Lucan 10.82: quem

Latin Latin Poetry
1

Good morning,

I’m having a bit of trouble with this relative at line 82:

quem formae confisa suae Cleopatra sine ullis (82)
tristis adit lacrimis, simulatum compta dolorem
qua decuit, ueluti laceros dispersa capillos,
et sic orsa loqui: 85

(My translation: And Cleopatra, relying on the perfection of her beauty, presented herself upset but without tears[scil. to Caesar], putting on a false act of pain - at least as far as she saw fit - and having messed up her hair as if she had been tearing at them, she began to speak as follows… )

I asked a friend and she proposed that it might be a combination of a connective relative and accusative of respect (Greek accusative). I don’t find the Greek accusative convincing: although it is a construction Lucan uses, it is less frequent in his work when compared with his contemporaries, and then we have a certain instance of this construction just two lines later with laceros capillos.

I have read over Woodcock §230 and I see how there might be some semblance to “connexion,” however I can’t rationalise it within the syntactic context of the passage. In other words, I’m quite lost.

Can anyone help?

Thanks, Nathaniel

2

I think quem is the object of adit. “And she approaches him…”

3

That was my thought too, Aetos. It’s how Braund translates it.

4

Was it the apparently transitive use of adit that troubled you Nate? If you, like me, don’t care to think of the accusative as a direct object, we can think of the verb’s prefix as governing it. I think that’s a better way of looking at it. Many verbs with prepositional prefixes behave in the same sort of way, whether with acc. or with abl. The passage reminds me of Aeneas’ trip to the underworld in Aen.6: “ut tristis sine sole domos (loca turbida) adires?”

5

Thanks to both of you!

I was seriously overthinking it…

And yes, I was reading adit as intransitive and trying to shoehorn quem into the rest of the phrase with whatever rule I could find. If I’d consulted a dictionary I would have avoided much unnecessary confusion :laughing:

Thanks again!