“Quid refert mea cui serviam?” (from a donkey in Phaedrus XV).
Translation (Loeb): “what difference does it make to me whose slave I am?”
A&G (§355) say that “The subject of [interest and refert] is a neuter pronoun or a substantive clause”, but it seemed to me here that the subject of “refert” would be “cui serviam” (an adjective clause, right?).
“Quid refert mea cui serviam?”:
“Quid” cannot be the subject, for it has an adverbial nature; I could replace it with “multum” or “nihil”, for example. If the phrase “multum refert mea cui serviam” is indeed correct, I think that it becomes evident that “quid” is not the subject.
“Cui serviam” is a relative clause with an omitted indefinite antecedent, right? Could it be rewritten: “Is cui serviam”? For some reason, I don’t think so, and this impression is strange. Why couldn’t it be?
In truth, maybe it is so because the adjective clause could be substituted for a “neuter pronoun”: “Quid refert mea « id » ?” (or so I think). But even this doesn’t make “2)” above clear to me.
I kindly thank any Latin sage who could help me with this.
No, quid is the subject all right (just as nilhil or multum would be), and cui serviam is not a relative clause but an indirect question (cf. cur id faciam).
Actually it is arguable whether quid is best regarded as nominative or accusative. Grammars are not very satisfactory on this. But the important thing here is that cui is dative not of qui (relative) but of quis (interrogative).
Thank you, mwh, for noting that this is an indirect question. This was so useful and I would hardly notice on my own account.
But still, given that it is an indirect question (and, A&G, “An Indirect Question is any sentence or clause which is introduced by an interrogative word, and which is itself the subject or object of a verb, or depends on any expression implying uncertainty or doubt”), it works in relation with the main verb, as its subject (not as its object, because refert is not a transitive verb).
The interrogative clause could be replaced by a neuter pronoun like id, don’t you agree? “Quid refert mea cui serviam?” > “Quid refert mea id?” And, since refert doesn’t take an object, quid must have some adverbial value. I would more easily see the adverbial value in nihil or multum, as I have said; in quid I don’t quite understand it well, but it is the only way this makes sense to me.
refert is a most peculiar verb, conventionally dissociated from refero even though it appears to be indistinguishable from it in form.
You’re certainly right to think that “quid refert mea id?” would be grammatically acceptable Latin (though that word order is unidiomatic). Plautus has “quid id refert tua?” See the OLD for more usage examples. But I don’t know why you find quid more problematic than nihil or multum. The syntax is identical.
The simplest answer would be to say that id is the subject and that quid is an internal accusative. But it’s by no means cut-and-dried, and a more satisfactory answer would need not only to take the peculiar nature of the construction into account and come to terms with the ablative mea but also to consider the nature of “impersonal” verbs. These are more complex questions than might be supposed.
