What type of cum clause is this?

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hi everyone!!
I’m having even more troubles with Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
“His quoque non passim mundi fabricator habendum aera permisit: vix nunc obsistitur illis,
cum sua quisque regant diverso flamina tractu, quin lanient mundum: tanta est discordia fratrum.”

“The creator of the world didn’t allow them to possess the airs for nothing: now he barely opposes them to mangle the world, since(?)…, that is the disagreement of the brothers.”

Because the understanding of this clause escapes me completly, I’m not being able to say what type of cum clause is that. “Regant” wants plural subject, which, at first sight, I thought It could be “sua flamina”. However, there’s the “quisque”, which is a singular pronoun in the nominative case. So the correct subject of the sentence is not clear to me.

2

this is a concessive cum clause: though they reign over their blasts in separate tracts each, ( that is the winds)it is scarcely prevented that they do not tear the world apart.
This is very easy Latin, how much education has degraded by now compared with what it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.

3

So “quisque” goes with sua flumina?

If someone has received an education from the beginning of the twentieth century, this Latin would be very easy for them, I suppose.

4

Let us leave on one side Philo’s last sentence which is as inelegantly phrased as it is rude. The purpose of answering posts is to provide help not to appear smug or superior.

Elsewhere on the Latin thread there are posts about the pitfalls of rushing to translate without first considering how the text works.

In your translation you have chosen to rearrange Ovid’s carefully constructed text and I am not sure that’s the best way to understand his meaning. The cum clause is an aside which interrupts vix nunc obsistitur illis… quin lanient mundum. When thinking about what the cum clause might mean you have to consider it in the context of the Latin as written. The subject of regant is the winds.

Do you think you fully understand the vix nunc obsistitur illis… quin lanient mundum clause? How do you understand “tanta est” in the final clause?

Going back to the beginning of the text I dont see where “for nothing” comes from. How do you understand passim?

As to the Cum clause you should look at this http://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/cum-clauses.

5

I would take it with diverso tractu which is of course an ablative. Can you see how it works?

Can you scan the line? cum sua quisque regat diverso flamina tractu. That would help to see what the cases could be. the final a in both sua and flamina is short.

I dont find reading Ovid easy and I dont think it is.

6

Got it. I will be more careful next time.

Yes, as you said, the rushing really got into my head, and I didn’t consider the context.
“Tanta” I should’ve translate it as something like “so great is the disagreement of the brothers”, right?
Considering what seneca2008 said, I get how Philo would be kinda upset. I’ve just murdered Ovid :laughing: . Also, I might have sounded a bit combative in the last sentece of my previous post, and I don’t want to do that at all. So, I apologize.

7

Kinda. Is there a reason for “quisque” not to be declined as “quoque”, to be in the ablative case too?

8

I think this has been a problematic passage in the past. The reading adopted by the Loeb and earlier editions seems to be “regat”. Your text and indeed that of Segal and Barchiesi has regant. So taking it with regant (the winds) rule their own blasts and so quisque (each one (of the winds - understood)) has to be nominative to agree with the winds the subject of the verb.

“although they control their own blasts each one in (their/his) separate course”

What does quoque mean? why would you want quisque to be in the ablative case? what would that mean?

9

Just to make it clear that there are two and only only two types of cum clause: those with indicative (purely temporal), and those with subjunctive. Classification of the latter as causal or concessive or whatever is determined solely by the context, not by anything in the Latin itself. It’s up to the reader.

And this is certainly not “very easy Latin,” but it’s interesting Latin, as Ovid’s Latin habitually is.

10

Thanks Michael for making that clear. It needed saying as it is not so crisply stated in the link to Allen and Greenough I gave.

11

" there are two and only only two types of cum clause: those with indicative (purely temporal), and those with subjunctive. Classification of the latter as causal or concessive or whatever is determined solely by the context, not by anything in the Latin itself. It’s up to the reader"

Thank goodness. When you get complicated rules with heaps of exceptions, the grammar gets buried under its own bull, So it’s when, since, or although whichever fits best! Thank you, thank you, thank you. :slight_smile: