pronoun antecedent difficulty

[hlawson38]

Augustine, City of God, book 2, chapter 13

Context: Augustine has been arguing that lewd scenes in theatrical shows discredit the pagan gods. Here he answers the possible objection that the gods had approved and ordered up such shows. Doesn’t that, he asks, prove those gods unworthy?

Cur non ergo hinc magis ipsi intellecti sunt non esse dii ueri nec omnino digni, quibus diuinos honores deferret illa res publica? [from the online LatinLibrary]

Note the comma before quibus. With the comma, the antecedent of quibus seems (to me) to be dii, i.e. the pagan gods.

However, the LCL text, which I read from, at the same place omits the comma, and, before looking at the LatinLibrary text above, I read quibus as the ablative complement of the adjective digni. But with this reading I could not make the rest of the sentence work.

I hope for an evaluation of my remarks on this difference, especially if able Latinists judge that I have got myself into a state of confusion.

Does the difference about the comma indicate a hard place in the text?

How to think about this problem?

[mwh]

Hi Hugh, I suspect it’s merely a matter of editorial convention. The older Germanic tradition (which the Latin Library appears to follow here) tends to use commas for all relative clauses, while the British-American tradition distinguishes two types, restrictive and non-restrictive. It’s a real can of worms. Fowler’s Modern English Usage is the classic text.
Either way, I’d take quibus here as dative not ablative.

[hlawson38]

Hi Hugh, I suspect it’s merely a matter of editorial convention. The older Germanic tradition (which the Latin Library appears to follow here) tends to use commas for all relative clauses, while the British-American tradition distinguishes two types, restrictive and non-restrictive. It’s a real can of worms. Fowler’s Modern English Usage is the classic text.
Either way, I’d take quibus here as dative not ablative.

Got it. Thanks for the comments.