Livy makes it seem as if Saguntum was north of the Ebro (Hiberus). The Ebro was apparently the “line in the sand” limit on Carthaginian expansion in Spain for the Romans–a Carthaginian move north of the Ebro would threaten southern Gaul, which, if not by that time a Roman colony, was within the Roman sphere of influence. In fact, Saguntum was apparently south of the Ebro, but the Roman historical tradition in which Livy was writing was at pains to portray Hannibal and the Carthaginians as aggressors in the lead-up to the Second Punic War.
Thanks for everything. I’m feeling lazy today and I meant to take two days off anyway, so I’m going to treat today and tomorrow as two half-days regarding chapter 8. There are two or three sentences I don’t get (mostly at the beginning) but I only read it through twice this morning and spent maybe 15-20min on it (it’s much more straightforward than chapter 7; the war reporting isn’t as dry as in Caesar. Parts are practically cinematic) and I want to give it a greater effort than I have, but, as I said, I’m having a hard time getting going today.
Why did Livy intend to slander Scipio and/or Sempronius Longus?
Chapter 8:
8.1
Per quod tempus ut quies certaminum erat ita ab apparatu operum ac munitionum nihil cessatum.
(“Through the time that there was a lull in the fighting there was no ceasing by the apparatus of works and constructions.”)
It seems that as the second part is introduced by “ita” that it should follow from the first; I understand it if it just means “while there was an ebb in the fighting nevertheless the construction went on right apace, as obsidio magis quam oppugnatio fuit”.
8.2
Itaque acrius de integro coortum est bellum pluribusque partibus, uix accipientibus quibusdam opera locis, uineae coeptae agi admouerique aries.
(“Therefore a more severe war broke out afresh in many parts, with certain places scarcely accepting siege-works, the siege-sheds began (to be used) and the battering-rams to be moved (against the walls).”)
I don’t understand “uix accipientibus quibusdam opera locis”. Does it just mean that there began to be an opportunity to use siege-works?
8.8
…Saguntis pro nudata moenibus patria corpora opponentibus…
“Saguntis … opponentibus”, “pro … moenibus”, “nudata … corpora”?
8.1:
ut . . . ita = as . . . so
This simply frames an antithesis. The ita clause doesn’t necessarily follow from the ut clause. In English we might write “while” for ut, or “but” for ita (but not both). Note ut with indicative.
8.2:
Itaque acrius de integro coortum est bellum pluribusque partibus, uix accipientibus quibusdam opera locis, uineae coeptae agi admouerique aries.
There are two coordinate clauses joined by -que:
Itaque acrius de integro coortum est bellum
pluribusque partibus, uix accipientibus quibusdam opera locis, uineae coeptae agi admouerique aries.
The second clause: “and in many places – certain terrains accepting siege-works with difficulty – the sheds began to be driven up and the battering ram [aries is singular] [began] to be moved/propelled [?]”. I’m not sure exactly how this worked but that’s the idea.
8.8:
. . . Saguntinis pro nudata moenibus patria corpora opponentibus . . . [Note typo.]
This is a metaphor.
moenibus is ablative “of separation” (or something like that) depending on nudata.
pro nudata moenibus patria is a unit: “in front of their fatherland denuded of its walls”. The Saguntines themselves were decently clothed.
Saguntinis . . . corpora opponentibus – the rest is easy!
Note: following pro a Roman reader would automatically interpret nudata as ablative feminine rather than neuter plural nom/acc., and then would recognize moenibus as an ablative complement of nudata and connect nudata with patria.
Addendum: pro is probably better translated “on behalf of,” but perhaps Livy intends a more graphic image of the Saguntines holding their bodies in front of their fatherland to protect it.
Ha! My interpretation is probably a little less ludicrous than it seems: I mixed up “nudata” with “nuda”, with the thought that they were without shields or something, and there were probably intact moenibus to fight before; it was the most grammatically-plausible reading I could come up with, although I couldn’t find a place for “patria”. Never would have come up with “pro nudata moenibus patria” but I’ll keep your tip about prepositions in mind.
9.2:
…Poenus quia non uicisset pro victo esset…
What I get from this is “the Carthaginian(s) because they had not conquered seemed to have been conquered”. Whichever way it is, what’s the syntax?
Chapter 10 looks very long and I might have to break it into two days. I might start on it today, but there’s a baseball game in the early afternoon and since I started working 4pm-mid I haven’t been able to catch many.
I’ve been reading this book:
It’s an up-to-date account of the Punic Wars by a leading historian specializing in the period. It’s a good corrective on Livy, trying to make sense of the events from all of the historical and other sources. It’s well written and succinct. I’m just about to reach the battle of Saguntum, after completing the sections on the First Punic War and the inter-war period. I don’t know much about this era.
Hoyos has translated the Punic War decade of Livy for the Oxford World’s Classics series.
I don’t have this and haven’t seen it, but you might want to think about acquiring it. It’s very reasonably priced, and it will have notes that supplement Walsh. There’s no harm in using a translation as a last resort to help you figure out difficult passages and also to make sure you correctly understand passages you think you understand.
You might also decide to read part of Book XXI in English or read the rest of the Third Decade in English once you’ve finished Book XXI.
cum diu anceps fuisset certamen,
et Saguntinis, quia praeter spem resisterent, creuissent animi,
Poenus, quia non uicisset, pro uicto esset,
These clauses are all circumstantial cum clauses with the subjunctive. et connects the first clause with the antithesis posed by the next two clauses, which are not joined by a conjunction (this is an instance fo “asyndeton”) to highlight the antithesis.
“the Carthaginian [singular for plural] was ‘for [as if] defeated’ because he had been victorious”
quia non uicisset subjunctive either by “attraction” or because it represents what was going through the Carthaginians minds.
As a stylistic note, the antithesis Saguntinis/Poenus is crisper and more effective with asyndeton. And for variety, the “logical” subjects of the two clauses are different in number and case: Saguntinis is dative plural; Poenus is nominative singular.
I put the first book in my Amazon wish list and will order it when I next get paid. Translations make me a bit leery since I’ve found that I too quickly check them when I get into difficulties but if you’re wearying of this exercise I can certainly understand getting one (ed: I’m not suggesting I’ll be leaning on you indefinitely; I’m just talking about the future in general). I’m not sure how far I want to proceed with Livy; obviously reading the entire decade would be a major commitment that would take well over a year but I want to read it all eventually, though by no means does it have to be all at once. In that case going through a translation more quickly would make sense. I want to read the Aeneid sometime but that would also be a major commitment; it’s probably better for my development to read a greater variety of authors and anyway you said that’s typically done in the fourth year so I’m still a ways off. Also I want to get into Greek at some point, so I have decisions to make following this book.
Speaking of being wrong about things you thought you understood: I had read it as “Saguntini …creuissent animos”, taking “crescere” as transitive. But it’s intransitive with a dative complement? “Courage had increased to the Saguntines”?
Ed: fixed some grammar
"Speaking of being wrong about things you thought you understood: I had read it as “Saguntini …creuissent animos”, taking “crescere” as transitive. But it’s intransitive with a dative complement? “Courage increased to the Saguntines”?
There may be a discrepancy in the text here. I copied the text from the on-line version, which reproduces a Teubner edition from the late 19th century. Walsh’s text is that of the Oxford edition from the 1920s. Walsh actually co-edited a new Teubner edition in the 1970s or 1980s, which is currently the last word in scholarship on the text, but I don’t have that one.
The on-line text apparently has Saguntinis . . . creuissent animi; the Oxford text: Saguntini . . . creuissent animos. Either reading is intelligible, but I don’t know offhand whether both are supported by manuscript authority or, on the other hand, whether one or the other is the product of editorial intervention.
Addendum: It looks like the text is Saguntinis . . . creuissent animi in all the editions I’ve been able to check (including the Oxford text printed in Walsh’s BCP edition). animos could be a Greek-like accusative of respect, but it doesn’t seem to be in any version of the text, and I’m not sure this usage would be Livian.
I don’t mind continuing to answer your questions–they have got me reading the text along with you, and I actually get some satisfaction out of writing clear and hopefully correct answers to difficulties. But I think it would be helpful for you to check the passages you don’t ask about to make sure you understand them correctly. The Hoyos translation isn’t a Loeb–the translation is not facing the Latin, so it won’t be quite so easy to access the translation before you’ve tried to work out the passage for yourself.
I recommend the translation based on experience. Last year I read through Thucydides in Greek. I used a translation as a last resort, and it was an enormous help to me in difficulties (of which there are many). I suspect everyone, including experienced Latinists, looks at translations from time to time.
In that case, I went ahead and ordered the Hoyos translation. Chapter 10 is long but not overly difficult; nevertheless there were about a half-dozen harder places and to my knowledge I’ve subdued most of them. There are a couple left:
10.4
Iuuenem flagrantem cupidine regni viamque unam ad id cernentem si ex bellis bella serendo succinctus armis legionibusque uiuat, uelut materiam igni praebentes, ad exercitus misistis.
This is a roundabout sentence! “You have sent to the armies this blazing youth, seeing his one path to his desire of a kingdom (ablative of route?) if from wars by sowing wars he lives girded by arms and legions, as if they are presented as tinder to the blaze.” I’m taking “bella serendo” as a gerund with an object not taking a gerundive. I’m having a hard time getting my head around this one.
10.7
Quo lenius agunt, segnius incipiunt, eo cum coeperint uereor ne perseuerantius saeuiant.
This seems proverbial. “Quo” and “eo” are ablatives of degree of difference? “Things are done more smoothly the more they are begun more sluggishly; the way this began, I fear they (will?) rampage tenaciously all the more.”
Everything else, as I said, I believe I’ve more or less got; these two are giving me more trouble than the rest.
Iuuenem flagrantem cupidine regni uiamque unam ad id cernentem si ex bellis bella serendo succinctus armis legionibusque uiuat, uelut materiam igni praebentes, ad exercitus misistis.
You have much of this right, but there are several points where you went astray. The way to read a sentence like this is to read it in units, using morphological cues to apprehend the structure as you read:
Iuuenem flagrantem cupidine regni
The accusative sets up the expectation of a verb later in the sentence, and flagrantem modifies iuuenem. We immediately recognize the “young man” as Hannibal from the context, and we recognize that he is flagrantem cupidine regni from what Livy has previously told us.
regnum is a loaded word for Romans. It calls to mind the arbitrary and cruel excesses of the kings of whom the Romans had rid themselves in 509 BCE (even though in Livy’s day Augustus was in the process of establishing a monarchical dynasty in Rome).
uiamque unam ad id cernentem
-que signals that the next unit will be parallel to the first, and sets up the expectation that either an adjective modifying iuuenem will follow or that uiam is parallel to iuuenem. When this unit is apprehended as a whole, cernentem is clearly parallel to flagrantem and uiam is the object of cernentem. Roads don’t discern; young men do.
si ex bellis bella serendo succinctus armis legionibusque uiuat
si . . . uiuat encloses this unit and marks it as a “future less vivid” condition with a subjunctive verb. This conditional clause is explanatory of unam uiam.
ex bellis bella serendo is a catchy phrase: “sowing wars out of wars”.
succinctus armis legionibusque --another catchy phrase armis legionibusque is a zeugma (or some similar figure of speech the name of which I don’t remember), linking a literal and a figurative sense of succinctus. We’ve had one other masculine singular noun in the sentence, and only one; here, the reader’s instinct is to link succinctus with the iuuenem, Hannibal.
uelut materiam igni praebentes
This “as if” clause has a nominative plural verb. There have been no previous plural nouns in the sentence, so the reader understands that it modifies the subject of the verb we have been expecting.
ad exercitus misistis.
Finally, we come to the verb–at the end of the sentence, as is normal in Latin–with its adverbial complement. We recognize that the subject is 2d person plural.
Of course, the objective is to read without translating, but translation can be helpful in making sure one understands the Latin text. Why don’t you take another stab at translating this sentence?
Iuuenum flagrentem cupidine regni uiamque unum ad id cernentum si ex bellis bella serendo succintus armis legionibusque uiuat, uelut materiam igni praebentes, ad exercitus misistis.
“You all, as if presenting tinder for his fire, have sent a young man burning with desire of/for a kingdom, discerning only one path to it: if he, sowing wars from wars, should live girded with arms and legions.”
“You all, as if presenting tinder for his fire, have sent a young man burning with desire of/for a kingdom, discerning only one path to it: if he, sowing wars from wars, should live girded with arms and legions.”
You have it now.
You left out ad exercitus, but that’s just an oversight and you’ve already shown you know what that means. Also -que joins the participial phrases flagrantem and cernentem.
Quo lenius agunt, segnius incipiunt, eo cum coeperint uereor ne perseuerantius saeuiant.
Yes, quo and eo are correlative here.
This breaks down as follows:
Quo lenius agunt, [quo] segnius incipiunt,
eo cum coeperint uereor ne perseuerantius saeuiant.
The subject is not res, the subject of repetuntur: he has switched to an animate subject with deposcunt. The subject of deposcunt is first, the legati, but more generally, the Romans. The quo sentence is a statement about the Romans, written by a Roman, reflecting the Roman self-image: slow and deliberate to act, but fiercely tenacious once moved to action.
"The more gently they act [and] the slower they start [asyndeton again],
the more tenaciously, once they have begun, I fear they will rampage."
Again, it’s important to pay attention to the cues that articulate the structure of the sentence. quo is answered by eo only after the two verbs agunt and incipiunt, thus marking quo . . . incipiunt out as a unit and signaling that the two verbs are parallel and coordinate.
There’s a kind of jingle here, -nius -iunt / -nius -iunt / -int -antius -iant, that articulates the sentence and lends it its aphoristic character. Also it ends in a double cretic (long short long). This sentence is as carefully crafted as a Vergilian hexameter.
I looked up the ablative of degree of difference in A&G and it turns out I lucked into the “quo … eo” construction. I didn’t know it was a thing and I had only encountered that ablative use a handful of times in my readings; this explains the gibberish nature of the translation, as I was basically making an educated guess on the meaning. I understand it now.
I got chapter 11 wiwith no problems.
You’re putting me out of business.
Zeugma and syllepsis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma
A classic:
http://www.iankitching.me.uk/humour/hippo/madeira.html
In performance:
Is there a difference between zeugma and syllepsis? I had always loved those constructions but never knew what to call it.