivid conditional.
Right!
Hugh Lawson

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