Context: Misers are crazy too. In this case, the Stoic philosopher is considering a rich miser who makes himself ridiculous by using rancid oil, sour wine, and so on, when he can well afford the pleasure of good things.
124 quantulum enim summae curtabit quisque dierum,
125 unguere si caules oleo meliore caputque
126 coeperis inpexa foedum porrigine?
Some hard things, for me, in this sentence:
deciding that quisque dierum meant “each one of [your] days”, and that this noun phrase is the subject of curtabit;
apprehending quantulum as a question word, with summae as genitive complement, and interpreting summae, as referring to the miser’s hoarded cash.
The verb coeperis gave me some trouble: perfect subjunctive, or future perfect indicative? I read it as perfect subjunctive. The grammar principle, I think, is this. The main-clause verb curtabit is future indicative, which invokes the primary sequence (of tenses). The subordinate clause must use perfect-subjunctive, if the verb’s action is completed. In this sentence the action was NOT to anoint, but to begin (coeperis). I still have to look up these rules, and I’m not sure about this.
Translation:
How little will each day take away from your money [summae]
if you began to anoint your cabbage with better olive oil
as well as your head disgusting with its uncombed dandruff.
You have this right except that coeperis is future perfect. This is a future “more vivid” condition, see Allen & Greenough 516. The action of coeperis takes place before curtabit, as you recognize, so in Latin the future perfect must be used in the protasis. (In English, we would just use the present tense.) The miser starts using extra-virgin oil on his cabbage and his hair, and then his wealth is diminished by just a little bit each day.
A&G 516c:
If the conditional act is regarded as completed before that of the apodosis begins, the Future Perfect is substituted for the Future Indicative in protasis, and the Perfect Subjunctive for the Present Subjunctive:—
sīn cum potuerō nōn vēnerō, tum erit inimīcus (Att. 9.2A. 2), but if I do not come when I can, he will be unfriendly
“Substituted” is of course the wrong word–it’s just the way Latin works.
I think you were basically on the right track–you recognized that coeperis happens before curtabit, but you just mixed up the rules for future more vivid and future less vivid. In future less vivid would be coeperis (perfect subjunctive)/curtes (present subjunctive).
Thanks, Hylander, this is the main reason why I posted this query. I’ve been confused about the general rules for sequence of tenses, Allen & Greenough, 483-484, on the one hand; and the particular rules governing conditional sentences, on the other hand, the ones you cited.
In my confusion about this, I tried by brute force to apply to that passage the general rules, rather than the precepts that govern conditional sentences. I have never got command of the different kinds of complex sentences, in their relation to matters of tense. Food for thought here. I actually considered briefly the future more/less vivid idea, but confused myself and drove into the ditch.
I see now that Allen & Greenough list the different kinds of subordinate clauses at #279, “Subordinate Clauses are of various kinds”: Relative Clauses, Temporal Clauses, Conditional Clauses, Final Causes, and Consecutive Clauses. Somehow I never put these things in relation to each other.