Ovid Amores II 4 (need help)

[Emma_85]

Ok, well I'm a bit stuck with this sentence (it's the first one):<br /><br />Non ego mendosos ausim defendere mores<br />Falsaque pro vitiis arma movere meis.<br /><br />It's ausim I don't really know how to translate. I suppose ausim is ausus sim really, that would make it perfect passive conjunctive 1st person. Now that just doesn't make any sense to me... how can 'I had been dared' be right?

[bingley]

Audeo is a semi-deponent verb. The present, imperfect, and future are active in form, the perfect tenses are passive in form, but the meaning is always active.<br /><br />So non ego ausim = I would not have dared.

[Emma_85]

:-[ stupid me! Thanks, I thought that's what it should be, I had just totally forgotten about semi-deponent verbs!

[Moerus]

Ausim is really an optative, a single form that remained in Latin. The optative, a mood to express wishes mainly, is very frequent in Greek. <br />In Latin, the subjunctive took the function of the old optative. <br />So we can say that in classical Latin ausim = audeam. <br />The optative is also used sometimes to ecpress something in a very polite way. Ausim can aslo be used so. In Roman ears of the classical period it must have sound very chic.