Corn. Nepos, Xerxes replies to Pausanias

Latin Learning Latin
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C.N., Pausanias

Context: During the Persian Wars, Spartan Pausanias, commander of Greek forces against the Persians, has returned some Persian P.O.W.s, kinsmen of Xerxes, to the Persian ruler, along with a letter in which Pausanias promises to enter into an alliance with Xerxes, for the purpose of reducing all of Greece to Persian control.

Text:

rex [Xerxes] tot hominum salute tam sibi necessariorum magno opere gavisus confestim cum epistula Artabazum ad Pausaniam mittit in qua eum collaudat ac petit, ne cui rei parcat ad ea efficienda, quae polliceretur: si perfecerit, nullius rei a se repulsam laturum.

Translation: The king delighted by the safe return of so many men members of his own family, quickly sent Artabazum [ his officer] to Pausanias along with a letter praising Pausanias and asking him to spare nothing in carrying out what he promised. When Pausanias has accomplished all this, Xerxes [? promised to deny him nothing.?]

I can’t quite fit magno opere into its sentence.

I can’t make out nullius rei a se repulsam laturum I feel pretty sure it is a promise of big reward, but I can’t crank the meaning out of those words. Neither can I make out the how repulsam relates to laturum, with respect to sequence of tense.

Finally, the antecedent of se is Xerxes, right? This is a summary of a letter of Xerxes, in indirect discourse.

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magno opere – (sometimes written magnopere) an idiom meaning “greatly”, here modifies gavisus. "He rejoiced greatly . . . "

Lewis and Short magnopere:

magnŏpĕrē (so written by Plaut., Cæs., Liv., and Sen., but ap. Ter., Cic., Plin. H. N., the best MSS. and edd. have magnō opĕre; cf. I Ellendt, Cic. de Or. 1, 35, 164; Osann, Cic. Rep. 1, 8, 13), adv. magnus-opus, with great labor; hence, in gen., very much, greatly, exceedingly, particularly, earnestly.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.11:229.lewisandshort

repulsa is a noun meaning “denial”

nullius rei a se repulsam laturum – “he [Pausanias] would obtain [laturum] a denial of no thing by/from him [Xerxes],” i.e., Pausanias would get anything he asked for from Xerxes.

the antecedent of se is Xerxes, right? This is a summary of a letter of Xerxes, in indirect discourse.

That’s right.

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To be on the extra safe side: the nominative is Artabazus, or, alternatively, in the Graecised form Artabazos.

Si perfecerit means of course “should he accomplish it”, but you may have translated it dynamically and therefore used “when”.

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si perfecerit, nullius rei a se repulsam laturum. – Also note that this is a future condition in indirect discourse.

In direct discourse, this would probably be si perfeceris [future perfect indicative], nullius rei a me repulsam feres [future indicative].

In direct discourse, we would expect future perfect perfeceris because Pausanias would have to accomplish what Xerxes wanted before Xerxes would give Pausanias anything he wanted. In indirect discourse, in “secondary sequence”, we would expect perfecisset, pluperfect subjunctive, but here C.N. uses perfect subjunctive (which happens to have the same form as the future perfect).

Edit: this is primary, not secondary, sequence, because the main verbs are present tense, not past, so perfect subjunctive, not pluperfect, is correct. See my subsequent post.

feres, future indicative in direct discouse, becomes future infinitive [eum/Pausaniam] laturum [esse] in indirect discourse.

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Thanks to Timothee and Hylander, esp. for the coaching on sequence of tenses. You detected my uncertainty on that; I didn’t ask about it because the questions on this text were getting too complicated. As I move through C.N. there will be many more opportunities to work on verb forms.

repulsa, a noun. I saw that possibility in the dictionary, but in effect I got sidetracked onto a search for a grammar rationale for a passive participle of that spelling. That hypothesis drove me into the ditch. :frowning:

About laturum: is this a future infinitive, with the esse left off?

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About laturum: is this a future infinitive, with the esse left off?

Yes, a future infinitive with esse omitted (as it probably is more often than not).

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rex . . . .confestim cum epistula Artabazum ad Pausaniam mittit in qua eum collaudat ac petit, ne cui rei parcat ad ea efficienda, quae polliceretur: si perfecerit, nullius rei a se repulsam laturum.

I see now that my earlier post about the future condition si perfecerit . . . laturum was wrong.

The verbs mittit, collaudat and petit, which lead into the conditional si petit . . . laturum, implying that it is indirect discourse, are historical presents. So the indirect discourse is primary, not secondary, sequence, contrary to what I wrote previously.

In primary sequence, the future perfect that would have been used in direct discourse (si perfeceris . . . feres), because perfeceris is expected to occur before feres) becomes perfect subjunctive perfecerit, not pluperfect subjunctive, in accordance with normal Latin usage.

It happens that the form of the future perfect perfeceris is similar to the form of the perfect subjunctive perfecerit, but in fact the two tenses are different in function. Don’t let this confuse you.

Contrast this with the earlier passage: . . . Pythia praecepit, ut Miltiadem imperatorem sibi sumerent: id si fecissent, incepta prospera futura. Here the verb introducing the indirect discourse, praecepit, is perfect, not present. So here the sequence is secondary, not primary, and the verb that would have been future perfect feceritis in direct discourse becomes pluperfect fecissent in indirect discourse.

I apologize for the confusion due to my error. I hope you’ll take the time to work through this. Unfortunately, Allen & Greenough are not very helpful on these points, but the rules are not as difficult as they seem at first blush. We have similar rules of “sequence” in English: “He says that he will do this if X happens” vs. “He said that he would do this if X happened” or “were to happen.”

In Latin, in addition to the rules of sequence in indirect discourse, another rule comes into play in future conditions in indirect discourse, namely, the rule that if the verb of the si clause (protasis) will occur before the verb of the main clause (apodosis), the verb of the si clause must be future perfect in direct discourse, which in indirect discourse becomes perfect subjunctive in primary sequence and pluperfect subjunctive in secondary sequence.

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Thank you Hylander for taking all that trouble. It will take me a while to command these principles, but that will be my focus as I continue with C.N.