Olim ad regiam venit agricola cum corbula uvarum quas reginae dare desideravit= Once a farmer came to the palace with a basket of grapes which he wished to give to the queen.
This is the first time in my limited experience I have seen the subject placed near the middle of a sentence. What was the writer intending to convey?
The natural order would be subject first. Olim ad regiam venit appears emphasized in comparison with agricola.
Hi, you’d need to check it in context (because word order in Latin depends on several factors) but at first glance, it does not appear idiomatic.
Subjects in this position after the verb (which itself does not come first) (slightly different to your question about the “middle” of the sentence, harder to define precisely) more typically include (1) negative quantifiers such as nemo, nec … quisquam, etc., e.g. non modo demigrandi causa de vallo decederet nemo (Caesar BG 5.43), (2) subjects in contrast, e.g. quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, (Caesar BG 1.1), (3) certain relative clauses, etc.
(There are different patterns again for verb-first sentences.)
Is this neo-Latin? Often I see authors taking constructions they’ve seen in one usage and applying them to other usages by analogy, where they no longer ring true. It may also come from a period outside golden age Latin, where my ignorance is infinite.
The best word order resources that I rely on for golden age Latin are Spevak and Devine & Stephens (both hard reads, but worth it).
Cheers, Chad
What was the writer intending to convey?
I believe the author was trying to use the pragmatics of a presentational/existential sentence, which is often signaled by putting the verb before the subject. This technique is used in many European languages and in Chinese as well, but each language imposes some different constraints.
In English, presentational sentences require the verb to come second or later in the sentence. Examples are:
“Once upon a time, there was a farmer who…”
“In the house lived a farmer.”
“In walked this guy wearing a huge hat.”
In the case of Latin, all the examples I can easily find are verb initial, unlike the posted sentence; and all have the subject at the end of the sentence or clause. Two of many examples are:
Fit protinus hac re audita ex castris Gallorum fuga. (BG 7.88)
There was, as soon as this matter was heard, a flight of the Gauls from the camp.
Reducitur ad eum deprensus ex itinere… N. Magus (BC 1.24).
N. Magus was led back to him, having been captured on the road.
Having the subject at the end is what I would expect from the pragmatics, since the main purpose of such sentences is to introduce the subject to the discourse.
Devine and Stephens and Olga Spevak describe presentational sentences as a subtype of “thetic” sentence. Such sentences are usually verb initial and portray the subject as part of the event and part of the predication rather than as a separate participant. Most of the other types of thetic sentences they cite also have the subject at the very end, but I did find one example from Olga Spevak’s book on Latin word order with the subject “in the middle.”
Condiunt Aegyptii mortuos et eos servant domi.
The Egyptians embalm the dead and keep them at home.
Spevak says this line is part of the author”s argumentation and “opens a series of errors that various nations commit.” The verb is initial to portray an example of an error by a nation rather than to update us on the activities of Egyptians. I think the subject is medial in this case because it can be anticipated from the context and the words “mortuos” and “domi” are the main points of the predications.
Is cum corbulā the ablative of accompaniment in the given sentence?
In the company of a basket?
I am not sure either what this type of ablative is called or how idiomatic this usage of cum is. Based on my linguistic background, I would have expected a verb meaning “to bring” to be used, rather than expression equivalent to “come with.”
The closest similar usage I could find in Lewis and Short is the following:
nam posteaquam illinc M’. Aquilius decessit, omnium instituta atque edicta praetorum fuerunt eius modi ut ne quis > cum telo > servus esset.
(Cicero, Against Verres 2.5.7)
For ever since Marcus Aquillius left it, the praetors’ regulations and edicts have all been to this effect, that no one > with a weapon > be a slave.
Looking through many of the examples, and the explanations of Lewis and Short, it appears that the use of cum with the ablative is licensed in the meaning “furnished with.” I still have some doubts about using this expression in the posted text, however.
Thanks, I had the same problem with the usage of the ablative.
This sentence, with the subject placed after the verb, and the usage of the preposition cum, feels to me like Spanish.
Chad mentioned neo-Latin.
Spanish commonly allows subject and verb inversion with single-argument verbs like venir (vēniō), but I don’t think it permits a motion phrase like al palacio real (ad rēgiam) to proceed the verb in prose. My guess is that the posted Latin was calqued on an underlying English sentence like “once upon a time, into the royal palace came a farmer….” English is the only language I know in which such an order of elements is possible for a presentational sentence, although all the SOV languages I know have some form of subject-verb inversion for such pragmatics.
In Stichus, 4.539, Plautus has a structure similar to the originally posted text:
Fuit olim, quasi ego sum, senex: ei filiae duae erant.
There used to be an old man like I am. He had two daughters
If I were to use this as a model and back-translate the English text with the intent to mimic Classical Latin, I would expect something like the following:
Fuit ōlim agrīcola. Cum regīnae ūvās dare vellet/voluisset corbulam eārum in rēgiam tulit.
What came to my mind when I first looked at the Latin sentence was this sentence from El Sombrero de Tres Picos, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, 1874:
Ya habían andado un cuarto de legua sin hablar palabra, el Molinero subido en la borrica y el Alguacil arreándola con su bastón de autoridad, cuando divisaron delante de sí, en lo alto de un repecho que hacía el camino, la sombra de un enorme pajarraco que se dirigía hacia ellos.
This is exactly how I speak Spanish (the sentence seems nicely balanced) and when I first read the Latin sentence I was struck that I immediately understood the sentence, which is not usually the case when I read Latin.
Normally, I do not use SOV in Spanish, unless I want to emphasize the subject. Both in conversation and in writing.
Spanish is a VO language, with the subject able to take any position (first, middle, or end).
Katalagon, thanks for the Spanish. A good and natural example of subject-verb inversion in the text is:
un repecho que > hacía el camino
“a steep slope that the road made”
I have recently been obsessing about overall word order in Latin and Greek. After considering the initial question further and re-reading on my own some of Devine and Stephens’ Pragmatics for Latin, I want to amend some of what I said above and explain my understanding at length.
A pre-posed destination phrase equivalent to ad regia is absolutely possible in English, Spanish, and other SOV languages, however, I think the destination needs to be highly topical and generally old information.
For instance, I think it would be grammatical, but oddly abrupt to say:
()In ancient times to a/the royal residence came a farmer.
()En la antigüedad a una/la residencia real vino un agrícola.
But it would be fine to say:
Once upon a time there was a royal residence, and to that royal residence came a farmer.
Érase una vez una residencia real y a esta residencia real vino un agrícola.
(*Erātur ūnā vice ūna domus rēgia et ad istam domum rēgiam vēnit ūnus agricola.)
For similar reasons, I think it is probably odd in Latin to say something like:
(*)Ōlim ad rēgiam vēnit agricola….
Nevertheless, I think the pragmatics indicate a presentative sentence to introduce the farmer as a new character in the story.
As for the position of the subject, it is usually last in such thetic sentences, and presentational sentences are just one type of such sentences. In nomal sentences, there is usually a notional topic about which something is predicated. The sentence has two parts. In thetic sentences, there is merely a single event description, with any entities mentioned being viewed as part of the event itself. The sentence has only one part.
Another way to look at presentational (and existential) sentences is that most sentences go from an entity to a separate event or description about that entity, but presentational sentences go from an event to an entity that emerges from the event.
Thetic sentences demote participants in an event from being something about which there is a predication to mere details of a higher-order predication. Such sentences are like predications of unspoken assumptions like: “What is the next event, a relevant case, an independent justification, a resulting situation, a separate cause, etc.” They present a situation as a whole that can supplement or interrupt an ongoing narrative or exposition.
“Exeunt omnēs” (Everyone leaves) used to be a frequent stage direction in written plays to explain what situation you will see at the close of the play.
“Delenda est Carthagō” (Carthage must be destroyed) sets forth the situation claimed to face Rome at that point. It focuses more on what the situation is than on what should happen to Carthage.
“Gaudeāmus igitur iuvenēs dum sumus” (let’s party 
while we are young) sets forth a situation to be embraced at graduation from university.
Here are some contrived, contrasting examples:
Senātōrēs Caesarem occidērunt.
This tends to mean: “what the senators did is kill Caesar.”
Caesarem senātōrēs occidērunt.
This tends to mean: “what happened to Caesar is that the senators killed him.” “Senātōrēs” remains the grammatical subject, even though “in the middle; but “Caesarem” is the actual topic of the larger predication.
However,
Occidērunt Caesarem senātōrēs
Tends to mean: “What happened (as the next event)/(as a result of the previous event)/(as a good case example of appropriate events) was the killing of Caesar by the senators.” The sentence does not aim to answer the questions “What did the senators do?” or “What happened to Caesar?” It just describes an isolated event from an objective viewpoint.
It is also possible for an object to follow the subject, but I believe this is a marked structure. The subject seems usually to appear last in the neutral order of most thetic sentences (other than imperatives), perhaps to indicate contrast, focus, or a mere tail clarification of what the verb refers to. Here are some authentic examples of the marked order from Devine and Stephens’ book:
Transfigitur scutum > Pulloni > et verutum in balteo defigitur. Avertit hic casus > vaginam> … Succurrit inimicus illi Vorenus (BG 5.44).
Pullo got his shield pierced and a spear was lodged in his baldric. This accident shifted his scabbard… His rival Vorenus ran up to help him (BG 5.44).
All these clauses portray a series of events from an objective viewpoint, which licenses the three initial verbs. (By the way, having “dēfigitur” sentence final, rather than initial, is actually quite usual for conjoined thetic clauses.) This textual strategy is good for narrating rapid fire changes in a scene. The lack of topics or sentence connectors gives the impression of watching events unfold in real time.
In the first sentence, although “Pullonī” is syntactically a dative object, it serves pragmatically as the subject at the event level and so is sentence final, leaving the grammatical subject “in the middle.” In the second sentence, the event is supposed to focus on the change in the scabbard, and so “vagīnam” is sentence final, again leaving the subject “in the middle.”
If the first sentence read “transfigitur Pullōnī scūtum,” we would be left picturing the shield, rather than the strong image of Pullo in peril. Similarly, if it said “āvertit vagīnam hic cāsus,” we are left with a mental image only of the action and not the resulting awkward positioning of the scabbard.
Here is another example of the marked order I just ran across in Livy’s introduction to his history of Rome:
[7]datur haec venia antiquitati, ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augtstiora faciat;
(You see,) Antiquity is given this indulgence, that by intermingling the human with the divine, the origin of city states is made more majestic.
The initial verb interrupts a declaration about not criticizing the historical legends of the poets in order to signal that it spells out a condition that justifies this omission. The grammatical subject, “venia,” is not clause final because the word “antiquitāte” is the focus, as a contrast with historians whose task it is to seek truth, rather than legends.
In summary, a subject typically ends up in the middle of a sentence because it is pushed there by a word that does something subjects generally do and/or the subject is not acting pragmatically as a subject.
Thanks, Altair. You really have put in a huge effort on word order.
I have a book that I sometimes look at, “The Romance Languages”, 1988, Oxford University Press, that looks at each Romance language and its changes from Latin.
In Spanish, certain patterns “repel” the subject, as you note.
a conjunction such as que will repel the subject.
Quiero que me lo diga usted.
passive reflexive constructions do this also.
En Oviedo se había levantado una iglesia metropolitana de bella fábrica.
existential constructions as well.
Viven jitanos en las cuevas.
But there are other patterns that tend to favor the movement of the subject past the verb.
My general feeling on this is that VSO and VOS are more common in formal registers. To me, this usage is more elegant, refined, literary. Sometimes the verb, giving the action, is put first for impact, as if the reader will appreciate seeing the action first, and then later a necessary clarification of the subject. Length of subject is also a factor.
As for the original sentence, I did find this on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buNykO_WOAY
At 0:33/2:26 I see what looks like the original sentence.
It seems to be a simple morality tale, but I can’t determine the origin.