Ovid, Metam. XIII, ln. 16 ff.

Latin Learning Latin
1

Context: Before the Greek nobles, Ajax debates Ulixes on the question, which one should bear the arms of the absent Achilles:


praemia magna peti fateor; sed demit honorem
aemulus: Aiaci non est tenuisse superbum,
sit licet hoc ingens, quicquid speravit Ulixes;
iste tulit pretium iam nunc temptaminis huius,
quod, cum victus erit, mecum certasse feretur.

Translation (Ajax speaking):
The prize I compete for is great, but the rival for it takes
away the honor. To have competed with him is not prideful
even though Ulixes hoped for a very big thing;
he has already won the prize of this contest
because, after he is defeated, it will be said he struggled against me.

I don’t understand the perfect tense usage here. Should we understand that Ajax is projecting in the verb tense an imagined situation in which the debate is already over?

2

Having a look at Simmons’ notes in Perseus:

non est . . . superbum, ‘it were no great honour to gain.’ The force of the perfect infinitive tenuisse (as in Fasti VI. 71, “remque mei iuris malim tenuisse precando”) may be rendered almost indifferently by ‘to have gained’ and ‘to gain,’ i.e. it corresponds most nearly to the aorist infinitive in Greek. Cf. Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, § 23, Roby, § 1371, Wickham on Hor. C. III. iv. 51, Ellis on Cat. LXIX. 2. On the use of the indicative see R. 643 (a).

Apparently this is as close as he could get to capturing the sense of the aorist in Latin. The aorist in Greek does not necessarily indicate the time of an action, rather its mere occurrence.

3

“I recognize that the stakes are high, but the identity of my competitor makes the honor worthless: for Ajax, it’s no source of pride to have won anything, even if it’s something huge, that Ulysses hoped [to win]. He [note contemptuous iste] has already won a prize from this contest, simply by the fact that, after he’s defeated, he’ll be said to have competed with me.”

I don’t think tenuisse needs to be explained by the Greek aorist. It translates comfortably into the English perfect infinitive. This is a general statement, not a specific reference to the present contest. tenuisse is simply an extended use of the perfect of teneo to mean something like “to have won”. It’s very Ovidian, and characteristic of the way the Latin poets – even more than the Greeks, I think – stretch meanings for epigrammatic concision and pithiness, to compensate for the poverty of Latin vocabulary, and also for metrical purposes.

Nor is there a need to convert est to a conditional.

quicquid speravit Ulixes is the object of tenuisse, not predicative with sit licet hoc ingens, which is parenthetical. Any prize that Ulysses could hope to win, no matter how great, can’t possibly be a feather in Ajax’ cap.

4

Here is the quotation that baffled me, which Hylander clarified.

praemia magna peti fateor; sed demit honorem
aemulus: Aiaci non est tenuisse superbum,
sit licet hoc ingens, quicquid speravit Ulixes;
iste tulit pretium iam nunc temptaminis huius,
quod, cum victus erit, mecum certasse feretur.

I want type out my present thoughts, after thinking over this. I’m trying to spell out the causes of my confusion over this passage.

Aiaci non est . . . superbum: superbum is neuter, nominative, singular, used substantively to mean “source of pride”. I didn’t see the possible substantive meaning.

tenuisse . . . quicquid speravit Ulixes: “to have/win/hold anything Ulixes hoped for”. It is a noun clause. It designates what is “no . . . source of pride”. I also missed the grammatical relation of tenuisse with quicquid speravit Ulixes. Besides that, I didn’t properly understand quicquid. I often stumble over pronouns, and I cannot now recall the tentative meaning I was trying.

Just as qui can be translated “somebody who”, quicquid can be translated “anything that”, as I now think.

sit licet hoc ingens: “let this be ever-so-great”. I had two problems with this clause. I didn’t get the antecedent of hoc, which must be tenuisse, and I was baffled by how to construe licet.

Several of my continuing areas of difficulty tripped me: pronouns and their antecedents, parsing the words in poetry, adjectives used substantively, and the word licet.

Many thanks to Hylander for the explanation, and to Aetos for the reply.

5

superbum is neuter, nominative, singular, used substantively to mean “source of pride”. I didn’t see the possible substantive meaning.

I wouldn’t say it’s an adjective used substantively. It’s a neuter adjective used predicatively; the subject is the noun clause tenuisse . . . quicquid speravit Ulixes. I translated it as “source of pride” simply to make the sentence read better (I hope) in English and to elucidate what Ovid is saying.

sit licet hoc ingens – the referent of hoc is quicquid speravit Ulixes.

This is poetry. It’s compressed, and word order is to some extent arranged to fit the meter or to serve other poetic purposes. It’s almost like a different language from Latin prose, and it takes some experience to read it fluently. You need to be prepared for the departures from normal word order and for stretched word usages, as well as for clever conceits that draw attention to themselves (especially in Ovid). But the more you read, the easier it becomes.

Hopefully, you are reading this metrically, aloud or silently. The meter usually helps the reader to understand the text.

6

Many thanks Hylander for those remarks.

Poetry remains extremely difficult for me.

7

The Metamorphoses is a good place to start, though. Try “Origo Mundi” in Book 1, lines 5-88, “Pyramus et Thisbe”, Book 4, lines 55-166, “Daedalus et Icarus” Book 8, lines 183-259, “Orpheus et Euridyce”, Book 10, lines 1-85, and “Atalanta” (Atalanta’s Race) Book 10, Lines 560-739. I think these may help you get used to the word order (or lack thereof) in Latin Poetry. I confess I haven’t had much practice at it in my later years, but having just about finished Book 1 of the Iliad, my enthusiasm has been rekindled and I find myself enjoying and appreciating metrical poetry much more than my first time around nearly 50 years ago studying the Aeneid. Hylander can give you much better guidance than I can, but I can at least tell you that learning to read Latin poetry is definitely worth it, if for no other reason than the sheer volume of material available and the wide variety of subjects. Everything from Love to History to Mythology to Drama to even Agriculture has been addressed in meter and Ovid’s works make for a great beginning. Then, perhaps some Vergil…

8

Many thanks, Aetos, for the encouragement.

9

I’m sure you weren’t serious Aetos but it’s not just the pedant in me that compels me to make the point that any piece of language longer than a single word has word order. A good number of factors determine word order in verse and make it more meaningful than word order in prose. There is so much more to it than making the words fit the meter. Of course you know this, but I couldn’t let pass the idea that Latin poetry lacks word order, as if a poet’s organization of his words is somehow random or insignificant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

10

There is so much more to it than making the words fit the meter

I did mention that word order in Latin verse also serves other poetic purposes, even if meter operates as a constraint that is absent from prose. The elaborate patterning of nouns, adjectives and verbs is something that is almost unique to Latin verse, and in many respects the Latin hexameter is quite different from Greek, precisely because of these patterns, which are confusing at first but come to seem quite natural after you begin to recognize and even expect them.

An example from Vergil’s Georgics I.43:

Vere nouo, gelidus canis cum montibus umor

Adjective 1 Adjective 2 Noun 2 Noun 1 – chiastic patterning of adjectives and nouns.

And that’s not all. This line has the most subtle interlocking patterns of alliteration and assonance:

Vere NoVo, gelidUS CaNiS CUM MoNtibUS UMor

I could go on, but it’s getting late.

11

Please excuse the gaffe; poor choice of words on my part. I was trying to get across the idea that word order in Latin poetry can seem somewhat tortuous and bewildering to the beginner, but has its rewards when one figures it out.

12

Although in this case, would you all agree that the word order in the verse could be pretty much the same if it were written in prose?

Or possibly something like this?: fateor praemia magna peti. sed aemulus demit honorem; Aiaci non est
quicquid speravit Ulixes, licet sit hoc ingens, superbum tenuisse. iste pretium temptaminis huius iam nunc tulit, quod, cum victus erit, mecum certasse feretur. ?

13

the word order in the verse could be pretty much the same if it were written in prose

To a certain extent that’s technically correct, but it’s not the whole story because the choice of words would be quite different. Expressions such as praemia magna peti, demit honorem aemulus, non est tenuisse superbum, which are metrically so satisfying and pleasurable to read, would be framed more straightforwardly and less succinctly and pithily (although epigrammatic concision is also to some extent a feature of the style of Sallust and especially Tacitus). I don’t think you can segregate word-order from the whole complex of poetic features Ovid has at his fingertips.

In any case, aemulus honorem demit or aemulus demit honorem would be a more natural prose word-order. Ovid’s postponement to the beginning of the next line of aemulus, the key word, and one that surprises and amuses the reader and highlights Ajax’ comic arrogance, is an effective poetic touch. Aemulus could be placed last (as the most important word) in prose, I suppose, but it wouldn’t have nearly the impact of the enjambment.

14

Aiaci non est tenuisse superbum, quicquid speravit Ulixes

This would also be quite different in prose: something like quicquid Ulixes speravit, licet hoc sit ingens, non est Aiaci superbum tenuisse . Ovid frames the sentence with Aiaci at the beginning and Ulixes at the end.

Of course, rhetorically crafted prose can also employ these word-order effects. But they are achieved by departures from what would be normal or unmarked word-order. And, of course, prose doesn’t generally bring meter to bear, although quasi-poetic prose rhythms are an important feature of much Latin prose.

15

Ovid’s verses unfold in ways that are at the same time both surprising and satisfying to the reader, and the shaping of his narrative to the meter, even or especially where he departs from normative word-order, is a big part of this. You’re missing the sheer delight of this if you don’t read metrically.

16

You’re missing the sheer delight of this if you don’t read metrically.

This I never doubted! Didn’t mean to be prosaic, I was just doing an experiment to see what the word order of the same words might be when rendered as prose (fully understanding that the diction, if I were really writing a prose version of this, would probably be different). I appreciate your insights!

17

It’s certainly true that Latin verse does things that Greek doesn’t, especially in hexameter and elegiacs. The “golden line” in hexameter is a prime example (adj.1 adj.2 verb noun-1 noun-2, e.g. irrita ventosae linquens promissa procellae, of Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne on Naxos). The fashion seems to have been started by Catullus, in his mini-epic, Cat.64. You’d never find such a mannered word order in prose; it’s meter-dependent. Catullus overtly championed the “new poetics” associated above all with Callimachus, and Cat.64 is thoroughly and flamboyantly “Alexandrian” (aka Hellenistic) in all aspects, from the treatment of the story to features of language and meter. I reckon the fancy word order exemplified in Catullus’ poem and emulated to differing degrees by his Augustan successors was originally a development from Hellenistic poetry. Another forerunner of a kind is an elegiac poem by Hermesianax (another “Alexandrian” poet admired by the Augustans) that I quoted in an earlier thread (http://discourse.textkit.com/t/internal-rhyme-in-elegiac-couplet/15308/4), ostentatiously showing a pattern in the pentameter of adj. … noun distributed at caesura and line-end respectively. But Catullus and the Augustans appear to have developed these mannerisms still further.