erat educatus

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spqr
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erat educatus

Post by spqr »

I saw this translated as 'he was brought up' (perfect passive) where as I would translate this as 'he had been brought up'(pluperfect passive). This being a compound tense and the word order is reversed does this change something?

Qimmik
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Re: erat educatus

Post by Qimmik »

You're right--this is pluperfect, but English is sometimes less precise than Latin in using the pluperfect and future perfect tenses to indicate that the action of a verb occurred before the action of another verb. Word order doesn't matter.

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calvinist
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Re: erat educatus

Post by calvinist »

It's pluperfect passive, you are correct, but it could be rendered by the English "he was brought up" since the English pluperfect doesn't perfectly overlap in usage with the Latin pluperfect. Some would prefer to say in English "When I met him I knew that he was raised by good parents" to "When I met him I knew that he had been raised by good parents".

spqr
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Re: erat educatus

Post by spqr »

Your points are well taken. I remember someone saying that at some point a translation becomes an opinion but I wonder how often it happens that recent scholars poring over documents now declare that a translation that has been accepted for millenia is now wrong?

spqr
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Re: erat educatus

Post by spqr »

As I was discussing in another topic could this be an example of a past participle used as a predicate adjective?

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calvinist
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Re: erat educatus

Post by calvinist »

spqr wrote:As I was discussing in another topic could this be an example of a past participle used as a predicate adjective?
Any perfect participle can be used as an adjective since participles are verbal adjectives. erat educatus is not enough context to make any judgement though.

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