Context: Cicero explains why Cato stayed on the job and carried out wicked orders to confiscate and sell at auction the goods of the king of Cyprus. This action yielded a lot of gold. Much of this oration seeks to explain why good men didn’t act more assertively against the bad politicians in control.
atque etiam hoc videbat, quoniam illa in re publica macula regni publicati maneret, quam nemo iam posset eluere, quod ex malis boni posset in rem publicam pervenire, id utilius esse per se conservari quam per alios dissipari.
Translation: and also Cato saw this, that since the stain on the republic was going to last, which nobody would be able to wash out, from the evil [ ex malis] some wealth [quod . . . boni] might come to the the republic, it would be better to watch over it himself, than to have it wasted by others.
I’m having trouble construing the phrase quod ex malis boni posset . . . pervenire. On the one hand,
could quod mean “something”, and then boni could be a genitive modifier?
On the other hand, there seems wanting a conjunction here. Should quod mean “because”? But that leaves the genitive boni hanging. The latter problem would vanish if I could translate boni as “some wealth”. I can’t find any authority for this.
Or, I may be blundering in the dark. Anyway, there is need of some grammatical sorting-out.
You always come up with the right sorts of questions and usually have at least the general sense derived from context, and that’s a very good thing.
I would certainly take boni as a partitive genitive with quod, “something of good,” “some advantage.”
Note that you left out regni publicati from your translation.
Syntactically, videbat actually sets up an indirect statement, videbat…id utilius esse. The quod clause is then the direct object of the infinitives conservari and dissipari. You are right, this means throwing in a “that” or an “it” or both in the appropriate places in English to make it smoother in English.
Thank you Barry; that’s very helpful. I was puzzled that for “videbat” I didn’t find the infinitive+subject accusative that seemed to be called for in indirect discourse. I need to rewrite that sentence in longhand, and link up the grammar with the sentence. I believe it will work out when I recast the grammar as a an indirect-discourse clause, with clauses dependent to it.
That will take a while, but I wanted you to know right away that I think I understand your commentary.
boni is certainly partitive genitive, but quod is not “something” but a relative pronoun. And the clause is not the direct object of the infinitives: conservari is passive.
quod and id are correlative. Lit. “… saw that what of good could pass to the state out of evils, that (id) was more useful (i.e. it was more useful for that) to be kept safe through him than to be squandered through others.”
Awkward in English, not in Latin. quod and id each at the head of their clauses—id picking up quod, as in e.g. quod dico, id verum est, What I say is the truth. And ex malo sandwiched between quod and boni juxtaposes malis boni.
Thanks, mwh; as soon as I can get to it, I’ll write out this sentence longhand, and try to make a thorough grammatical analysis, to be inspired by the suggestions received. But I’ve just enjoyed the evening meal and some wine…hence the delay.