renuntiat: abbreviated perfect?

Latin Learning Latin
1

C.Nepos, “Alcibiades”

Context: Alcibiades has taken refuge in Darius’s territory, under the protection of the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, and the two have become fast friends. But Lacedaemonian leader Leander (here referrred to as Laco) wants Alcibiades dead, or as a prisoner.

his Laco rebus commotas statuit accuratius sibi agendum cum Pharnabazo, huic ergo renuntiat quae regi cum Lacedaemoniis convenissent, nisi Alcibiadem vivum aut mortuum sibi tradidisset.

Translation: Shaken by these developments, Leander decided that he must press Pharnabazus harder. Leander renounced the arrangements they had agreed upon on behalf of the king and the Lacedaemonians, unless Pharnabazus handed Alcibiades over, dead or alive.

two questions:

1, I’m reading renuntiat as an abbreviation of renuntiavit. The sequence of tenses seems to require it.

  1. I read regi as a dative singular of rex, with the antecedent being Darius. I’m unsure of the precise subject of convenissent, “they had agreed upon”. On the one side it would be King Darius or his agent Pharnabazus on his behalf, or the other the Lacedaemonians or their agent Lysander.
2

quae regi cum Lacedaemoniis convenissent

The construction seems to be “Res convenit, constr. alicui cum aliquo, inter aliquos, or absol.:” thus L&S. I think regi is dative of agent. So “what had been agreed by the king with the Spartans”

Not sure about renuntiat as a perfect, but i dont think so. You need to refer to Hylander’s list of conditionals.

EDIT as statuit is perfect and convenissent is a pluperfect subjunctive, I guess
renuntiat has to be a perfect.

3

(1) I would guess perfect, with long a. But this contraction is quite rare, I think. I’m not sure this text is sound.

  1. Subject of convenissent is quae. I don’t think there’s a need to fit the dative regi (yes, the Great King, Darius) in a pigeonhole. It’s enough to know that when the subject of convenio is a thing agreed upon by two parties, the complements indicating the persons between whom the thing is agreed upon are dative cum ablative. If pushed, I would classify the dative as indirect object rather than agent.

Lewis & Short, convenio, IIAb(a):

Res convenit> , constr. > alicui cum aliquo> , inter aliquos, or absol.: cum his mihi nec locus nec sermo convenit, Plaut. Ps. 4, 7, 10: haec fratri mecum non conveniunt neque placent, Ter. Ad. 1, 1, 34: de dote mecum conveniri nil potest, Plaut. Trin. 2, 4, 168: hoc mihi cum tuo fratre convenit, Cic. Fin. 5, 29, 87; Liv. 2, 39, 8; Quint. 3, 6, 91: * * *

4

Do I read you right, that “quae . . . convenissent” is an impersonal use of convenio? C.N., we may imagine, put it in the plural because what was agreed upon was no simple thing, but several complicated things–does this seem plausible?

One more question: if we read renuntiat as perfect, must we also read statuit as perfect?

5

convenissent isn’t impersonal: the subject is quae, “those things which had been agreed upon between the King and the Lacaedemonians” or “by the King with the Lacaedemonians.”

statuit and renuntiat could be historical presents (although it looks like they crop up in a narrative otherwise told in the perfect tense). But I don’t understand why convenissent and tradidisset are subjunctive. “He renounces/renounced what the King would have agreed upon unless he (Pharnabazus? the King?) had handed over Alcibiades to him (Laco) alive or dead”? Doesn’t make sense to me. The two subjunctives don’t seem to be in indirect discourse–rather, I would expect Laco to make a statement to the effect that he would renounce what had been agreed on unless Alcibiades were to be turned over to him, which I think would require traderet, not tradidisset. Maybe I just don’t understand the situation. Or perhaps renuntiat means “re-announce.” quae . . . convenissent could be an indirect question–no, that can’t be right and it would still not make sense to me. It would be easier for me if nisi were si.

6

I have to say I’m stumped by this. I can’t find a copy of the OCT edition of C.N. with critical notes, which I think I have somewhere. The best I can do is to take statuit and renuntiat as perfects or (more likely) as historical presents with secondary sequence (somewhat unusual but not unheard of). Then take renuntiat as implying a future infinitive that contains the idea of renouncing, something like se non observaturum. Then the rest falls into place:

quae regi cum Lacedaemoniis convenissent, nisi Alcibiadem vivum aut mortuum sibi tradidisset.

“he announced that he would not observe the agreements between the King and the Lacedaemonians [literally, what had been agreed to between the King and the Lacedaemonians] unless he [Pharnabazus] handed over Alcibiades to him [the Lacedaemonian] dead or alive.”

tradidisset would be pluperfect because the handing over would have to occur before the Lacedaemonian would honor the agreements. In direct speech, it would be future perfect.

That’s the best I can do to make sense of this. I hesitate to resort to “tampering with the text”, but I think I would mark this passage with a crux/dagger indicating a textual problem that can’t be resolved in a satisfactory manner. It seems to me that a future infinitive has dropped out, and perhaps renuntiat isn’t right. Any number of conjectures could be proposed, but none of them would be convincing without more evidence.

I don’t think there’s any question about what happened, or what the Lacedaemonian told Pharnabazus–dead or alive or else!–but I have difficulty getting there with the Latin.

7

Renuntiat is surely just a historic present. I’m not familiar with Nepos’ Latin, but I’d be most surprised if he used renuntiat as a contracted perfect. Why ever would he? Whether statuit is present or perfect I wouldn’t like to say. Perfect, at a guess, and then the switch to historic present as he takes action. Nothing unusual about historic present introducing historic sequence.

I haven’t read the context, but I imagine convenissent is subjunctive as being indefinite—“whatever agreements had been made,” “the agreements that had been made (whatever they were).” (Pluperf. in historic sequence.) Leander would know what they were, Pharnabazus might not? Or simply in quasi-indirect speech, and definite—the agreements that had been made. As for tradidisset, I guess (like Hylander, I see) it’s pluperf. as being prior in time to the potential renunciation of those agreements, representing future perfect. Unless Pharnab hands over Alcib (will have handed him over, says hyperlogical Latin), the agreements that have been made between King and Sparta are null and void.

But my Latin is untrustworthy, as I’ve recently been reminded.

I take it commotas is a typo for commotus. Laco is “the Spartan.” Darius is not the “antecedent” of regi but could be said to be the referent. In Greek—and maybe in Nepos?—“king” is the standard designation of the king of Persia, the Great King.

8

This critical edition has:

His Laco rebus commotus statuit accuratius sibi agendum cum Pharmabazo. Huic ergo renuntiat quae regi cum Lacedaemoniis essent, nisi Alcibiadem vivum aut mortuum sibi tradidisset.

9

See page 103 of Benecke’s 1843 edition, which Bedwere linked to. essent makes less sense to me than convenissent, a reading (or conjecture?) that Beneke doesn’t seem to be aware of. And according to his notes, some texts (mss. or conjectures?) have the words irrita futura (“[the agreements] would be null and void”) after essent, which would clear up my difficulties, and some editors print stare non posse at the end, so that the sentence would read:

his Laco rebus commotus statuit accuratius sibi agendum cum Pharnabazo, huic ergo renuntiat quae regi cum Lacedaemoniis essent irrita futura, nisi Alcibiadem vivum aut mortuum sibi tradidisset, stare non posse.

But accepting both i_rrita futura_ and stare non posse doesn’t work for me. That looks like a conflation of two different attempts to make the Latin work. If I had to choose, I’d choose s_tare non posse_ at the end.

There’s also a note on p. 30 of Benecke’s edition indicating B.'s doubts about the text of this sentence.

I have trouble discerning from Benecke’s notes what the mss. actually read here, as opposed to what previous editors have printed, which seems to occupy most of his brief discussion. In any case, it looks like this is indeed a passage that Benecke and other editors before him have struggled to make sense of, so I don’t feel so bad about my own difficulties. i wish I had access to a more modern edition that reflected actual collation of the manuscripts, but I’m not sure anyone has taken the trouble to edit C.N. in a century or more. The OCT dates to 1905, I think, an era when OCT’s weren’t always reliable (not true of all, though).

mwh’s suggestion that quae . . . convenissent is a general relative clause seems like the best solution to me to interpret the text that hlawson originally presented, although I would have expected quaecumque rather than just quae. And I still would prefer to be able to treat quae . . . convenissent as just a subordinate relative clause in indirect discourse, rather than as a general relative clause.

Apologies for being so obsessive about this, but it really got under my skin that I couldn’t understand it. I’ve got to let go . . .

10

Thanks to Seneca, Hylander, mwh, and bedeware, for aiming their formidable latinity at this text. I feel that I am just beginning to come up with a higher class of problem. :wink:

Surely that counts as progress.