I have been reading “De Viris Illustribus” by Abbatis Lhomond. It isn’t too difficult and since I can’t find an English or French translation, I’m really forced to work out what the Latin is saying.
In the story about Lucius Junius Brutus, the first counsel of Rome, it says: Profectus Delphos cum Tarquinii filiis, quos pater ad Apollinem muneribus honorandum miserat, baculo sambuceo aurum inclusum Deo donum tulit.
I don’t know what to do with “baculo” and “sambuceo” which are dative or ablative and mean a walking stick and a musical instrument, something like a harp.
I translate what I can as:
Having gone to Delfi with the sons of Tarquinius, whom their father had sent for services honoring Apollo, he carried……..… included a golden gift.
In another story about Mucius Scaevola, who puts his hand in a flame to prove his bravery to King Porsenna, it says: Apprehensus et ad regem pertractus, dextram accenso ad sacrificium foculo injecit; hoc supplicii a rea exigens, quod in caede peccasset.
I’m having trouble with the phrase “hoc supplicii a rea exigens”
I translate what I can as:
Having been captured and brought before the king, he put his right hand in the burning sacrificial brazier……. Because he had been mistaken in the murder.
I think that the sense of “hoc supplicii a rea exigens” is that he wants to expiate his guilt by this punishment, but I don’t see how the words go together.
Thanks for any help.
PS When I have other questions on this book, should I put them in the same thread or start a new topic?
Reading without a translation is GREAT - it is the very best thing you can do to really get into the Latin.
Baculo sambuceo: the “sambuceo” is an ADJECTIVE, meaning “elder, from an elder tree” - the gold was wrapped up by (inside) a stick of elder wood, so that is an ablative with the participle inclusum - and aurum is a NOUN, not an adjective (the adjective would be aureus, not aurum, with the same adjectival ending as sambuceus - notice the “e”?), so the gold wrapped inside the stick is a noun, in apposition to donum, also a noun: he sent the gold (as) a gift
hoc supplicii a rea exigens: This is a lot trickier, because you have to realize that a rea means “a rea manu” - so Mucius exacts this punishment from his guilty (hand). As for “hoc supplicii,” that is a partitive genitive, and a rather unusual partitive genitive. Usually the partitive is some notion of quantity, but it can also be used for quality, too - this (type) of punishment, we might say in English. So he was exacting this (type) of punishment from his guilty (hand) because…
I hope that helps! As for the etiquette of how threads work at TextKit, I’ll defer to someone else; I’m guessing it would be very useful to have all the De Viris Ill. questions here, but that’s just a guess on my part.
Here is another question from the story of Menenius Agrippa who worked to reconcile the rich patricians with the poor plebs. I’m having trouble with this line:
Potest consolari pauperes Menenius, sed multo magis docere locupletes, quam non sit necessaria solidam laudem cupienti nimis anxia divitiarum comparatio.
What I get is:
Menenius was able to console the poor, but even more was able to teach the rich,
quam non sit necessaria – how much it is not needed
solidam laudem cupienti -
nimis anxia divitiarum comparatio – the too anxious procuring of riches
“solidam” and “laudem” are accusative, “cupienti” is dative or ablative, and “comparatio” is nomnative.
How does this all fit together?
That’s a very tricky sentence, indeed. Sometimes I find it helpful to try to rephrase the sentence in Latin, so as to stay within the logic of the language while giving myself a break.
“nimis anxia comparatio divitiarum non sit necessaria [alicui] cupienti solidam laudem.”
“The too anxious procuring of riches is not necessary for [someone] desiring genuine praise.”
(solidus has the basic sense of “solid,” but it can be used more figuratively to refer to something that is complete, substantial, genuine, or true… aka, not hollow or alloyed.)
“cupienti” is a participle that is a dative of reference. You don’t technically need the [alicui] above with such participles (as they are being used substantively), but it can be helpful to supply them. The next step is realizing that this participle can have its own object–the accusative “solidam laudem.”
[Edit: See Laura’s solution below… i.e., read the whole sentence!] I’m not entirely sure how to render “quam,” but I think you should probably read it as an adverbial exclamation, such as, “How unnecessary is the too anxious procurement of riches to the man desiring real praise!”
MAIN IDEA: Menenius docet
quam non sit necessaria
nimis anxia divitiarum comparatio.
SPECIFICATION OF IDEA: Cui haec comparatio
necessaria non est?
Necessaria non est homini,
qui solidam laudem cupit.
In other words, there are other kinds of things people can and should strive to attain, not just mere increase of wealth. The trick is recognizing that necessarius really likes to take a dative complement! Then, you find your dative complement, and the participle cupienti really wants an object. What’s hard for us as English speakers is that we are so dependent on word order that something like this kind of makes our brain freeze: “quam non sit necessaria solidam laudem” - too many loose pieces are piled up there for English speakers to handle… but really, it’s not a problem. When you are reading, try to do this: quam non sit (I would really like a predicate, and perhaps also a subject, for this verb) necessaria (great, that sounds like a predicate, feminine singular, now I need a fem. subject) solidam laudem (YIKES: accusative, now I need something to govern this accusative - brain is now dangerously full) cupienti (oh, this is good: cupienti is a verbal adjective that really wants an object: solidam laudem cupienti, good, that takes care of my accusative, desiring praise makes sense - and that necessaria I saw earlier, it likes to have a dative - but I am still hoping for a subject since, honestly, I don’t have a good feminine noun to be the subject of “sit necessaria” - nothing in the previous sentence can be my implied subject) nimis anxia (well, okay, another adjective - I hope this is the adjective that goes with the feminine subject I am looking for!) divitiarum comparatio (eureka, there is what I wanted from the start: it is finally the subject of sit that I wanted from the start - now I have everything I need)
That quam: when quam comes first in a sentence and there is no clear feminine antecedent, you are very likely dealing with an adverb - this is the adverbial quam that is correlated with the adverbial tam (similar to the pair of adverbs you know from quantum-tantum, qualis-talis, etc.)
Tam necessaria est!
It is so necessary!
Quam necessaria est!
How necessary it is!
That is very confusing for us in English because so-how do not feel as close a pair as Latin tam-quam.
Thanks, Laura! For some reason I chose to ignore the earlier part of the sentence, which caused me to miss the fact that the final part is the reported relative clause following up on “docet.”
The story of Caius Marcius Coriolanus is about a Roman of noble birth who lost his father at an early age and was never accepted by the noble class. I’m having trouble seeing how this sentence works:
Sortitus erat a natura nobiles ad laudem impetus;
sed quia doctrina non accessit, irae impotens, obstinataeque pervicaciae fuit.
I believe that the sentence means:
Assigned by birth to the glory of nobility, he didn’t reach it because of his education. Angry at his powerlessness, he became stubborn and obstinate.
One of my problems is with “nobiles ad laudem impetus” - is “nobiles” a noun or an adjective? I expected “impetus” to be a verb, but my dictionary says it is a noun?
My other problem is with “irae, obstinatae, and pervicaciae” - these feminine and are either genitive or dative, but I don’t understand why.
Thanks for any help.
“He had been granted by nature noble impulses [nobilēs impetūs - pluraliter] for glory, but because education didn’t befall [him] he was powerless with anger and obstinate intransigence.”
One thing that is really really important is to be clear on what is a noun in Latin and what is an adjective. In your translation, you had “angry at his powerlessness” - you need to pay attention to the parts of speech, and not just grasp for the root meaning of the word (this was the same problem you had with aurum “gold” and aureus “golden” in an earlier passage). Notice that the noun and the adjective share the same root but they are DIFFERENT WORDS:
If the author wanted to say “angry at his powerlessness” he would use different words. But the words he actually used are ira, “anger” and impotens, “powerless” - and so you get “powerless (over) his anger.” If you don’t let the parts of speech help you, you will go astray from what the author is saying in Latin.
Sometimes people find the analysis of cases useful, and sometimes they don’t (so if you don’t find it helpful, then just skip this!) - but if that is the kind of thing you find useful, there are two types of genitives here -
descriptive genitive - this is something you see when you have a noun+adj phrase in the predicate of a sentence (something like when we say a “he is a man of great courage” in English), which is what you have here with obstinatae pervicaciae fuit - “he was a man of obstinate stubbornness.”
genitive complement - there is a whole long list of verbs and adjectives in Latin that take a genitive as their complement; because these are idiomatic, we sometimes have a similar construction in English, but sometimes not: for example, with irae impotens, we would say in English, “powerless (over) his anger.” This is where the dictionary is a big help, since that is where you can look up idioms - in the entry for impotens in the Lewis & Short dictionary, for example, you find “With gen., having no power over, not master of, unable to control” and it even gives impotens irae as an example there, along with impotens amoris, doloris, animi, etc. http://athirdway.com/glossa/?s=impotens