Hi, I have a question in this paragraph regarding an usual use of “tibi” (at least for me), repeated twice in this same paragraph:
Quid quod adventū tuō ista subsellia vacuēfacta sunt, quod omnēs cōnsulārēs, quī tibi persaepe ad caedem cōnstitūtī fuērunt, simul atque assēdistī, partem istam subselliōrum
nūdam atque inānem relīquērunt, quō tandem animō tibi ferendum putās?
My translation:
What about the fact that those chairs near you were made empty because of your arrival, (and the fact) that all of consular ranks, that had been decided to you very often for slaughter as soon as you took a seat, left that part of yours of the seats bare and empty, with what state of mind at last do you think that this must be carried to you.
Now, “tibi”: is a dative. “Tē”: is ablative.
I saw another translation which says: by you (twice). Then, it should be “tē”.
Steadman explains that it is a dative of agent (p. 37, last line).
Here, I am lost.
Any idea?
Both of these tibi are datives of agent. The dative of agent is often used with periphrastic perfect passive verbs (constituti fuerunt) and usually with gerundives (ferendum). With other passive verb forms, the agent is marked by a + ablative.
Anto, how do you mean you’re lost? tibi is dative of agent with the gerund, as usual, so where is your remaining difficulty? Cf. e.g. “nihil homini tam timendum quam invidia” (or Roosevelt’s “Man has nothing to fear but fear itself”).
You must be aware that the trouble with the extremely literal kind of translation that you’re addicted to is that it completely fails to capture the rhetoric—and the Catilinarians are nothing if not rhetorical. The two tibis reinforce the tuo; they intensify the fact that it’s Catiline he’s addressing. This is between the two of them.
Yes, you are right. The problem is that I am not yet used to this structure.
Now I checked that Steadman explains it at page 11:
Passive Periphrastic10 (gerundive + sum ) expresses obligation or necessity and governs a dative of agent.
verendum est mihi = it must be feared by me