I read this in Servius the other day and was made slightly confused by it:
arma virumque. > figura usitata est ut non eo ordine respondeamus quo proposuimus; nam prius de erroribus Aeneae dicit, post de bello. hac autem figura etiam in prosa utimur. sic Cicero in Verrinis “nam sine ullo sumptu nostro coriis, tunicis frumentoque suppeditato maximos exercitus nostros vestivit, aluit, armavit”
I understand the Latin perfectly well, but I don’t understand how the quote from Cicero indicates a word order contrary to the reality of events. Thoughts?
Yes it does look a bit odd, since the clothing precedes the provisioning in the vestivit aluit armavit trio as well as in the coriis tunicis frumento trio, but I suppose the point is just that the two don’t correspond with each other—no mention of arms in the first. Perhaps it was the Vergilian arma that called this far from perfect example to mind.
IMO, the coria are for their armor. “armavit” is not armed, but armored here, going with the coria. And therefore the matchup is:
coriis 2. tunicis 3. frumento
vestivit, 3. aluit, 1. armavit
And as I am able to understand it, the figure isn’t when we have a “word order contrary to the reality of events”, but when it is contrary to “quo proposuimus”.
Thank you. That makes more sense, although I still think Servius could have given a better example…
About “quo proposuimus”, you have to know what that is referring to. Servius, in the prologue, mentioned the order of the books and why Virgil ordered things the way he did, with Book 1 beginning in medias res. The “proposuimus”, I believe, refers to his discussion of the order of the books of the Aeneid in the prologue.
My lucid-as-possible translation of “figura usitata est ut non eo ordine respondeamus quo proposuimus” is “This figure of speech is customary, so we should not not understand it to indicate an order of the books different from what we set forth”. Would that be accurate?
As I understand it, Virgil’s propositum, in the very first line, is “arma virumque”. But the responsio is reversed from this. He tells first of the wanderings (lines 1-4), and then of the war (line 5).
For Cicero, the propositum is “with leathers, tunics, and grain,” but the responsio is “clothed, fed, armored”
But take all this as the words of a Latin baby. I only know how the Aeneid starts out from the recent Greek translation thread on it. (Of which thread, I suspect that some of the participants were anxious to hear from mwh on their Greek.)
From what I can find, armor in the late Republic would have included a fair amount of leather, especially for the less wealthy. The pteryges (πτέρυγες) and sometimes the lorica musculata were leather, the galea (γαλέη) too, in addition to belts and thongs and so on. The scutum had a layer of leather over the wood.
As far as the word corium used to refer to leather armor, Tacitus describes the armor of the Sarmatians as “ferreis lamminis aut praeduro corio consertum”.
Yes, that makes complete sense. Thank you for that bit of research, jeidsath. I forget that much of a Roman soldier’s armor would have included leather, which is a tough material but not as heavy as metal and so allows greater mobility on the field.