Need a sentence translated.

Latin Learning Latin
1

Here’s the sentence:

To be only body is to be an animal; To be only spirit is to
be an angel; To fuse them together is to be a human being.

Thanks in advance for your efforts.

PS: This is for a wordreference thread-see here:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=33767

You can post directly into the thread if you want or I can post there on your behalf.

Thanks again,
-Jonathan.

2

solum corpore animal, solum spirito angelus, et corpore et spirito homines

3

I’m curious about the shift from singular to plural in sententia amantis.

(Which makes a nice pun, I guess, sententia meaning both “sentence” and “opinion,” I believe.)

Anyway, literally, it is rendered, “Only by body animal, only by spirit angel, both by body and by spirit men/humans.”

Is there a rhetorical reason why you didn’t say “et corpore et spirito homo” or “solum corpere animalia [etc]”?

Also, which ablative is the one you’re using? Ablative of respect?

Curious,

David

4

David,

Many thanks for your comments. Uhm, no, I must say, I didn’t really think about it. Perhaps I’ve read some author recently who speaks in general terms about man and uses the plural, homines? But then he’d probably also use the other terms in the plural, so I cannot really think of any reason why I should make that change… I didn’t think that much about it, just gave it a shot :slight_smile:

I did consider, though, whether I should use the ablative or the genitive. They can both be used in a descriptive mode, I’d call them ablativus qualitatis and genitivus qualitatis - sorry, I learnt those Latin terms in school and not the English ones. Would you call it an ablative of quality? Or a descriptive ablative, perhaps? I am not sure what the exact difference between the descriptive ablative and the descriptive genitive would be: what difference do you see between vir corpore magno and vir corporis magni? Perhaps it has a semantic significance, perhaps it just makes for a stylistic touch. I can’t really tell; my feel for the language doesn’t go that far.

I reckon I could argue that I did want a stylistic point to come out in using solum twice, as well as et in et … et.

5

Thanks for the response!

I wasn’t sure whether the switch in number was intentional or incidental, but I thought that, if you had meant it, it might be useful to know why. I’m glad you explained it anyway.

Also, the syntactic form you mention, “genitivus/ablativus qualitatis,” matches the genitive/ablative of description that is found in the textbook I’m using (Moreland & Fleischer’s). That possibility occurred to me briefly, but M&F seem to indicate that the noun in the genitive or ablative of description usually comes with an adjective. That confused me, I think.

Nice discussion.

David

6

speciem antiquam malo:
solum corpore animal, solum anima numen, et corpore et anima homines.
:slight_smile: