Livy XXI

Latin Learning Latin
61

I’m having some trouble with this, but I think I’m on the right track:

Alco insciis Saguntinis, precibus aliquid moturum ratus, cum ad Hannibalem noctu transisset, postquam nihil lacrimae mouebant condicionesque tristes, ut ab irato uictore, ferebantur, transfuga ex oratore factus apud hostem mansit, moriturum adfirmans qui sub condicionibus iis de pace ageret.

(“Alco, unknown to the Saguntines, thinking he could move anybody with pleas, when he had gone over to Hannibal at night, after tears and grim conditions could not move (Hannibal), that (under) what terms were being proposed by the irate victor he would (have to) be made a deserter of an orator and remain among the enemy, maintaining that whoever made peace under such conditions would die.”)

This all makes sense in the abstract and I think it’s the thought of the sentence but structurally it’s a mess. There’s a cum- and an ut-clause I can’t account for and, probably more fundamentally, I’m having trouble finding a main verb to go with “Alco” to form the predicate in the jungle of subordinate clauses. “Adfirmans” is nominative and “Alco” is its antecedent, so maybe the main clause is “Alco (was) maintaining that whoever made peace under such conditions would die”? I think I’ve got the rest of the chapter.

Ed: the “ut” clause makes more sense if you get rid of the commas around “ferebantur”. Ed2: I think I’ve got the “cum” clause, too – actually really simple.

62

Alco insciis Saguntinis, precibus aliquid moturum ratus, cum ad Hannibalem noctu transisset, postquam nihil lacrimae mouebant condicionesque tristes, ut ab irato uictore, ferebantur, transfuga ex oratore factus apud hostem mansit, moriturum adfirmans qui sub condicionibus iis de pace ageret.

Breaking this down into units:

Alco

insciis Saguntinis

precibus aliquid [se] moturum ratus

cum ad Hannibalem noctu transisset

postquam nihil lacrimae mouebant

condicionesque tristes ut ab irato uictore ferebantur

transfuga ex oratore factus

apud hostem mansit

moriturum adfirmans qui sub condicionibus iis de pace ageret.

moturum, mouebant – “move things forward,” “accomplish”

tristes – “cruel,” “harsh”

Does this help? If you break it down this way, the main verb should be obvious.

63

“Mansit”, right?

That was actually what I was leaning towards originally before “abnuente Alcone” later, which made me think that he had rejected the terms outright and left Hannibal, so I revised my earlier thinking with the problem sentence.

I try to break down sentences but I can get into a bit of trouble with the borders of the segments (where one ends and the next begins). I guess it will come more naturally with practice. In particular “condicionesque” threw me off, as I thought it would be parallel with “lacrimae” (i.e. the harsh conditions inside the city) when actually it starts a new piece which I expected to begin with “ut”.

64

I see I made a mistake when I typed out the ferebantur clause, leaving -que off of condiciones. This led me to interpret ut as “when”. But ut ab irato uictore should be set of by commas: here it means something like “considering that” the terms of surrender were announced by the angry victor. The preceding postquam governs both mouebant and ferebantur: “after the harsh terms of surrender were announced/told–considering that [they were announced] by the angry victor”.

However, the verb mouebant is the cue that the first postquam clause is complete–the verb is where we expect it, at the end of the clause. The second verb in the imperfect signals that the second postquam clause (or as I mistakenly read it, a clause tacked onto the main verb by ut “when”) is complete, and that the sentence moves to a new unit, which turns out to be the main verb we’ve been waiting for ever since the sentence started with a nominative singular noun, Alco.

L&S ut:

b Reflecting the assertion to particular circumstances, etc., ut = for, as, considering: hic Geta ut captus est servorum, non malus, Ter. Ad. 3, 4, 34: ut est captus hominum, Cic. Tusc. 2, 27, 65; Caes. B. G. 4, 3: Themistocles ut apud nos perantiquus, ut apud Athenienses non ita sane vetus, in regard to us, etc., Cic. Brut. 10, 41: Caelius Antipater, scriptor, ut temporibus illis, luculentus, for those times, id. ib. 26, 102: nonnihil, ut in tantis malis est profectum, considering the unfortunate state of affairs, id. Fam. 12, 2, 2: (orationis genus) ut in oratore exile, for an orator, id. Or. 3, 18, 66: multae (erant in Fabio) ut in homine Romano, litterae, id. Sen. 4, 12: consultissimus vir, ut in illā quisquam esse aetate poterat, Liv. 1, 18, 1: florentem jam ut tum res erant, id. 1, 3, 3: Apollonides orationem salutarem, ut in tali tempore, habuit, id. 24, 28, 1: Sp. Maelius, ut illis temporibus praedives, id. 4, 13, 1: insigni, ut illorum temporum habitus erat, triumpho, id. 10, 46, 2: Ardeam Rutuli habebant, gens ut in eā regione atque in eā aetate divitiis praepollens, id. 1, 57, 1: vir, ut inter Aetolos, facundus, id. 32, 33, 9: Meneclidas, satis exercitatus in dicendo, ut Thebanus scilicet, Nep. Epam. 5, 2: ad magnam deinde, ut in eā regione, urbem pervenit, Curt. 9, 1, 14: multum, ut inter Germanos, rationis ac sollertiae, Tac. G. 30.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.19:370.lewisandshort

The clauses leading up to mansit are in chonological order. (1) Alco had the idea of trying to supplicate Hannibal; (2) he went over to Hannibal by night; (3) his tears accomplished nothing; (4) the terms were brought to him; (5) he became a turncoat instead of a political leader and decided to stay with the enemy. Note mansit is perfect: he made a decision to stay at a moment in time.

65

Looking at the breakdown again a few times I see what I probably ought to have seen long ago: literally every verb ended a part. I’ll definitely give it a go next time I encounter a long/complex sentence.

66

This won’t work all the time, but it should be a helpful exercise most of the time.

67

13.3

Vestra autem causa me nec ullius alterius loqui quae loquor apud vos uel ea fides sit quod neque dum uestris uiribus restitistis neque dum auxilia ab Romanis sperastis pacis unquam apud vos mentionem feci.

Vestra autem causa
me nec ullius alterius loqui
quae loquor
apud vos uel ea fides sit
quod neque dum uestris uiribus restitistis
neque dum auxilia ab Romanis sperastis
pacis unquam apud vos mentionem feci.

However, your cause,
Which I say I do not say of any other,
This among you at any rate should guarantee (taken from the note)
Because while you resisted with your strength
And while you hoped for Roman aid
I never made mention of peace among you.

Alorcus says that although the conditions are harsh he comes to the senate as a hospes. He says that even that being the case, submitting to the conditions would guarantee their cause, which resisting and waiting for the Romans would not do.

68

Breaks down like this:

Vestra autem causa me nec ullius alterius loqui

quae loquor apud vos [verb is not at end of unit]

uel ea fides sit

quod neque dum uestris uiribus restitistis

neque dum auxilia ab Romanis sperastis

pacis unquam apud vos mentionem feci.

This part is more or less correct:

“while [as long as] you resisted with your [own] strength
And [or] while [as long as] you hoped for Roman aid
I never made mention of peace [i.e., resolving the conflict by peace negotiations] among [in your presence] you.”

But it would be better to follow the Latin more closely here: "neither . . . nor . . . did I make mention . . . " or "I never made mention . . . either as long as . . . or as long as . . . "

quod here is “the fact that”

uel ea fides sit quod – "at any rate, let the fact that . . . guarantee that . . . "

This is the difficult part:

Vestra autem causa me nec ullius alterius loqui

quae loquor apud vos

Leaving aside the relative clause for the moment, we have an acc. + infinitive: me . . . loqui

This is modified by uestra causa . . . nec ullius alterius

Ablative causa is like a preposition: “on behalf of”, “in the interests of”. The key thing to note here is that unlike a true preposition, causa can be complemented by a possessive pronoun, or alternatively a genitive (just like the English expressions); here’s it’s complemented by both: “on your behalf/in your interests and no one else’s”

Vestra autem causa me nec ullius alterius loqui – “that I’m saying in your interests and no one else’s”

Then the relative clause quae loquor apud vos falls into place: “what I’m saying in your presence/among you”.

Vestra autem causa is fronted for emphasis; in English, we could translate this “that it’s in your interest and no one else’s that I’m saying what I’m saying in your presence”

Putting this all together: “That’s it’s in you interest and no one else’s that I’m saying what I’m saying in your presence, let [this] at any rate be a guarantee: the fact that I never made mention of the possibility of resolving the conflict by peace negotiations in your presence either while you resisted with your own strength or while you had hopes for assistance from the Romans.” Not very elegant English, but it will do to illustrate how this sentence is constructed.

69

The first apud uos could be taken with what follows:

apud vos uel ea fides sit – “let this be the guarantee among you/for you”

instead of with what precedes:

i]quae loquor apud vos[/i] – “what I’m saying among you/in your presence”.

My inclination is to take it as a reference to his public utterances before the Saguntines, like the second apud uos. I think the alternative is not impossible, but taking it with quae loquor, it seems to me, balances mentionem feci.

The underlying idea of this sentence: if he had been acting as an agent of Hannibal, he would have urged peace negotiations on them before they had exhausted their ability to withstand Hannibal on their own.

70

So “vestra causa” takes indirect discourse, or am I missing something? “That it’s in your interest that…” would seem to take it but the “that” is unexpressed.

That sentence is hard to understand even in English.

71

The acc. + acc. construction . . . me . . . loqui depends on fides:

"That I am saying [me loqui] in your interest [uestra causa] and in no one else’s [nec ullius alterius]

the things I am saying to you [quae loquor apud uos]

let at any rate the guarantee be [uel ea sit fides]

the fact that [quod]

neither while you resisted with your own strength

nor while you had hopes for assistance from the Romans

did I ever make mention to you of the possibility of a negotiated peace."

His point is that the fact that he didn’t bring up the possibility of a negotiated peace with the Saguntines as long as they had some hope of success guarantees or at least demonstrates that he is now speaking in their interest, and not Hannibal’s, and that he has the Saguntines’ own interest at heart. If he were acting in Hannibal’s interest, he would have tried to push a negotiated peace on the Saguntines earlier.

This is the rhetorical strategy of winning over the audience at the beginning of the speech (captatio beneuolentiae). He needs to show the Saguntines that he’s telling them what is in their interest, not that of Hannibal, since he has come from Hannibal’s camp, and Livy has suggested that the words Livy puts in his mouth are disingenuous, as, from Livy’s perspective, words spoken by anyone associated with Hannibal would be. fides is a loaded word. “Guarantee” here is a good translation, but it doesn’t quite capture the notion of truthfulness and honesty.

72

The argument is cynical and doesn’t withstand logic, of course, but that’s exactly the point, from Livy’s perspective.

You have to bear in mind that the speeches in Livy and all other ancient historians are fabrications. This was understood by ancient readers. The speeches are designed to reflect what the speakers in whose mouths they’re placed are likely to have said, in the judgment of the historian–the arguments the speaker would likely have made under the circumstances–and they reflect the historian’s bias. Moreover, they’re typically composed and embellished in accordance with the canonical principles of rhetoric, as taught in schools. They’re set pieces intended to display the historian’s rhetorical skills and prose style, as well to illuminate the situation from the historian’s perspective. Livy reflects traditional Roman historical views in a rather black and white fashion, and this speech, with its portrayal of the speaker’s cynicism, is no exception.

73

Thanks for all the help. The sentence threw me for a bit of a loop for some reason: not because I was at all confident about my try at translating it, because I wasn’t, but perhaps because it’s a sentence I probably never could have gotten seeing as I couldn’t make much sense out of the English at first, and i never thought to have the indirect statement to go with “fides”, which does two different things in the sentence. However it was just this afternoon that I got to chapter 14. As it happens the Oxford World’s Classics edition came today and I read chapters 1-13 – I pretty much got the more recent chapters; details of the earlier ones are a bit foggier, which could mean that they’re out of recent memory or also of course that I got them wrong. Long story short I ended up peeking at chapter 14 when reading it and that’s taken care of. I shouldn’t have as much temptation when I’m not actively looking at the open book where it’s translated.

74

Chapter 15 seems a natural stopping point to take a day’s rest so I’ll probably do that; I think I made significant progress on a sentence that didn’t come easily:

(Captum oppidum est cum ingenti praeda.) Quamquam pleraque ab dominis de industria corrupta erant et in caedibus uix ullum discrimen aetatis ira fecerat et captiui militum praeda fuerant, tamen ex pretio rerum uenditarum aliquantum pecuniae redactum esse constat et multam pretiosam supellectilem uestemque missam Carthaginem.

(“However, many things had been intentionally damaged by their masters/owners, and in the slaughter anger made hardly a distinction of age, and captive soldiers (“captives of soldiers”, genitive of material) had been booty; nevertheless it is agreed that out of the price of sold things a great deal of money was obtained and much fine plate and garments were sent to Carthage.”)

Not sure about “captiui militum praeda fuerant”; for “captive soldiers had been as booty” I would expect no “militum” and a dative of purpose “praedae”. “Captiui praedae fuerant” or something like that, the idea of the sentence being that in the general slaughter the Carthaginians lost human booty.

As for the rest of the chapter, it’s mostly getting the consulship straight; if I’m reading it correctly it gives reasons why Scipio and Sempronius were consuls in 218 and not 219: however, it states “ad quos et principio oppugnationis legati Sagunti missi sint”, which suggests that they were consuls at the beginning of the siege of Saguntum in 219, but “non coeptum oppugnari est sed captum”, and they were consuls at the Ticinus and Trebia in 218. This is all a little hard to follow. Why the subjunctives in sentence 4?

Ed: spelling

75

uix ullum discrimen

captiui militum praeda fuerant – I think this means “the captives were the booty of the soldiers,” in other words, the captives belonged to the soldiers (and were probably sold as slaves), but there was still a significant amount of valuable booty for Hannibal and/or the Carthaginian treasury. Walsh’s note suggests that Livy is trying to reconcile two somewhat contradictory accounts.

quae si ita sunt fieri non potuit, ut P. Cornelius Ti. Sempronius consules fuerint, ad quos et principio oppugnationis legati Saguntini missi sint et qui in suo magistratu cum Hannibale, alter ad Ticinum amnem, ambo aliquanto post ad Trebiam, pugnauerint.

“If this is right, it wasn’t possible that P. Cornelius and Ti. Sempronius were both the consuls to whom the Saguntine ambassadors were sent at the beginning of the siege, and the consuls who fought with Hannibal during their term, one at the Ticino and both a little later at Trebia.” In other words, they couldn’t have been consuls both in 219, when the siege occurred (the Saguntine ambassadors probably came to Rome in 220), and in 218, when Hannibal was already in Italy and defeated Scipio at the Ticino and both of them at Trebia.

Why the subjunctives in sentence 4?

fuerint is subjunctive in a result clause (fieri non potuit ut). (The sentence actually denies the result.)

missi sint and pugnauerint are subjunctive “by attraction,” aka “subjunctive of integral part.” They’re an “integral part” of the result clause and so are “attracted” into the subjunctive.

Allen & Greenough sec. 593:

  1. A clause depending upon a Subjunctive clause or an equivalent Infinitive will itself take the Subjunctive if regarded as an integral part of that clause:—1

“imperat, dum rēs iūdicētur, hominem adservent: cum iūdicāta sit, ad sē ut addūcant ” (Verr. 3.55) , he orders them, till the affair should be decided, to keep the man; when it is judged, to bring him to him.
“etenim quis tam dissolūtō animō est, quī haec cum videat, tacēre ac neglegere possit ” (Rosc. Am. 32) , for who is so reckless of spirit that, when he sees these things, he can keep silent and pass them by ?
mōs est Athēnīs laudārī in cōntiōne eōs quī sint in proeliīs interfectī; (Or. 151), it is the custom at Athens for those to be publicly eulogized who have been slain in battle. [Here laudārī is equivalent to ut laudentur .]

1 The subjunctive in this use is of the same nature as the subjunctive in the main clause. A dependent clause in a clause of purpose is really a part of the purpose, as is seen from the use of should and other auxiliaries in English. In a result clause this is less clear, but the result construction is a branch of the characteristic (§ 534), to which category the dependent clause in this case evidently belongs when it takes the subjunctive.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=AG+593&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0001

76

Thanks. I had taken “et … et” as affirming both (contradictory) parts instead of meaning “both … and”: “if this is so then it is not possible that these two were consuls (in 219), to whom the Saguntine delegation was sent (in 219) and who fought Hannibal (in 218)”. I also was leaning towards a result clause with “fieri non potuit ut”, especially given that the subjunctive is perfect, but wasn’t sure how to take the following perfect subjunctives; that tense makes sense in themselves but they seem to defy the ordinary sequence of tenses (ed: perhaps “potuit” is taken as a virtual present tense?).

77

but wasn’t sure how to take the following perfect subjunctives; that tense makes sense in themselves but they seem to defy the ordinary sequence of tenses (ed: perhaps “potuit” is taken as a virtual present tense?).

The sequence of tenses rules don’t apply to result clauses. The verbs go into the tenses that they would normally be in if they were statements in the indicative. In fact, result clauses are different from indirect discourse and purpose clauses–they are statements of fact, not what is going through someone’s mind.

78

It so happens that I’ve just reached the chapter dealing with result clauses in Henle. According to Henle the sequence of tenses does apply to result clauses but with two exceptions:

-to emphasise the actual occurence of a past result or to indicate that the result continues up to the present the perfect subjunctive is used in secondary sequence
e.g. Tam celeriter e castris egressi sunt ut nostri eos consequi non potuerint

-to express the present result of a past action the present subjunctive is used in secondary sequence
e.g Adulescens tam strenue laboravi ut dives nunc sim

Great thread btw.

79

These examples show why, logically, the sequence of tenses rules don’t apply to result clauses, which are in principle statements of fact–what actually happened. The tenses in result clauses are the same as those that would be used in the indicative in an ordinary declarative sentence. The “exceptions” listed by Henle are really just instances of this principle. The imperfect subjunctive is used in a past result clause (instead of the perfect) if the “result” is merely a tendency without implication that the result actually occurred. But in any event, these rules are different from the sequence of tenses rules for indirect discourse and purpose clauses. The textbooks are confused and confusing on this point.

80

Mmm, yes, I see what you mean.
But what then with a sentence like: sic vitam egit ut omnes eum laudarent?
It’s a result clause and it seems to follow the sequence of tenses. Or would you say it’s a purpose clause, or something in between?