Hello, everyone, first post here. I’m learning Latin and Greek and have been lurking around for some time.
LLPSI chapter 44 is an extract from Cicero’s De imperio Cn. Pompeii, where one finds this sentence quite at the beginning: “Causa quae sit videtis”. It obviously means “you see what the cause is” (or “you know what the reason is”, etc.) and could just as well be phrased as “Videtis quae causa sit” or “Videtis quae sit causa”, right?
But then in the notes to the chapter, in the book A Companion to Roma Aeterna, I find this explanation:
Causa quae sit vidētis: you might expect causam (the object of vidētis) but here, as very commonly, the antecedent (causa) is attracted into the case of the pronoun (quae) that introduces
the indirect question (Quae sit causa?).
I would not at all expect “causam”! Is there any grammatically acceptable way that “causa” could be put in the accusative in this sentence? The explanation seems to indicate that this is some sort of exception, when all I see is a perfectly normal indirect question.
I think you are right: quae sit causa is a perfectly good indirect question, and Lewis & Short cites a number of instances of indirect questions as complements of video in Cicero. See L&S video B I.
And the Oxford Latin Dictionary confirms this. See uideo 14c.
But Cicero could have written causam – that would have been an instance of what Allen & Greenough § 576 calls “accusative of anticipation,” where “the subject of an indirect question is … attracted into the main clause as object.” This is a genuine Latin construction; A&G says it’s a colloquial and poetic usage, perhaps not suitable for a speech. But I don’t think that construction is applicable here. (It’s not contemporary English, but it appears in the KJV New Testament, “I know thee who thou art.”)
Thank you! I did not know about that construction, but I expect to see it soon in my readings. It’s quite inexplicable how the annotator might assume the student to associate to that usage, yet unseen throughout LLPSI, if that is indeed the case.
The note in your textbook is odd. Usually the construction causam quae sit videtis is called “attraction,” as in the sections I linked to in Allen & Greenough and Smyth, where an element of the indirect question is “attracted” into the main clause. The note suggests just the opposite: that causa has been “attracted” from the main clause into the indirect question. But I think the note is confused. There’s no reason to view causa as an element of the main clause dragged by attraction into the indirect question.
It seems to me quite reasonable to view causa as attracted into the case of the relative. As between causa quae sit videtis and causam quae sit videtis I’d have thought it was causa that called for grammatical explanation. causam would simply be the direct object of videtis, as in “I know thee who thou art.”
Isn’t causa quae sit an indirect question, rather than a relative clause, with causa fronted for emphasis? “You see what the reason is . . .”. And doesn’t causa fit naturally – without being attracted – in the indirect question?
I agree that if Cicero had written causam quae sit videtis it would be an instance of attraction of causa to the main clause, the “I know thee who thou art” construction. I think this would be a a possible way of saying the same thing as causa quae sit videtis. But causa quae sit videtis seems to me, at least, grammatically straightforward as an indirect question.