Hello all.
I see “Ante hos viginti annos…” which I believe means 20 years ago.
But I thought that the accusative in a statement about time referred to movement through time.
Could somebody point me in the direction of where this usage is explained? Or am I just being Mister Dimmo yet again?
Cheers.
Paul.
Allen & Greenough sec. 424f:
These are idiomatic usages, without strict rationality.
What else would it be but accusative after ante? It’s the “hos” that is a bit unexpected. I see Lewis and Short mentions this in the hic entry.
Hi
Try looking at the companion page 171
II. Ante/Post
ante decem annōs: ante the preposition + the accusative
decem annīs ante: ante as adverb + ablative of degree of difference
similarly: paulō ante, etc.
If you look at the marginal note on page 150 you will see "X annis (abl) ante = ante x annos”.
Rather than search for some deep explantion just note it as an idiom.
I think I’m seeing it as poetic “Before these (last) 20 years…”
I’m not sure about poetic. Here’s the Lewis and Short entry that I mentioned.
I notice “very rarely” there.
Pliny: Tiberio Claudio principe ante hos annos XL institutum…
Phaedrus, (The Wolf and the Lamb): Ante hos sex menses maledixisti mihi.
Fronto: Polemona ante hoc triduum declamantem audivimus…
Augustine: …quantum in me usque ante hoc triduum vestra Sanctitas vidi…
In their contexts, as far as I can puzzle out anyway, they simply specify an event that occurred, “40 years ago”, “six months ago”, “three days ago”. Nothing special about the time period stands out to me, except that it is the one just passed. (As opposed to some other period of 40 years, I guess.)
That was what I was thinking, “Before these (last) 20 years…”
Paul.
I have been thinking more about this. Could you say where exactly you have seen this?
I have seen “on line” this formulation as being exercise 5 no 10 in Cap. XIX but in the printed edition I see the formulation without “hos", Ante viginti annos. This is the formualtion that seems to be used in the text.
Perhaps I have missed it, so it would be helpful to me if you could point me in the right direction as I don’t yet have an explanation for hos which I am happy with.
Yup. Question 5, ex 10, chap 19. 2011 Spanish edition. I could take a photo if you like.
No, thanks that’s great, your account is good enough.
My feeling is that hos is simply a mistake. It doesn’t appear in the text nor does it appear in the English edition of the Exercitia. I can also find no explanation of it in the companion.
I cant think of other examples where something is introduced and no explanation is made.
Thanks Joel for drawing our attention to the entry in Lewis and Short. The comment is very rarely of time just ended and then the citation has various time periods the shortest of which is three days. So I interpret the caveat as it would be rare if the time period ended say this morning, although this would no doubt be a subjective opinion.
The OLD has:
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There is no mention of time “just ended” but a definition is given “immediately preceding the present”. No mention of rarity either. If I were forced to translate, maybe it means something like “before these last twenty years (just) gone by”. Clunky I know.
I am not going to pursue this further as I don’t think it is of much importance compared with the other things to be learned in this chapter. As I said at the outset I am inclined to think its an “error” or at least an “oversight”. It may be correct latin but its not raised in the main text so is very unhelpful.
Happy as usual to be corrected. Its a bit late here but I dont have time to re-read the post tomorrow.
So I interpret the caveat as it would be rare if the time period ended say this morning, although this would no doubt be a subjective opinion.
See the rest of the section that I cut off in the image. The contrast is with the same use to mean (without ante) “this present time period of X”, with many examples given. Very rare in comparison to that.
As far as error goes…it’s the main text’s “ante decem annos” to mean “10 years ago” that I couldn’t find examples for in the dictionaries. If it’s adverbial (though the index lists this as “prep + acc.”), then it should relate to another already past time, per L&S., and not the present. But maybe I just don’t see it.