Context: Procris after hearing rumors (false) about her husband, suffers from “suspicious mind”. Tormented by the rumor, she still doesn’t want to believe it.
Metamorphoses, book 7, line 833 f.
indicioque fidem negat et, nisi viderit ipsa,
damnatura sui non est delicta mariti.
she refuses to believe the informer, and unless [ until?] she has seen [for herself]
she is not going to believe her husband guilty of the charges.
damnatura . . . non est: I’m unsure about this construction. Is this the conclusion of a conditional sentence?
delicta: I’m reading this as accusative plural of the noun delictum, delicti, neut. The rumor concerns whether her husband is philandering with a nymph. I don’t see plural, instead of singular. There’s one tattler and one offense. Is Procris thinking the accusation if of a continuing offense?
sui . . . mariti: genitive singular? Is there a rule for the person condemned in the genitive.
indicioque fidem negat et, nisi viderit ipsa,
damnatura sui non est delicta mariti.
indicioque fidem negat – she refuses to give credence to the evidence
viderit is future perfect
damnatura est is more or less equivalent to future damnabit
delicta is accusative plural; plural for singular is common in Latin poetry. Delictum wouldn’t scan.
sui mariti is genitive, depending on delicta: the offense of her husband
nisi viderit, non est damnatura – a “simple” future conditional, with future perfect in the protasis and periphrastic future in the apodosis. The future perfect indicates that the protasis (nisi viderit ipsa) is anterior to the apodosis (non est damnatura) won’t occur unless and until the protasis occurs .
Think of this as “focalized” (I think that’s the right term) on Procris: this is told by Cephalus in the historical present in the third person, but it’s translated from what was going through Procris’ mind in the first person: nisi videro ipsa, damnatura mei non sum delicta mariti: “unless I see it myself, I won’t condemn my husband’s offence.” Instead of putting it in the past tense with a verb of thinking or deciding and an infinitive + accusative construction for the apodosis of the condition, Ovid has the narrator (here, Cephalus) put it in the future to represent what she is thinking in the imagined present. This is a “vivid” way of using a historical present narrative to tell us what went through her mind.
This is equivalent to something like: censebat nisi vidisset ipsa, se non esse damnaturam delicta sui mariti.
I need to read over your post several times, and study conditional sentences.
The scanning issue with the accusative plural was helpful; I’d never heard of that.
The comments on point-of-view are also helpful. I need to think about that more. When working so hard to understand the literal meaning clause by clause, contextual matters (like who’s talking here?) can be lost.
The genitive matter. I cannot now reconstruct how I failed to see the meaning you suggest.
Alternatively–and maybe this is better–delicta could be plural, as a general statement rather than one referring to a specific set of circumstances. “Unless I’ve witnessed them myself, I will never condemn [alleged] offenses of my husband.”
I’ve been reviewing A & G on conditional sentences. I can see that I’ve read it before, but somehow raising the question, and getting an answer is (like) “more vivid”.
Yes, this is what Allen & Greenough calls a “future more vivid” conditional (sec. 516.1), with the future indicative in the apodosis and the future perfect in the protasis to indicate that the action of the protasis will be completed before the apodosis occurs (sec. 516c). She won’t condemn unless and until she witness her husband’s wrongdoings herself.
You can see how contorted (and poetically inert) this would have to be if Cephalus had presented this in indirect speech with a verb of thinking or deciding in a past tense. In a sense it is indirect speech because it represents what Procris was thinking. But Ovid has Cephalus represent her thoughts in the historical present without twisting it into indirect speech, using the third person.
This is indeed an example of explicit embedded focalization. If I’m not mistaken, there is always embedded focalization after a verb of ‘‘to see’’/‘‘to hear’’.
This is indeed an example of explicit embedded focalization.
I’m not wholly familiar with the terminology, but is this really “explicit” focalization? Cephalus never uses a verb of thinking or deciding for Procris’ thoughts–he simply presents them in the third person.
De Jong 2014, 50: ''It is one of the special characteristics of narrative texts that a primary narrator-focalizer can embed the focalization of a character in his narrator-text, recounting what that character is seeing, feeling, of thinking, without turning him into a secondary narrator-focalizer (who would voice his own focalization in a speech). Such embedding of focalization is explicit when it as marked by a verb of seeing, feeling, or thinking, and so on .. ‘’ (her italics, not mine).
Her first example: E.M. Forster, A Room with a View, chapter 1:
‘‘Miss Bartlett was startled, Generally at a pension people looked them over for a day or two before speaking […] She knew that the intruder was ill-bred, even before she glanced at him. He was an old man, of heavy build, with a fair, shaven face and large eyes. There was something childish in those eyes, though it was nog the childishness of senility. What exactly it was Miss Bartlet did not stop to consider, for her glance passed on to his clothes.’’
Notice ‘‘the intruder’’ and ‘‘ill-bred’’, all in the eyes of Miss Bartlett!
" . . . Such embedding of focalization is explicit when it as marked by a verb of seeing, feeling, or thinking, and so on .. ‘’
In the passage from Ovid, there’s no verb of seeing, feeling or thinking. Cephalus is simply stating Procris’ thought, changing it from the first person into the third person, without a verb that explictly introduces it as her thought (unless you take negat in the preceding sentence as the explicit focalizer).