please help me parse this clause: de natura deorum, I, xliv, last para.

Latin Learning Latin
1

Context: Cicero’s Academic mouthpiece Cotta, after a dismissive summary of Epicurus’s account of what the gods are like, renders his judgment.

quae natura primum nulla esse potest. . .

I think this means, in context, something like this: “no such being [as a god, as described by Epicurus,] can possibly exist.”

But if the teacher said, “Mr. Lawson, stand and parse this clause,” I would not know how to parse the words quae, natura, and nulla. I think I’ve forgotten something about pronouns, but I don’t know how to look it up.

Here is a fuller context, in Latin:

Verius est igitur nimirum illud quod familiaris omnium nostrum Posidonius disseruit in libro quinto de natura deorum, nullos esse deos Epicuro videri, quaeque is de deis inmortalibus dixerit invidiae detestandae gratia dixisse; neque enim tam desipiens fuisset ut homunculi similem deum fingeret, liniamentis dumtaxat extremis non habitu solido, membris hominis praeditum omnibus usu membrorum ne minimo quidem, exilem quendam atque perlucidum, nihil cuiquam tribuentem nihil gratificantem, omnino nihil curantem nihil agentem. quae natura primum nulla esse potest, idque videns Epicurus re tollit oratione relinquit deos;

2

As no doubt you see, they’re all nom.singular. quae natura “which nature” is tantamount to “et ea natura,” the relative serving as a sentence connective as often. “nulla esse potest” is the predicate; the adjectival negative (nulla) is stronger than non would be, cf. "nullos esse deos” above. (OLD nullus 4d, with more Ciceronian exx.)
It’s potest rather than esse that’s negated of course; such a nature can’t be anything at all, can’t at all exist, can have no existence.

3

Many thanks, mwh.

I got my mind into such a tangle over this passage that I need to spend some time thinking about your reply.

4

Thank you mwh.

Let me try again. I often have trouble with short sentences like this one, in which three of the six words are in agreement with each other. In this passage, the speaker is Cotta, who represents the Academic philosophy, which as I understand asserts no positive doctrines, but examines the teachings of other philosophers.

quae natura primum nulla esse potest

quae: relative pronoun, nominative, feminine, singular. The antecedent is “natura deorum”, as this was discussed by Epicurus. quae, in agreement with natura, is the predicate nominative of potest esse.

natura: nominative, feminine singular. This is the subject of the verb potest esse. Natura here means being, or thing, or substance.

primum: adverb, meaning “in the first place”.

nulla: adjective, nominative, feminine, singular, modifies natura, that is, no natura whatever.

potest esse: can possibly exist.

Epicurus, according to Cotta, believed no gods exist, but did not want to publish this in writing. Epicurus signaled his disbelief to those able to “read between the lines” by an incoherent, meaningless account of what the nature of the gods was. (As I understand Cotta.)

5

Hmm. I’m not sure I can explain it any better than I did..
quae natura refers to the nature just described—a risible impossibility, as Epicurus implicitly recognized, according to Cotta. quae really has no antecedent, it merely serves to grammatically connect this statement with the preceding one. Lit. “which nature,” i.e. “And/but this nature.” Latin often uses relatives in this way. (Gildersleeve notes this right at the beginning of his treatment of what he calls relative sentences, para.610—but perhaps you don’t have his Latin Grammar. Cf. e.g. Quod erat demonstrandum—syntactically subordinate, pragmatically independent.) Natura means the same as it means when one describes the “nature” of something, in this case the nature of the gods.

I don’t know if this helps at all.

6

It does help. I needed clarification that you meant quae natura as you have restated it here. Yes, you did state it in your first reply, but my confusion prevented me from understanding you properly. Because I need to do some work on quae natura, I thank you for the Gildersleeve reference, which I do have.

Although I wondered if I was missing something about quae, I turned up nothing that helped me. I easily forget these points of grammar.

One more question. What about nulla? Is it an adjective modifying natura?

7

Hugh, These days I rarely consult grammars, especially Latin ones, but your original puzzlement led me to refer you to Gildersleeve for this distinctively Latin use of the relative pronoun (§610 with REMARK 1), and now your fastening on quae natura has me referring to §616.2: “An appositional substantive, from which a Relative clause depends, is regularly incorporated into the Relative clause,” with the Ciceronian example “[Amanus] Syriam a Cilicia dividit, qui mons erat hostium plenus.”

Which construction is perhaps less puzzling in light of modern English idiomatic usage. :smiley:

Here natura is not in apposition to any specific noun but rather to the sum of properties of the ludicrous imaginary Epicurean deity just described (homunculi similem … membris hominis praeditum omnibus usu membrorum ne minimo quidem, exilem quendam atque perlucidum, nihil cuiquam tribuentem nihil gratificantem, omnino nihil curantem nihil agentem). He’s being heavily sardonic.

And yes, nulla, as you suggest, is an adjective modifying natura, see my original reply. That nature is null, it cannot exist.

8

A very helpful commentary, mwh. Thank you for patiently stepping through this with me.