illa, quid e multis referat (nam plurima norat),
cogitat et dubia est, de te, Babylonia, narret,
Derceti, quam versa squamis velantibus artus
stagna Palaestini credunt motasse figura,
She thinks and is unsure which she should relate from the many (for she had come to know very many [stories]), should she tell about you, Babylonian Dercetis, whom the inhabitants of Palestine believe to have disturbed ponds, her shape having been changed and with scales covering her limbs.
I’m fairly sure of the sense, but I’m wondering if “squamis velantibus artus” is to be considered a secondary ablative absolute inside the framing “versa…figura” which certainly appears to be an ablative absolute. If both are considered AA’s, is there any special significance to the one being “nested” inside the other? It doesn’t SEEM so. It seems like we’re supposed to understand that her shape changed and she became covered by scales.
Or if they’re not both AA’s, then can someone please tell me how the grammar actually works here?
The sandwiching is rather nice, and the organization of the entire clause is very neat and typically Ovidian. quam sets up the upcoming stagna Palaestini credunt motasse, quite straightforward.
Inbetween we have (i) versa abl., without revealing what or who has been “turned,” and we’re kept waiting for the very last word for that (versa … figura, neatly wrapping up the entire relative clause); and (II) squamis velantibus artus, an intervening self-contained ablative phrase.
versa .. figura could be taken as abl.absolute, but it might best be read as instrumental: she moved the waters by means of her converted shape. That’s the actual metamorphosis, a fish.
The complementary squamis velantibus artus completes the picture: fish-scales veiling (what had been) her limbs (metamorphosis in process, as always in Ovid). So both ablative phrases are integrated into the primary image.
(Remember poets did not think in terms of “ablative absolute” as an exclusive grammatical category.)
So much for the grammar. Still more interesting: she ends up selecting from no fewer than four Babylonian metamorphic tales (among a vast multitude): Dercetis (apostrophized), an …? an … ? an …? No prizes for guessing that the one she eventually settles on (the last, of course) is chosen as being the most obscure (53: hoc placet; hanc, quoniam vulgaris fabula non est, …). Cue Pyramus & Thisbe.
It’s very funny if you can appreciate the ingenuity and the sheer verve. If ever I’m despondent, a little dose of Ovid will buck me up.
So I guess I was “right”. But I need to pay closer attention to the syntax in Ovid–you’ve made me more aware of that. I think I may have been working too much with a mindset of “this is poetry: the words could be scattered anywhere” and not appreciating parallelism and “sandwiching” etc., the structure of which gives clues to the grammar.
Not just to the syntax, more to the syntactic organization. There’s nothing more pernicious than thinking that verse is just prose with the words shuffled around until they scan. Verse is nothing like that. Yet that sort of thinking is actively encouraged by verse composition books.
And don’t be so concerned with whether or not you were “right.” Widen your lens, broaden your horizons.
I’ve been rereading the Metamorphoses and just today reached Pyramis and Thisbe. I’m particularly enjoying the deft and economical way he puts his sentences and his hexameters together. Very different from Vergil. Assonance and internal rhyme everywhere. His facility is astounding – I think his stream of consciousness and even his dreams must have been in perfect hexameters and elegiac couplets. Reading Ovid is such a pleasure, not only for his inexhaustible imagination that gives life to what must have been stories that had probably previously been told in a sentence or two and for the scintillating wit that has me constantly laughing out loud, but also for the sheer mastery of the Latin language and the Latin hexameter.
I’m not totally sure what distinction you’re making between “syntax” and “syntactic organization”. My best guess is that you mean for me to try to grasp, as a whole, how he’s … the analogy that comes to my mind is: building a house … his overall blueprint for how to organize the words he’s going to use to express himself in an artistic manner.
And I’m not just trying to be “right” in some petty sense of “winning” or something–I more or less understood the grammar of the house he’d built, this time, so I made a little progress toward fully understanding what he was saying. That’s a good thing, is all. Anyway, I appreciate your help, Michael.
Dave