clauses of comparison

Latin Learning Latin
1

hello chaps, i don’t think i’ve done this lot very well. I’ve been on drugs (legal) over the weekend cos one of the glands under my ears has swollen hugely. I’ve got a big uneven face at the moment. I havent been able to concentrate much. Anyway, enough excuses:

  1. Although the Gauls were exhausted, they fought until the chief was captured.
    quamquam Galli confecti erant, tamen pugnaverunt donec principem captum est.

must be something wrong with it, was too easy.

  1. The cowardly merchants love acquiring money in the same way the Persians used to venerate fire.
    mercatores ignavi pecuniam acquirere amant tamquam Persae ignem venerabantur.

is it right to use the inf. in acquirere rather than a gerund? is it even the right word?

  1. If there were as many Romans as there are fish in the sea, we would rejoice greatly.
    si erant/essent?? tot Romani quot pisces in mare essent, magnopere gauderent.

not sure about the subjs here.

  1. THe brave Spartans swam as if they were the sons of Neptune.
    Lacedaemonii fortes natabant tamquam filii Neptuni essent.

hmmm.

  1. It is not fitting for good men to read Lucan’s poem, however beautiful it is.
    bonos legere carminem Lucani? non decet, quamvis pulchram est.

should quamvis put decet in the subj? can an impersonal go into the subj?

  1. Rome was the same size as Carthage while Hannibal used a sword.
    … dum Hannibal gladium usus est.

first bit of this confuses me. should it be tantus/quantus??

  1. We would not give up the black dog even if you were to offer us a great weight of silver.
    etsi ponderem magnum argenti nobis polliceamini, canem nigrem non omittatis.

not sure about polliceamini or the rest.

  1. Poets, you ordered the trees to walk in the same way as the soldiers.
    Poetae, arbores ambulare iussistis tamquam milites essent.

  2. Even if Hector had lived, Troy would have been destroyed by fire.
    etsi Hector habitavisset, Troia igne deleta esset.

  3. Do not drink water, citizens, if you wish to be good.
    noli bibere aquam, cives, si boni esse vultis.

not sure about the second part of this.

thanks guys.

2

  1. Qvamqvam, etsi, tametsi all introduce statements of fact in concessive clauses, where Qvamvis introduces statements as merely conceived. So the first one looks to be correct to me.

  2. This seems to be right, though one much less a dilettante than I may disagree with me.

  3. Si tot Romani essent qvot pisces in mare svnt, magnopere gavdeamvs.

  4. This is actually correct. Despite the paradigm with contrafactual conditional sentences, conditional clauses of comparison using such particles, as ac si, vt si, qvasi, qvam si, tamqvam si, velvt si, or simply velvt or tamqvam, employ the present or perfect subjunctive when the leading verb is primary, and almost always the imperfect when the leading verb is secondary.

  5. If decet is going to be in the subjunctive, it will be because the subjunctive is used commonly with deliberative questions. Qvamvis would, however, put ‘est’ into the subjunctive. However, neither of those two things is an issue as this sentence is neither deliberative and as qvamvis shouldn’t be used here. I would render the sentence thus:

Non decet bonos legere carmen Lucani, qvamqvam pvlchrvm est. (qvamvis with the subjunctive if it is not necessarily your opinion that the poem is beautiful.)

  1. Vtor takes the ablative. As: Isto bono vtare dvm adsit, dvm absit ne reqviras. I do not remember who wrote this.

I do not have time for the rest right now, I must go to bed. I will try to finish tomorrow.

3

It is grammatically impossible to have a direct object with a passive verb. principem should be nominative as subject with captum agreeing. confectus means “exhausted” in the sense of “used up”, which I suppose is one way to look at it here, since their numbers would be diminishing. I would have expected (de)fatigatus for “exhausted”, as in “tired”, to mean that rather than their numbers their strength was diminishing.

  1. The cowardly merchants love acquiring money in the same way the Persians used to venerate fire.
    mercatores ignavi pecuniam acquirere amant tamquam Persae ignem venerabantur.

amare rarely takes the infinitive in classical Latin, except in poetry. Prose would normally use an impersonal such as libet or placet.

  1. If there were as many Romans as there are fish in the sea, we would rejoice greatly.
    si erant/essent?? tot Romani quot pisces in mare essent, magnopere gauderent.

usually the structure “if ____ were _____, then _____ would _____” calls for both verbs to be in the imperfect subjunctive.

  1. It is not fitting for good men to read Lucan’s poem, however beautiful it is.
    bonos legere carminem Lucani? non decet, quamvis pulchram est.

should be pulchrum est of you go with this rendition.

  1. Rome was the same size as Carthage while Hannibal used a sword.
    … dum Hannibal gladium usus est.

perhaps… tanta carthago, hannibale gladio utente, quanta roma. it is much more common to encounter an ablative absolute than an actual temporal clause with dum meaning “while”.

  1. We would not give up the black dog even if you were to offer us a great weight of silver.
    etsi ponderem magnum argenti nobis polliceamini, canem nigrem non omittatis.

like most, if not all 3rd declension nouns ending in -us, pondus, ponderis is neuter and the accusative is pondus. omittatis does not mean “we would not give up” because you have it in the 2nd person. niger, nigra, nigrum is 1st/2nd declension adjective and -em is not a possible ending.

  1. Poets, you ordered the trees to walk in the same way as the soldiers.
    Poetae, arbores ambulare iussistis tamquam milites essent.

the implication is “…in the same way as the soldiers (walked)”. You can leave out the verb after milites, but if you do want to include it, it is not essent.

  1. Even if Hector had lived, Troy would have been destroyed by fire.
    etsi Hector habitavisset, Troia igne deleta esset.

habitare is to live or dwell in a place, vivere would stress that he actually still lives and breathes. “if ____ had _____, then ____ would have ____” is normally expressed with both verbs in the pluperfect subjunctive. The proper ablative of ignis is igni - it is one of the few pure i-stems that are not neuter.

  1. Do not drink water, citizens, if you wish to be good.
    noli bibere aquam, cives, si boni esse vultis.

nolite is used when addressing more than person. Other than that it looks fine.

4

I am embarassed. I missed some things, on which benissimus picked up with celerity. It was pretty late last night, and I was in a hurry, but it is still pretty sad.

As regards my correction for number 3, for some reason I was thinking 1st person plural of the present subjunctive (although that can be used when the protasis of a present contrafactual nature, it is more natural to use the imperfect subjunctive (i.e. gavderent))