There’s a common phrase “quo vadis” which is always translated as “Where are you going?” My question is, why the ablative case? I would think the real intent is more accusativish (hmm, the spell checker doesn’t think that’s a word…), meaning “to where (whither) are you going”, while the ablative seems to me to be more of a “from where (whence) are you going (coming).” Any thoughts?
Let’s simply ansering that question by saying that ‘quo’ is an adverb meaning ‘to where, wither’. ‘From where’ = unde. Where = ubi. And Qua = by which way.
On this quo-question the anser is indeed mostly an accusative.
Exempli gratia: Quo vadis? Domum eo / vado. Or In Italiam vado or Romam eo etc.
Cura it valeas,
Moerus
It’s actually the locative of quis, used to translate που.
Greek ‘pou (sorry i dont have the greek font installed yet’) means ‘where’, so the Greek equivalent of ‘quo’ would be ‘poi = to where, wither’.
Are you sure quo is an old locative of quis and not an ablative form? Checking a few historical grammers and dictionaries of Latin I only found it to be an ablative and not a locative, whose ending mostly was in -i like ubi, hic (from heice).
Please let me know where you found that about the locative?
Moerus
I like the adverb answer, I hadn’t thought of that. I had thought it might be a locative (though I have no idea if it would be the correct form) but that would still be an unsatisfying answer since the locative has more of a stationary feel to it, and this question really implies directionality.
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First time I see this. From which book is this coming?
Thnx,
Moerus
Btw - what I meant to translate ποῦ was that Jerome translated ποῦ ?πἀγεις with quo vadis, where it entered into popular parliament.
That was from Chambers Murray, which is based off of Smith and Lockwood’s dictionary.