C.N., Cimon, fuit enim tanta liberalitate

Latin Learning Latin
1

Cornelius Nepos, Cimon

Context: Cimon’s lavish generosity

fuit enim tanta liberalitate, cum compluribus locis praedia hortosque haberet, ut numquam in eis custodem posuerit fructus servandi gratia, ne quis impediretur, quominus eis rebus quibus quisque vellet frueretur.

I fear I have something wrong here, but my best effort at translation follows:

He was a man of such generosity, who owned farms and gardens in several places, that he never placed guards in them to prevent pilfering, so that on his property [ “eis rebus”] each one might enjoy [“frueretur”] the things [“quibus”, ablative complement of “frueretur”] he wanted [“vellet”].

2

The “cum” is related to “fuit enim tanta liberalitate”.

He was such a lavish man, given that he owned farms and land in many different locations, that…

3

Your translation is basically right (with some allowance for paraphrase), except for eis rebus.

cum here is circumstantial, and might be translated as adversative , “although”, and embedded in the result clause.

He was a man of such generosity that, although he owned farms and gardens in a number of places, he never placed guards in them to watch over the produce, so that no one would be prevented from enjoying the things each one wanted [to enjoy].

. . . quominus eis rebus quibus quisque vellet frueretur.

eis rebus (which you translated “on his property”) is not locative–it’s the complement of frueretur and the antecedent of quibus: "enjoying those things which . . . "

Grammatically there are two possible analyses of this phrase. Volo can take either (1) an infinitive complement (“to want to do something”) or (2) a direct object (“to want something”).

  1. Understand frui with vellet (infinitive complement of vellet): quominus eis rebus quibus quisque [frui] vellet frueretur. “[so that no one would be prevented from] enjoying [quin frueretur] those things which anyone wanted [to enjoy].” Here quibus is the ablative complement of understood frui, which is unnecessary in proximity to frueretur and might sound redundant or otiose or inelegant.

  2. A second interpretation: quibus is the direct object of vellet. Normally the direct object of volo would of course be accusative. However, sometimes (indeed, often) a relative pronoun is “attracted” into the case of its antecedent. This construction is explained (not much better than I have) at Allen & Greenough 306a:

A relative occasionally agrees with its antecedent in case (by attraction):—

sī aliquid agās eōrum quōrum cōnsuēstī; (Fam. 5.14), if you should do something of what you are used to do. [For eōrum quae .]

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=AG+306&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0001

Thus, in this passage quibus could be explained as having been “attracted” into the case of eis rebus, which is the ablative complement of frueretur, instead of eis rebus quas vellet frueretur.

I don’t think there’s much reason to prefer either analysis here–take your pick. I think I’m inclined towards #1, only because I feel more comfortable with an infinitive complement of vellet, and also because inserting frui in the neighborhood of frueretur would be inelegant. Maybe C.N. didn’t think too hard about this–he just wrote what came naturally.

4

One thing troubles me about this. Is the cum clause really “embedded in the result clause”? It would make good sense if it were, but it stands outside of the ut clause. That seems to have been anphph’s point.

5

Thanks to anphph, who saw that I was fudging the translation of the cum clause. I had considered several possibilities, and finally just took a stab at it.

Thanks to Hylander for two solutions to the eis rebus quibus puzzle, and I also like first one. Although I considered several possibilities, I did not even think of an implied infinitive complement for vellet, even though I was bothered by vellet and unhappy with my effort. I also did not consider the possibility of an ablative d.o. of vellet.

6

Yes, the cum clause is outside the result clause, but it struck me that the circumstances it describes (C’s ownership of farms and orchards) are more circumstantial to what’s inside the result clause, so I thought it might be better to translate it that way. In fact, I find it difficult to translate any other way. I should have made it clearer that mine was not a strict translation. (I think anphph’s point was simply that the cum clause was not a relative clause, as hlawson translated it.)

Or maybe I could just amend (tamper with) the text by conjecture, moving ut forward. But that would be wrong.