I’ve been reading through Foster’s book of Ciceronian texts and translations and am encountering some translations which raise questions in my mind. Here’s one I recently came across:
Si locare voluisses, duobus his muneribus liber esses.
If you had wished to rent them out, you would be debtless—there being these two gladiatorial spectacles. (p. 372).
He explains:
“there being these two gladiatorial spectacles”: in the middle of the contrary to fact conditional, these three substantive words function as an AA [ = abl. abs.] whose participle is not given, but is felt to be “being,” and its subject is in the abl. form muneribus.
I have never seen the unexpressed “being” used impersonally in an abl. abs. One will find Caesar duce (with Caesar being leader), etc., but I’m not aware of anything like what Foster is arguing for. Is anyone aware of this construction, or is it a mistake?
Winstedt’s translation seems to take the ablative as one of means (or perhaps of cause):
If you had cared to let them out, you would have cleared your expenses on these two shows.
I’d say you’re obviously right against Foster. But surely it just means free of them (lit. free from them), not abl. of means or cause. How did Shackleton Bailey take it? His translations of the letters are always instructive, to say the least.
Yes, I took it the same way as you, as an abl. of separation, when I read it, but since both Winstedt and Foster took muneribus as “shows,” I assumed the reference was contextually demanded. I just checked Bailey (which I should have done to begin with), and he also treats it similarly to Winstedt:
If you had cared to hire them out you would have cleared your outlay in these last two shows.
I agree it sounds much more natural to take it as “you would have been free of these two obligations,” but I suppose the context demands otherwise.
I agree with both of you. I’m wondering: In classical Latin, does esse even have a present participle?
I know that Latin later would have such a present participle, but in Cicero’s time, there was no such thing, was there? I don’t see how it can be “understood” in an ablative absolute if the word doesn’t exist in the first place.
No present participle, but it’s common to have constructions like “Caesare duce,” “with Caesar being leader,” which are sometimes translated as “with Caesar as leader.” But we can drop the participle in English too (“with Caesar the leader, …”).
But the implied “being” always joins the noun and the noun (or noun and adjective); it’s never used impersonally, outside the noun-noun (or noun-adjective) cluster, as Foster seems to want us to understand it (“there being these two spectacles”). In fact, it’s worse than that, because the games had clearly taken place already, and so it would have to be an understood perfect participle, which I don’t recall classical Latin ever allowing.
I’m coming across things like every few pages. I bought the book because I had been led to believe he had been the greatest Latinist alive. I have come to believe that this claim was probably just something put out by his enthusiastic and awe-struck students, because I know my college humble college professors would never have made goofs like that.