Oratio in Catilinam Tertia

Latin Learning Latin
21

One tricky sentence and one that seems easy but is eluding me, both in section 22:

The statue of Jupiter is installed in the Capitol as the conspiracy is thwarted:

Quo etiam maiore sunt isti odio supplicioque digni qui non solum vestris domiciliis atque tectis sed etiam deorum templis atque delubris sunt funestos ac nefarios ignis inferre conati.

(“Wherefore even those, deserving of hatred and punishment, who not only to try to set fires to your homes and roofs but also the temples and shrines of the gods, are deadly and nefarious.” I’m sure I’m missing something here (although on the whole I think I’m somewhat closer to it than I was last time I had trouble with a sentence: not hard to do, I admit), especially with the infinitive “conati”.)

The gods brought it about that the warlike Gauls came to the aid of Rome’s empire:

…id non divinitus esse factum putatis, praesertim qui nos non pugnando sed tacendo superare potuerint?

(“Do you think it not to be done divinely, especially those who could surmount us not by fighting but by staying silent?” This sentence is giving me trouble that I probably ought not to have. It’s so simple yet I can’t quite figure it out.)

22

what’s the rhetorical figure called of mentioning things by “omitting” them?

Preterition/praeterition

Qimmik mentioned that Cicero loved to use the relative superlative: how do you tell the difference between a relative and absolute if they have the same form and often mean essentially the same thing? (e.g. “a most excellent man” vs. “the most-excellent man” in English)

I think I wrote that Cicero liked absolute superlatives. You’ll notice how frequently he uses them, to the point where to my ear he sounds pompous and orotund. Context is the only way to tell them apart (and they aren’t really that dissimilar)–whether or not a class of individuals, objects, etc. is specified or implied as a basis for the comparison or whether the superlative is just an intensifier.

Quo etiam maiore sunt isti odio supplicioque digni qui non solum vestris domiciliis atque tectis sed etiam deorum templis atque delubris sunt funestos ac nefarios ignis inferre conati.

What are the subject and predicate of the main clause of this sentence? This is the first question you need to ask.

The subject is isti.

The predicate is sunt . . . digni.

maiore odio supplicioque: what is its case and function in the sentence? It’s ablative, and it’s the complement of digni, which normally takes an ablative complement; and etiam, “even,” modifies the comparative maiore: “they are worthy of even greater hatred and punishment”. Cicero has emphasized etiam maiore by fronting it and setting it off from the nouns it modifies by hyperbaton, interposing the less important words sunt isti.

Then we come to a relative clause, introduced by qui, which is masculine plural nominative and modifies isti, specifying who the subject of the main clause, “they,” refers to: qui . . . sunt . . . conati. Sunt is the only finite verb form in this clause, so it must be (or be part of) the main verb of the clause, and conati is masculine plural nominative, so it must refer to the subject isti. Sunt conati fits together as a periphrastic perfect: “they tried” (not “try”).

What did they try to do? You would expect an infinitive complement of conati, and, sure enough, we find an infinitive verb with its obvious object: ignis inferre: “set fire[s]”

funestos ac nefarios, which are masculine accusative plural, can’t be predicate adjectives agreeing with nominative isti (as you thought). They must modify and agree with masculine accusative plural ignis: “deadly and nefarious fires” (if I thought hard enough I might be able to think of a more elegant English translation, but you get the picture).

With in-ferre we expect a dative complement, and we have vestris domiciliis atque tectis . . . deorum templis atque delubris. Two neatly balanced pairs, each a hendiadys.

The rest falls into place:

“Therefore, those men who tried to set deadly and nefarious fires not only to your dwellings and houses but also to the temples and shrines of the gods deserve even greater hatred and punishment.”

I think you could have done better on this sentence if you had tried to apply grammatical analysis a little more rigorously. When you come to a sentence you don’t understand, first identify the subject and predicate of the main clause, which should have an finite indicative verb, then do the same for any subordinate clauses and identify their functions, and then fit the whole together. If you do this enough, you’ll get better at it, and you’ll do this instinctively for more and more sentences, which will allow you to dispense with this “decoding” process most of the time.

23

id non divinitus esse factum putatis, praesertim qui nos non pugnando sed tacendo superare potuerint?

praesertim qui nos non pugnando sed tacendo superare potuerint – this relative clause refers all the way back to homines Galli earlier in the sentence: “especially the ones who could have defeated us not in combat but by clandestine means [tacendo].”

The rest seems clear: “don’t you think that was done/happened by divine intervention?”

A textual note: potuerint (perf. subj.) is a conjectural emendation proposed by one of the Ernesti clan of classical scholars somewhere around 1800 or before; the mss. have indicative potuerunt. It turns an ordinary relative clause into a causal relative clause. It feels right: it’s exactly what you’d expect with praesertim: “especially since they could have defeated us not by combat but by clandestine means.” However, it goes against the principle of difficilior lectio potior, “the more difficult reading is stronger.” In other words, it is less likely that somewhere along the line in the history of the text, a scribe introduced a difficult reading in place of a simpler one than that a scribe simplified a difficult reading because he couldn’t understand the more difficult one. So, given a choice between two readings, the more difficult reading is to be preferred. In situations like this, where we have just one ms. reading, this implies that you shouldn’t introduce into the text a conjectural reading that has no support in manuscript authority if any sense at all can be made out of the reading of the manuscripts, even if the conjecture seems more plausible than the ms. reading. You can take your pick as to which reading you prefer; it’s a matter of weighing the two against one another, and even if you choose potuerunt, you should keep in mind that potuerint is a plausible possibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christian_Gottlieb_Ernesti

24

You’re probably right. Thank you very much for the walkthrough (it might be the most helpful thing you’ve posted). I’ll try to apply that kind of thing to the next difficult sentence I encounter (which I actually hope is in the next reading). I probably wouldn’t have been able to get this one because I misread “conari” for “conati” (similar to how I misread “passae” for “passurae” a while back – once you misidentify words it can be very hard to un-mistake them.) but yeah, all of what you suggest seems eminently reasonable. I can fairly reliably separate sentences into their constituent clauses so I’ll try subject-and-finite-verb-hunting next time. You’d think it would be obvious but I tend to get lost in the weeds instead of recognizing the overarching structure.

in re: “homines Galli” – I had read that clause as referring to the gods (a subject invoked just the word before), hence the source of my trouble. As you can tell I can be a bit lazy and myopic, some mornings more so than others.

ed: by the way, I read the accusative plurals as somehow being the subject of the “infinitive” “conati”. It seemed to make the most sense at the time. Of course, it’s little better but I was getting kind of frustrated at staring at the sentence for a great deal of time and making little headway, so I basically made the words fit what I thought it might have been trying to say.

25

In section 28. Cicero will be protected from harm.

Quod si omnis impetus domesticorum hostium depulsus a vobis se in me unum converterit, vobis erit vivendum, Quirites, qua condicione posthac eos esse velitis qui se pro salute vestra obtulerint invidiae periculisque omnibus.

(“Because if the averted strike from all the domestic enemies turns itself from you to me,” – this is where I run into trouble. “Erit” seems to be the apodosis so “it ought to be lived by you, Romans,” (= “you ought to live”?). “Velitis … eos … esse” seems to be the verb here, referring to the domestic enemies? No, to “qui … obtulerint”, which seems to be a relative clause of characteristic. “With which condition henceforth”. “Qui-se-obtulerint pro-salute-vestra invidiae-periculisque-omnibus”. “With which condition henceforth you wish them to be, they who offer themselves for your safety, to hostility and all dangers.”

Because if the averted strike from all the domestic enemies turns itself from you to me, you should live, Romans, with the condition henceforth that you wish that they, who offer themselves for your safety, have hostility and all dangers.

Which doesn’t make much sense. Am I on the right track?

26

Does your text read vivendum? The Oxford text by Clark and Dyck’s Cambridge “Green and Yellow” text both read videndum, and the only variant mentioned in Clark’s apparatus is providendum. I can’t make much sense of vivendum, and this makes all the difference and must have been what threw you off.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0010%3Atext%3DCatil.%3Aspeech%3D3%3Achapter%3D12%3Asection%3D28

Quod si sometimes written as one word is “but if”.

vobis erit videndum – vobis is dative of “agent” with the gerund: “it will have to be seen by you,” i.e., “you will have to see”. “Consider” or even “decide” would probably be a better translation here.

qua conditione . . . velitis – this is an indirect question introduced by qua [conditione]. When you encounter a question word such as qua with a subjunctive verb, you should ask yourself whether the construction might be an indirect question (and you will eventually pick up on this automatically). (Of course, it’s often difficult to distinguish interrogative from relative pronouns, but the interrogative pronoun should at least raise the possibility of an indirect question, especially with a subjunctive verb.)

I would analyze the subjunctive obtulerint as simply a subjunctive in a dependent clause in indirect speech (the indirect question). The tense is perfect because the self-sacrifice occurs before the verb esse. It’s the equivalent of future perfect indicative in direct speech. Qua condicione eos esse vultis qui se pro salute vestra obtulerunt invidiae periculisque omnibus? But English would use the present tense here.

“But if the whole onslaught of domestic enemies, having been averted from you, turns itself on me alone, you will have to decide on what condition/in what situation/in what circumstances you subsequently want those who offer themselves to hostility and all dangers for the sake of your safety to be.”

This is awful English because to translate literally you have to move “to be” to the end of the sentence. A slightly more idiomatic translation:

But if the whole onslaught of domestic enemies is averted from you and turns itself on me alone, you will have to decide subsequently how you want those who offer themselves up to the most dangerous hostility for the sake of your safety to be treated.

27

The text does indeed say “videndum”. I must have mistyped it. I only attempted the translation when I had trouble with it and typed it into a text field to think out loud, and that word was wrong. (Obviously I attempted a translation in my head but when I failed I came here to use the “sandbox” of the text field)

Thanks – I couldn’t figure out the dative for some reason (even though it’s literally “to…”) and thought that it would make sense as a dative of possession (“hostility and all dangers be to them”), mixing up the roles of the dative and its complement (I had taken the verb as the end of the clause). (I probably could have figured this out but I was a bit rushed as I had a lunch date to keep)