Sed quia in civitate bellicosa...

Latin Learning Latin
1

Sed quia in civitate bellicosa plures Romuli quam Numae similes reges fore putabat iturosque ipsos ad bella, ne rege absente sacra neglegerentur, Iovi assiduum sacerdotem creavit qui ‘flamen Dialis’ appellatus est.

But because, amongst the warlike citizens, a greater number believed there should be kings similar to Romulus rather than to Numa and that they would themselves go to war, lest, in the absence of a king, they should neglect the sacred rites, they created a special priest for Juppiter who was known as Flamen Dialis.

The first part of this is tricky..Orberg’s guidance [Romuli (gen) similis = Romulo (dat) s.] seems to suggest this meaning.

2

putabat is singular, not plural. Plures cannot be the subject of putabat. So what is its case and its function in the sentence?

creavit is singular, too.

Ask yourself: who or what is the subject of putabat and creavit?

neglegerentur is passive.

Who or what is the subject?

See if you can recast your translation to reflect the answers to these questions. Then we can work on some of the details.

3

I’m working on this. At the moment I can’t see a single noun or pronoun in the singular nominative that would qualify as a subject using the verbs in the singular…but I’ll post my conclusions shortly…

4

But because he believed that, amongst the warlike citizens, there would be more kings similar to Romulus than to Numa, their having gone to war, the rites would not be neglected through the absence of the king, he created a special priest for Jupiter who was known as Flamen Dialis.

5

“He” being Numa, of course.

Now let’s tackle iturosque ipsos ad bella. What’s the function of this phrase in the sentence?

And what kind of clause is ne rege absente sacra neglegerentur?

You got these essentially right in your first effort at translation.

6

Seems iturosque ipsos ad bella is a future participle meaning something like and when they themselves (i.e. these future war-like Roman kings) had gone to wars… It uses the future participle to denote action in the future from the point of view of Numa when he was thinking about the need for religion.

ne rege absente sacra neglegerentur is a purpose clause, expressing the thing that, in this case, Numa intended to avoid. I tried to make my second translation into (slightly) more idiomatic English…

7

Yes, ne rege absente sacra neglegerentur is a purpose clause.

iturosque ipsos ad bella – -que joins this clause with in civitate bellicosa plures Romuli quam Numae similes reges fore, and both clauses are complements of putabat.

ituros is, as you noted, a future participle–it’s part of a “periphrastic” future infinitive with esse omitted (as it often is in real Latin). The subject of this future infinitive must be [reges] ipsos.

So we have "But because he believed that . . . there would be more kings similar to Romulus than to Numa, and they would go to war themselves, . . . "

ne rege absente sacra neglegerentur, as you noted, is a purpose clause, and you got the purpose clause more or less right the first time, except that neglegerentur is passive: lest . . . the sacred rites should be neglected"

rege absente – you translated this “through the absence of a king”. I’m not sure you recognized that this is an ablative absolute. I think a better translation would be “a/the king being absent/away,” or “while a/the king was absent/away” or just “in the king’s absence”.

in civitate bellicosa – you translated this “amongst the warlike citizens”, but civitas is singular, not “citizens” but rather “state,” “body of the citizens” or “community”. Here I would translate it “in a warlike community”.

assiduum – take a look at the meanings given by Lewis & Short. I would translate here “permanent”.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.0:4065.lewisandshort

So, we have:

Sed quia in civitate bellicosa plures Romuli quam Numae similes reges fore putabat iturosque ipsos ad bella, ne rege absente sacra neglegerentur, Iovi assiduum sacerdotem creavit qui ‘flamen Dialis’ appellatus est.

“But because he thought that in a warlike community there would be more kings similar to Romulus than to Numa and they would go [off] to war themselves, lest the sacred rites be neglected while the king was away, he created a permanent priest for Jupiter who was called the flamen dialis.”

At this point, I would suggest you shouldn’t try to recast your translations into more idiomatic English until you have translated in a way that clearly reflects the syntax of the original. The object isn’t to translate idiomatically–it’s to understand how the original Latin is structured so that you master the Latin constructions. If you’ll allow me to offer some advice, I feel that too often you assign English meanings to the words and then try to make sense out of the whole sentence without fully working out the syntax. You can’t understand the meaning of a sentence without understanding the syntax. Not only do you need to pay close attention to the inflectional endings of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs, you have to think about how they fit together. What noun does this adjective modify? What is the function of that noun phrase in the sentence? What is the mood, tense and voice of this verb? Why is it subjunctive? What is its subject and what is its object? If you follow this practice very rigorously, after a while it will come naturally and you won’t have to think about it.

8

Qimmik

I read you loud and clear. Many thanks for your help and for your guidance. I will endeavor to follow your advice diligently.

regards

Paul