Book V, lines 5-7:
inque repentinos convivia versa tumultus
adsimilare freto possis, quod saeva quietum ventorum rabies motis exasperat undis.
I understand the meaning sufficiently, but the recent admonition to “be sure you understand the grammar” is ringing in my ears. I struggled for a while with “quietum” which I think in that spelling could be either neuter nom. or acc. of the adjective “quietus, -a, -um” or the genitive plural of “quies, -etis”, both referring to rest and quiet, one a noun, the other an adjective. Finally I peeked at Hill’s wonderfully literal translation, and I guess that “quietum” must be an adjective agreeing with “quod”??? I’m not used to seeing a relative pronoun modified by an adjective if that’s what’s really happening. Or maybe I still don’t understand.) I would have expected something more like “cuius quietem saeva ventorum rabies exasperat”. Would someone please contribute a few words of wisdom to explain exactly how the grammar works here?
Hi Dave,
mwh will probably sort this for you, but I thought I’d have a try-
quod has as its antecedent ‘freto’, so quietum agrees with quod which in turn refers back to freto. So I believe quietum is a predicate adjective (with an implied est) agreeing with quod. The sense would be “fretum, quod quietum est” motis undis exasperat saeva ventorum rabies.
Dave, You’ve understood it correctly, and your prosaic paraphrase captures the meaning well. But saeva quietum is a typical juxtaposition of opposing adjectives (mirroring the sudden metamorphosis of convivia into tumultus), and it’s perfectly grammatical to have the adjective agreeing with the relative. Would “which, previously quiet, …” make it easier for you? The construction is the same.
(Aetos, with respect, there’s no implied est. quod is accusative, the object of exasperat.)
The “previously” quiet expression, using a clause in English to help set the pronoun-adjective unit off from the rest of the sentence, makes it much clearer. It seems like I haven’t see that (or I saw it and misunderstood it), adjectives modifying relative pronouns, but now that I’ve seen it in action, and explained like you did, I’ll hopefully have no difficulty the next time I run into this!