Greetings,
I am a second year Latin student whose course work is being retarded by a relatively poor familiarity with grammar in general and from a lack of discipline during my first year of Latin.
If possible I would appreciate some help with the following sections from the afore mentioned poem:
Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,
et quod vides perisse perditum ducas.
My question is what to should be done with “perditum,” I recognize desinas and in turn ducas as jussive subjunctives, but where as the note in my text [The Student’s Catulls, Third Edition, by Daniel H. Garrison] instructs me to supply an esse and take ducas (as a head verb) as also governing an indirect statement with perditum [esse] as perfect passive infinitive with accusative quod as subject, my professor translated it without an indirect statement.
In my understanding (basically whatever I can grasp from my Allen and Greenough Grammar book) if you see an indirect statement with quod as accusative subject, vides perisse becomes a relative clause of something? Perisse gives me some trouble here, a perfect active infinitive, to have passed away, being destroyed? Does it have a subject? quod again? Grammar book says most relative clauses in indirect statements are in the subjunctive unless they are true regardless, or for emphasis (more or less), which could be the case here, giving you: consider that to be destroyed [which] you see as destroyed. With emphasis on the fact that Catullus sees it as destroyed [knows it to be] whether or not he considers [believes] it? However having to supply the [which] or some other relative conjunction along with the [esse] feels odd, although I know esse is supplied often in poetry.
If you translate without an indirect statement it feels simplier. “Consider that which you see as destroyed to have been destoryed.” Perditum here is then a perfect passive participle, but the videns perisse still gives me trouble. Is perisse a complimentary infitive?
Also neither of these translations is particularly close to those I have found online.
I apologize for the length of this question and also if my attempt to explain my thoughts does more harm than good. Obviously I am struggling but feel if I could get my head around this it would help me identify such constructions in the future. Thank you for any and all help!
Salve, Sine Arbore.
You’re muddling yourself up an awful lot here by terminology and using the same verb in English for two Latin verbs, which signify something slightly different (even though the sense in English could be expressed along the lines of “What’s gone is gone”).
Instead of switching things into “Consider that which you see as destroyed to have been destroyed.” for “quod vides perisse perditum ducas”
try, word for word: “what /you see/ to have died/ (as) lost/ consider”.
Think of the sense. “Reckon as lost what you know to have perished” In other words, “Don’t be pursuing something which is hopeless. What’s gone is gone (your love’s feeling for you).” What do you think? Yes, there is the clause in there: “that which you see has died” (“that which has died” clause = accusative + infinitive) or “that which you see has died consider (as) lost”.
By the way, I checked online a moment ago for what translations you could be talking about, and they all seem to be very close to how you are expressing things. I just think you were in a mental knot for a while.
Thank you for taking the time read through that mess of a question and respond. It is quite clear that I am terribly confused and was indeed in a metnal knot. I think I can understand the sense of the text, and that is where we left it in class as well, having identified the tense and voice of verbs and participles the sense isn’t terribly hard to gather (assuming of course you have correctly identified the verbs!). I am only attempting to wrestle with these questions (which are difficult to even phrase) in order to better understand such constructions and their usage. I could not recall seeing a jussive subjunctive governing an inderect statement with a relative clause before and as the note from the author of my book told me that is what I was looking at, I thought it wise to attempt to understand exactly how that worked. Clearly Catullus’s first command to himself is just as applicable to me. Thanks again!
(Just checking, Treeless.) And do you see it OK now? Iamne, Sine Arbore, clarè vides? Modò verifico.
Thanks for checking back adrianus. I recently took a test proving I really don’t have much of a clue as to how that works grammatically. I just decided that I would let it be for now and hope that the next time it comes up I am more familiar with the general constructions involved which will in turn allow me to better comprehend their use in compound. However the quarter is not yet half over, so I am sure that I will have another question or two to pose to those kind hearted souls who are willing to offer their help to the less adept.
Thanks again.