Nominative or Ablative?

Latin Learning Latin
1

Dear members,

Though mine might be an easy question for you, it has troubled long enough to make me register here in search of help.

“As persons of integrity we do not obey our wrath.”

An exercise provides all the Latin words needed to translate the sentence above, but without the proper endings. And we are not supposed to add anything else. What should we do with the expression “as persons of integrity”? Put another way, which of the answers below is correct?

Personae integrae [nominative] non obtemperamus nostrae irae.

Personis integris [ablative] non obtemperamus nostrae irae.

Thanks

2

I believe it should be ablative. This is known as the ablative of “physical description or quality.”

Compare with these examples from Latin for Beginners, by Benjamin L. D’Ooge:

Vir magnā virtūte.
A man with greath courage.

Silva altīs arboribus.
A forest with tall trees.

3

Thank you very much for your reply.

Yes, I have seen those examples, and what made me pose the question is that, while magnā virtūte and altīs arboribus are ablatives indeed, vir and silva are both nominatives.

You see, the one solution that occurred to me, perhaps asking for the nominative, is to read the English sentence thus:

We persons of integrity do not obey our wrath.
Personae integrae non obtemperamus nostrae irae.

Does it make sense at all?

4

Yeah, the more I think about it the less confident I am in the ablative. An appositive of “personae integrae” may make more sense. I’m trying to make up other similar sentences, like “Viri fortes, hostum arma non timemus”? I’d go with the appositive for now.

5

It should be nominative. The ablative would suggest agency.

It is, however, ablative when the subject and the “person acting as whatever” are different:

Aenea duce Troiani prospere fugerunt.

6

Thank you all very much!

7

I think we could say:

Personae intergritatis (in genitive) …

or…

Personae integritate (in ablative) …

Could it fit as an answer to your exercise?

8

I’m afraid that wouldn’t.

That is indeed a possibility, closely resembling the English phrasing, but since the adjective has been turned into a noun, it cannot be a possible answer to the exercise in question.

Thank you very much.

9

I see…

But what about “as”? May we suppose that some kind of predicate is involed of implied? Or perhaps an abverb like “quasi” (= like…)? Your attempt shows that you want to use an apposition to the (not present in the sentence) subject “nos”.

10

Now you have reached the reason why I posted my question here in the first place. I had asked myself exactly the same.

From the members’ replies to my post as well as from the author’s instruction that we are not supposed to anything else to the sentence, I have been working on the assumption that the Latin nominative (persōnae integrae) is sufficient to convey the same English idea (as persons of integrity) and that this is precisely the lesson to learn.

The sentence below, though different from the one in question, is quoted from another exercise just for you to see why I had thought of the ablative:

Antīquīs ligna terrae magnō servitiō erant.
The timber of the land was of good service to the ancient.

11

Or:

For the ancients, the timber of the land was of good service.

12

There is no ablative in the above sentence.

13

Is it simply the dative?

14

For many years war lasted (was) for the Americans against the timber of the land.
Per multōs annōs bellum erat Americanīs contrā ligna terrae.

The same here?

15

I understand antiquis as dative of interest (possessive) and servitio as (predicatve) dative of purpose… And I hope I have used correctly the terminology :blush: Or, of course, antiquis may be read as a supplement in dative to servitio… :unamused:

16

I see, I didn’t know about that.

Thank you very much.

17
  1. contra + accusative=> contra lignam
  2. Here also Americanis is DATIVE. The meaning:

Unfortunatelly for the Americans, the war was for many years against… (dative of dissadvantage)
Americans had for many years war against… (dative of possession, non literally speaking of course…)

Cheers!

18

Because I had reason to believe, from the book, that “timber” was used as meaning “woods,” I chose the accusative plural.

Thank you very much. I was unaware of such dative usages.

Now, have you thought further about the first sentence in this thread?

19

I thought Dative of Posession was only with a passive verb?

20

Dative of possesion is mostly found with forms of esse; ‘patrifamilias erant duae filiae’.
Dative of interest can appear with almost any verb, but especially with ‘videor’ and synonyms- eg. ‘ille mi par esse deos videtur’. Or am I confusing uses? I never really read Latin syntax in English or American books.

I have never heard of merging those two classes of dative, but thinking about it, they are quite related, but aren’t all datives?