Hello everybody!
I’m not understanding very well this sentence from Cicero:
“Si te iam, Catilina, comprehendi, si interfici iussero, credo, erit verendum mihi, ne non potius hoc omnes boni serius a me quam quisquam crudelius factum esse dicat.”
“If I now order you, Catillina, to be killed and arrested, I should fear that the good people may not say It was done later, rather than someone say that it was more cruel.”
So, Cicero fears more the people not saying that this was done later, than someone saying this was more cruel?
I’ve looked some translations, and It seems that they don’t translate the “ne non”, which I find kinda weird. I thought that when “ne” is used with “non” in clause whose main verb is “verba timendi”, the negation would be translated in the other clause.
Would this simplified version be equivalent to the original one?
“Vereor ne non potius omnes boni [dicat] hoc [esse factum]serius a me, quam quisquam dicat esse factum crudelius.”
“Si te iam, Catilina, comprehendi, si interfici iussero, credo, erit verendum mihi, ne non potius hoc omnes boni serius a me quam quisquam crudelius factum esse dicat.”
You’ve got the right sense of it. If we translate credo as “I suppose” or “of course”, serius as “too late”, rather than “later” and crudelius as “too cruelly”, that will bring out the meaning more. What makes this sentence a little different is that the statement is ironical (this is done by the use of credo). “erit verendum” because of the irony, is actually being made negative, in other words it’s as though Cicero said “non verendum erit”, so now the subordinate clause “ne non…dicat” which would normally be negative( “so that they not…”) takes on takes on a positive force. “I shall not have to fear …that will not say” becomes “I shall have to fear that…will say”.
Thanks! I’m still not understanding it completly. I’ve just noticed that “dicat” is singular, while the subject “omnes boni” is plural. Is there a reason for that? Shouldn’t it be “dicant”
In this case, dicat belongs to two subjects, omnes boni and quisquam, so it agrees with quisquam and is understood with omnes boni. You can find mention of this in Allen&Greenough, 317.c: http://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/verbs-and-subjects
In the last couple of days, as …ne non… was rolling around in my head, every time I logically analyzed the matter, it seemed that it meant the opposite of what it should mean. But finally facta est lux.
Consider not what Cicero feared, but what he wanted. Did he want people to say he had acted hastily, or that he had acted cruelly? Well, actually he didn’t want either one. He needed to fear them both equally. “Non” mdifies “potius”, it does not modify the implied verb of “dicant”. “Non potius…quam” = EQUALLY.
First off, have a look at A&G, para.564, under Substantive Clauses of Purpose: http://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/substantive-clauses-purpose
ne non is used to negative a purpose clause after verbs of fearing, so I think we still have to associate it with dicat, rather than potius.
My understanding of this sentence is that Cicero would rather be said to have acted too cruelly, than too late. Because he’s employing irony as a rhetorical figure to make his point, the direct translation seems to say the opposite of what he means. What needs to be understood is that by using “credo= I suppose”, he’s setting up “erit verendum mihi” to actually mean “non erit verendum mihi”. Because of this, ne non becomes something like a double negative=positive.