A question at another forum that others here may know the answer to…
here.
Thanks.
Anyone?
Word order and rhythm seem to me to favor taking unus with Italorum.
As to Nepos’s Chronica, I think that all we know of it comes from this poem and Ausonius Ep. 16.1, “Nepotis Chronica, quasi alios apologos (nam et ipsa instar sunt fabularum) ad nobilitatem tuam misi” (cited as per Merrill’s commentary ad loc.).
The general interpretation that I have always heard is that prior to Cornelius Nepos, Roman historians had only attempted piecemeal histories – no one had written a “universal” history.
Other interpretations seem much more difficult to me, but I suppose one couldn’t rule them out.
Catullus, though not as much as Horace, is known for transposing words and breaking up thoughts over multiple lines. At times I wonder if he’s playing with the words here…
For you, one of the Italians, dared to unroll the whole age of the Italians in three scrolls…
I was actually considering writing a paper on several points in Catullus where he does this, or rather, where ambiguity seems purposeful.
And, which work of Ausonius is “Ep.”? I checked his Ephemeris, Epicedion, Epigrammaton, and Epitaphia, per here, and didn’t see anything correlating with the cite. I’m not familiar with Ausonius, perhaps you are?
I did check Merrill, and he really doesn’t have enough information on the matter. Perhaps there isn’t enough information out there on the matter…
Also, one problem with unus Italorum is the meaning of unus as “first”. Although a better suggestion, I suppose, is “alone of the Italians” instead of “first of the Italians”…
There’s an interesting discussion of Catulli dedication to Nepos and his use of ‘usus’ here:
http://www.brynmawr.edu/archaeology/guesswho/johnston.html
Cheers,
Int
“You alone of the Italians” is certainly how I read unus. As for Ep., I assume Epistles, although I can’t say for certain what abbreviation conventions Merrill is using. The Wikipedia page mentioned earlier also says that Aulus Gellius says something about the Chronica as well.
If you want to be really sure of the correct interpretation, I think what is needed is a search through all Latin literature for examples of unus + genitive. Then you will know how common a phrase that is. After doing that investigation, you can then read through all of Latin poetry to see how often the last word of one line is integral to the meaning of the next line, with a focus on the ambiguities you are concerned with.
You might limit your searches in general to all Latin verse, or perhaps confine them still further to Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, and maybe Horace. This task is not as monumental as it may seem if you have access to PHI or a few months to do some reading.
The task is not monumental anyway, but prithee, what is PHI?
The Packard Humanities Institute’s CD set which contains essentially all extant Latin literature in a digital and searchable format. It’s the Latin counterpart to the TLG (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae).
I happened to come across the following in my reading today. I post it here as it may be of interest to you, Chris. It is taken from Philip Hardie’s commentary on Aeneid IX (Cambridge 1994), and refers to the following passage (Aen. 9.339-42):
(Nisus has just killed a number of hapless victims)
impastus ceu plena leo per ovilia turbans
(suadet enim vesana fames) manditque trahitque
molle pecus mutumque metu, fremit ore cruento.
nec minor Euryali caedes; …
Hardie’s note ad loc.:
342 nec minor Euryali caedes: > we expect the simile to refer to Nisus, but there is no apodosis to the > ceu > of 339, and the words > nec minor > are an invitation to apply the details of the simile as much to Euryalus as to Nisus, thus emphasizing their community of spirit; Pavlock 215 comments ‘mad rage is transferred with unfortunate ease from one individual to another’. The simile is Janus-headed, acting as the pivot of this episode: a precedent is found in the similes in Catullus 68, and such things are frequent in Milton’s > Paradise Lost> , where ‘Double syntax occurs when three word groups > a, b, c > are connected in such a manner that > ab > forms one chain of discourse and > bc > another’ (J. Carey and A. Fowler, > The Poems of John Milton > (London and New York 1968) 434). > nec minor > perhaps also alerts us to the fact that the 25 lines following the simile equal the number of lines in the first half of the paragraph.
Yes indeed! This helps greatly. Thanks.