What case is 'me' here? Hor. carm. 1.5

Latin Learning Latin
1

me tabula sacer
votiva paries indicat uvida
suspendisse potenti
vestimenta maris deo.

I would have translated this like an indirect statement: ‘the sacred wall reveals on the votive tablet that I hung my dripping clothes up for the god who is the master of the sea’ - i.e. taking ‘me’ as the subject acc in the acc-inf statement.

However, several translations I’ve read render it ‘as for me, the sacred wall reveals (on a votive tablet???) my dripping clothes hanging for the god, master of the sea’ - where ‘me’ seems to be some accusative of respect (or maybe even ablative of respect) and the subject of suspendisse is vestimenta, with suspendisse being intransitive. Is there such thing as an independent use of ‘me’ (such as an ablative/accusative of respect) meaning ‘as for me’? None of my grammar books seem to discuss this.

In general I find this passage quite confusing because I have taken tabula with votiva and concluded they are both ablative ‘on a votive tablet’ but I am not sure this is entirely correct.

Any help would be appreciated!

2

You are right.

The subject is sacer paries; tabula votiva are ablative (the meter of the Alcaic stanzas requires the final -a of each to be long); me is the accusative subject of suspendisse; and umida vestimenta is the object of suspendisse. This is Horatian compression, with hyperbaton.

The translation is loose. The translator has resorted to paraphrase in order to place “me” emphatically at the beginning of the sentence, as me is in Latin, to contrast sharply, and ironically, with Pyrrha’s still undeceived lovers.

Milton was not squeamish about starting the sentence with “me” in his translation:

Me, in my vow’d
Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern god of sea.

The whole translation is here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50372/ode-i-5-to-pyrrha

3

Thanks very much! :slight_smile: