Frontinus, Stragegemata, short hard sentence

Latin Learning Latin
1

Context: Frontinus explains that he hopes, by assembling many instances of clever tricks of commanders, to save persons in need of military advice the trouble of sifting many books. He seems aware of a possible accusation that his book is too derivative to enjoy high standing.

Sed, ut opinor, occupatis velocitate consuli debet.

Free Translation: But, it is my view that busy men are entitled to swift advice.

My calls:
debet: impersonal use of this verb, one owes, a person owes.

consuli: I am reading this as the passive present infinitive of consulo. I’m having a lot of trouble with this. Perhaps this might be an English illustration of the Latin: “To be advised with swiftness one owes to busy persons.” I am reading the infinitive phrase as direct object of debet.

velocitate: ablative singular, adjective with adverbial force.

occupatis: adjective, dative plural, used substantively. I call this the indirect object of debet.

2

Here is more context:

Illud neque ignoro neque infitior, et rerum gestarum scriptores indagine operis sui hanc quoque partem esse complexos et ab auctoribus exemplorum, quidquid insigne aliquo modo fuit, traditum. Sed, ut opinor, occupatis velocitate consuli debet. Longum est enim singula et sparsa per immensum corpus historiarum persequi, et hi, qui notabilia excerpserunt, ipso velut acervo rerum confuderunt legentem. Nostra sedulitas impendet operam, ut, quemadmodum res poscet, ipsum quod exigitur quasi ad interrogatum exhibeat.

I think you have this right. The impersonal use of debet troubles me a little. Neither Lewis & Short nor the Oxford Latin Dictionary clearly indicate such a usage, but I don’t see any alternative here – I don’t see a possible subject.

3

I may be missing something, but doesn’t the passive solve this? Intransitive verbs with datives are construed impersonally in passive with dative object. I found this little example in a grammar, possibly close enough for comparison:

Nemini persuaderi poterat.

4

Thanks to both Timothée and Hylander for the reassurance. For me this was no easy call.

Although I found no perfectly on-point example, the Allen and Greenough #455 gave me a little encouragement. I’d be grateful for an evaluation of this judgment of mine.

[*] 455. With impersonal verbs and expressions that take the Infinitive as an apparent subject, the personal subject of the action may be expressed—
By a Dative, depending on the verb or verbal phrase:—
“rogant ut id sibifacere liceat ” (B. G. 1.7) , they ask that it be allowed them to do this.
“nōn lubet enimmihidēplōrāre vītam ” (Cat. M. 84) , for it does not please me to lament my life.
vīsum est mihidē senectūte aliquid cōnscrībere (id. 1), it seemed good to me to write something about old age.
quid est tam secundum nātūram quamsenibusēmorī; (id. 71), what is so much in accordance with nature as for old men to die?
exstinguīhominī suō tempore optābile est (id. 85), for a man to die at the appointed time is desirable.

5

I would have expected debetur but Nemini persuaderi poterat might bear out Timothée’s analysis. I’m hard pressed to find an example with debet. Do you have a cite for this that might give us some context.

As for sec. 455, occupatis isn’t the personal subject of debet – it’s the direct object.

6

To me it seems logical that the passivity is expressed not in the finite verb but in the infinite verb subordinate to the finite verb. This happens in English (“it can be done”) as well as in French (“cela peut être fait”), German (“das kann getan werden”), or Swedish (“det kan göras”), to take only a few Indo-European languages as examples.

Despite these words I, too, had hard time finding any pertinent examples of debet. Finally I found the following from Menge’s Lehrbuch der lateinischen Syntax und Semantik (2007), and it may do:

It translates freely, in the context, “We must regard (this) as a given”, uel sim.

7

passivity is expressed not in the finite verb but in the infinite verb subordinate to the finite verb. This happens in English (“it can be done”) as well as in French (“cela peut être fait”), German (“das kann getan werden”), or Swedish (“det kan göras”), to take only a few Indo-European languages as examples.

But on these expressions, “it/cela/das/det” is not impersonal–it’s a pronoun that refers to something specific that is doable. In the phrase under consideration, debet would be purely impersonal–there’s no referent for the impersonal subject. Isn’t that different from the English/French/German/Swedish phrases?

Here is the sentence from Cicero de Officiis 3.38:

satis enim nobis, si modo in philosophia aliquid profecimus, persuasum esse debet, si omnes deos hominesque celare possimus, nihil tamen avare, nihil iniuste, nihil libidinose, nihil incontinenter esse faciendum.

In this sentence, the subject of debet is the infinitive phrase si omnes deos hominesque celare possimus, nihil tamen avare, nihil iniuste, nihil libidinose, nihil incontinenter esse faciendum. Leaving aside the protasis of the conditional, the sentence can be translated literally “that . . . nothing greedy, nothing unjust . . . must be done [if we had the magic power to act with invisibility to gods and men] must be persuaded to us”, i.e., "we must be persuaded [by philosophical reasoning] that . . . "

In the sentence occupatis velocitate consuli debet, the infinitive phrase velocitate consuli doesn’t seem to me to be the subject of debet, but rather the object. Otherwise, there would be no complement to debet, and we would have something like “to be consulted speedily owes to busy people”. Owes what? “To be consulted speedily must”. Must what? The sentence from Cicero isn’t parallel.

I’m willing to accept that debet here is impersonal, but I still find it a little strange.

8

Hi, I don’t know syntax peculiarities of those authors outside the canon, but I suspect this is an example of a later construction of impersonal debet + inf.: see e.g. pages 122-123 of “Archaic Syntax in Indo-European: The Spread of Transitivity in Latin and French”, section 3.4.1 (Verbs developing impersonal structures), sub-section “Debet + infinitive”:

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aiEqn_WQl-8C&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122

Cheers, Chad

9

The linked passage seems to explain the use of debet here, indofar as I can read it. I’m surprised that neither the Oxford Latin Dictionary nor Lewis & Short mention this usage. Frontinus, after all, is not “late Latin”–he’s Flavian.

10

I haven’t given this much thought, but it seemed to me that Cicero’s nobis persuasum esse debet made a fine match for Frontinus’ occupatis … consuli debet. Both persuadeo and consulo take dative of the person (persuade someone, consult someone’s interests), and this carries over to the “impersonal” passive of these verbs. Nobis ~ occupatis, persuasum esse ~ consuli. “We ought to be convinced” ~ “Busy people ought to have their interests consulted.”

Admittedly the parallelism breaks down if we insist that the following infinitival phrase in the Cicero is the subject of debet, but isn’t it better to think of it as acc.&inf. dependent on persuasum esse?

Looking at OLD s.v. debet I see intelligi debet eum conscium fuisse (Cic., “it should be understood that he was conscius”) and nemini debet nimium licere (Quint., “no-one should have excessive licence”). Again in these and similar instances, can’t debet so used be viewed as impersonal, with the infin. dependent on it? Potest etc. work the same way. To go by Chad’s post, that’s what his linked book is suggesting too (the link refuses to show me the page), but only as a “later construction.”