Ovid Met. Bk VIII: Difficult sentence

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hopoate
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Ovid Met. Bk VIII: Difficult sentence

Post by hopoate »

Hello everyone, I am having problems translating the bolded portion of the sentence below:

Interea Minos Lelegeia litora vastat
praetemptatque sui vires Mavortis in urbe
Alcathoi, quam Nisus habet, cui splendidus ostro
inter honoratos medioque in vertice canos
crinis inhaerebat, magni fiducia regni.
(Ovid Metamorphoses, Book 8, Lines 6-10).

My specific problem is figuring what agrees each other. In this instance, I think that the subject of inhaerebat is "splendidus ostro...crinis", and inhaerebat takes the dative "cui", so that the sentence reads:
"which Nisus reigns, and to whom adheres a lock, splendid with purple color, among the honored white hairs and in the middle of his head."
However, I have read else that cui is a possessive dative, and if true, sounds a lot better, I think, but I do not understand how this grammar would work.
Does inhaerebat take "cui" as a dative, or is "cui" just a possessive dative? In other words, which translation is the right one:
1. "whose lock, splendid with purple, clung amongst the honored white hairs and in the middle of his head"
2. "to whom(Nisus) a lock, splendid with purple, clung, amongst the honored white hairs and in the middle of his head"
The second alternative doesn't sound particularly right, especially since if it were right, I'd have to say that the lock of purple hair clung to Nisus, which doesn't make a lot of sense, as opposed to the lock of purple hair being Nisus' (possessive dative).

Cheers for the help, really appreciate it guys

modus.irrealis
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Re: Ovid Met. Bk VIII: Difficult sentence

Post by modus.irrealis »

2 doesn't sound right to me either, but I don't think the other option is 1. I would just take it as a dative of interest (I may be mixing up the terminology) and modifying the statement as a whole rather one particular part of it. You'd probably want to translate into English with a possessive but it seems more natural to me to use with "canos" than "crinis" since the latter is the new information so to speak so it's same odd to say "whose lock". (That might be a bit of a non-answer though.)

Imber Ranae
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Re: Ovid Met. Bk VIII: Difficult sentence

Post by Imber Ranae »

Am I going mad, or have a number of responses in this thread, including one of my own, made before modus.irrealis's latest reply, disappeared? What's going on?

Edit: Nevermind. An almost identical thread was made at another forum, where my answer basically reflects what modus.irrealis says here.
Ex mala malo
bono malo uesci
quam ex bona malo
malo malo malo.

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thesaurus
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Re: Ovid Met. Bk VIII: Difficult sentence

Post by thesaurus »

Imber Ranae wrote:Am I going mad, or have a number of responses in this thread, including one of my own, made before modus.irrealis's latest reply, disappeared? What's going on?

Edit: Nevermind. An almost identical thread was made at another forum, where my answer basically reflects what modus.irrealis says here.
I have noticed that replies occasionally appear above posts that were already in threads. I'll get notification of a new reply in my email, only to find that the "new" reply predates the last post in the thread. I'm not sure if this is a matter of posts needing to be approved by administrators, or possibly of some sort of time-lag.

Responsa animadverto nonnumquam accidere super ea quae prior in fila posita sunt. Cursorio electronico mihi in aures accidit responsum novum adesse, cum autem filum inspiciam, "novum" responsum prae ea quae iamiam scripta erant cecidisse invenio. Nescio an hoc fiat ob responsa administratoribus adprobanda vel ob moram interretialem.
Horae quidem cedunt et dies et menses et anni, nec praeteritum tempus umquam revertitur nec quid sequatur sciri potest. Quod cuique temporis ad vivendum datur, eo debet esse contentus. --Cicero, De Senectute

adrianus
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Re: Ovid Met. Bk VIII: Difficult sentence

Post by adrianus »

Supra omnia alia hoc in legendo, ità audio: "cui medio in vertice", et "cui" = dativus possessionis casus, ut suspicor, quià pronomen ad corporis partem adjungitur.

When I read this, I hear before everything else: "in the centre of whose crown (of the head)", where "cui" = dative of possession with a part of the body, I suspect.

Addendum

Very sorry, but I can't find that rule anywhere. I must have made it up!
Me paenitet! Hanc regulam nullibi reperio. Me eam finxisse credo!

Hang on! I didn't. Here, for example:
Manete! Non finxi. Ecce indicium:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PNNs ... dy&f=false

Isn't this also an example of it (Aeneid, IX, 186-187):
Nonnè et hoc (quoad mihi videlicet) est exemplum eiusdem rei:
"aut pugnam aut aliquid iamdudum inuadere magnum mens agitat mihi, nec placida contenta quiete est"
I'm writing in Latin hoping for correction, and not because I'm confident in how I express myself. Latinè scribo ut ab omnibus corrigar, non quod confidenter me exprimam.

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