cuius

Latin Learning Latin
1

Clueless beginner question.

“Tē, Caesar, invocō, cuius caelestī prōvidentiā … " (Valerius Maximus). Translated as “You, Caesar, I invoke, by whose heavenly foresight…”.

I’m confused by the use of cuius. I want “by whose” to be ablative not genitive. Can someone please help.

Thanks.

2

cuius is a relative pronoun here, so a very literal translatese might be: “I invoke you, Caesar, by the heavenly foresight of whom…” This makes it a little clearer that it, the heavenly foresight belongs to Caesar, and that it thus requires a genitive.

It is probably English which is causing the confusion. For the English relative clause we can’t write *“whose by heavenly foresight”. Nevertheless the preposition “by” (equivalent to the Latin ablative in this example) qualifies the foresight, not Caesar himself.

If cuius were in the ablative quō, it would be “I invoke you Caesar, by whom…” and hopefully it is clear that this is a different sense altogether.

Does this help?

3

Thanks I think I get it now