hard parsing in Ovid, Met. xii, 67-69

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hlawson38
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hard parsing in Ovid, Met. xii, 67-69

Post by hlawson38 »

Ovid, Metam. XII, ll. 67-69


. . . et Hectorea primus fataliter hasta,
Protesilae, cadis, commissaque proelia magno
stant Danais, fortisque animae nece cognitus Hector.

I think I have the meaning:

Protesilaus falls first to Hectors deadly spear, and battles fought cost the Greeks dear, and by death[dealt out] Hector of the valiant spirit is known.

To get there I had to do some guesswork in the parsing:

Hectorea: adjective form or Hector, to modify hasta, the Hectorean spear
Protesilae: vocative complement of cadis. I'm weak on Greek names
magno stant: idiom, cost dearly, magno is ablative of price. "sto" + abl. of price is a dictionary meaning
nece: ablative of agent, by death. Hector's mighty spirit is made know by the death he deals out
fortisque animae: modifies Hector
Hugh Lawson

Qimmik
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Re: hard parsing in Ovid, Met. xii, 67-69

Post by Qimmik »

You have this right.

Protesilae is the vocative of Protesilaus. This type of direct address to a character, "apostrophe," is a rhetorical device that in the Iliad and Vergil is often used in a very poignant way. Patroclus, the most sympathetic character in the Iliad, is addressed directly this way a number of times, prefiguring his imminent death. In Ovid (and sometimes in the Odyssey) it sometimes feels like it's used metri gratia, as here. (In the Odyssey, Eumaeus, the swineherd who puts up Odysseus in his hut and tags along with him and Telemachus, is addressed several times by the formula die subota, "divine swineherd".) Perhaps the direct address to Protesilaus here is a bit of Homeric/Vergilian parody, which is prevalent in the Metamorphoses--frequently in Homer apostrophes are used to address men in their moment of death.

Homeric parody in the Metamorphoses -- the two big Iliadic battle-scenes in the Metamorphoses, are fights that break out at weddings.

nece -- ablative of means/instrument might be more precise.

This is Ovid's whirlwind narrative of the Trojan war, hurriedly passing over the main events and focusing on extraneous incidents.

Incidentally, the mss. read fortesque animae neque, which makes no sense. fortisque animae nece is a conjecture ascribed in the Oxford and Teubner editions to a 17th century scholar by the Latinized name of Hugenius. The conjecture seems forced and difficult but (unlike the ms. reading) not impossible, and so far no one has apparently come up with a better remedy.

I think Hugenius may have been Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), the father of Christiaan Huygens, one of the greatest scientists of all times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantijn_Huygens

hlawson38
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Re: hard parsing in Ovid, Met. xii, 67-69

Post by hlawson38 »

Thanks to Qimmik for the speedy reply. I'm pleased to hear that "nece" is a hard call, for I had much trouble with it.

Fortis animae: that also was a hard call, but Gildersleeve declares that the genitive is the adjectival case, and this observation has helped me understand some instances of the genitive.
Hugh Lawson

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