Aeneid - Book IV
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L&S doesn't have profess as a meaning for promitto... Am I missing something?
magicas invitam accingier artis
I was thinking of using an archaic ending to capture the archaic infinitive, but it seems there isn't one for the first person? Of course...
dan.tobias.name
I was thinking of using an archaic ending to capture the archaic infinitive, but it seems there isn't one for the first person? Of course...
Archaic English Grammar -- dan.tobias.name
If you're going to use archaic English, get it right!
Hmm... didn't know about this punctuation difference.
tum vero Aeneas subitis exterritus umbris
corripit e somno corpus sociosque fatigat
praecipites: "vigilate, viri, et considite transtris;
tum vero Aeneas subitis exterritus umbris
corripit e somno corpus sociosque fatigat:
"praecipites, vigilate, viri, et considite transtris;
"The punctuation here assumes that 573 praecipites starts another verse as the first word of Aeneas' speech. The colon here has been disputed since antiquity: Conte takes praecipites as an enjambed modifier of sociosque (his apparatus note argues in favor of the resultant variety of expression); so too Page (O'Hara prints the text with no comment); Butler; Mynors' Oxford text; also Güthling; Irvine; Austin; Tilly; Perret's Budé; Heuzé's Pléiade and Holzberg's Tusculum; Binder and Binder's Reclam; Maclennan. Contra: Geymonat; Götte's Tusculum; Henry (sans commentaire); Stephenson; Sabbadini; Mackail; Pease; Buscaroli; Paratore; Dolç; Goold's Loeb; Rivero García et al.; Conington; Williams. Williams here is right: it is better to have Aeneas recall Mercury's own word, especially when it was virtually repeated (565 ... praeceps ... praecipitare ...); this seems to be a weightier consideration here than the question of beginning a speech at the start of a verse."
tum vero Aeneas subitis exterritus umbris
corripit e somno corpus sociosque fatigat
praecipites: "vigilate, viri, et considite transtris;
tum vero Aeneas subitis exterritus umbris
corripit e somno corpus sociosque fatigat:
"praecipites, vigilate, viri, et considite transtris;
"The punctuation here assumes that 573 praecipites starts another verse as the first word of Aeneas' speech. The colon here has been disputed since antiquity: Conte takes praecipites as an enjambed modifier of sociosque (his apparatus note argues in favor of the resultant variety of expression); so too Page (O'Hara prints the text with no comment); Butler; Mynors' Oxford text; also Güthling; Irvine; Austin; Tilly; Perret's Budé; Heuzé's Pléiade and Holzberg's Tusculum; Binder and Binder's Reclam; Maclennan. Contra: Geymonat; Götte's Tusculum; Henry (sans commentaire); Stephenson; Sabbadini; Mackail; Pease; Buscaroli; Paratore; Dolç; Goold's Loeb; Rivero García et al.; Conington; Williams. Williams here is right: it is better to have Aeneas recall Mercury's own word, especially when it was virtually repeated (565 ... praeceps ... praecipitare ...); this seems to be a weightier consideration here than the question of beginning a speech at the start of a verse."
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Based on that defense below, you'd think they were pretty confident about the conjecture, but they made sure to put "with some reserve" near the beginning of the section.  Tongue.gif "(1) Tongue out :p")
vidit et aequatis/arquatis classem procedere velis
"Arquatis to describe the convex sails of the ships would continue (via allusive reference to the rainbow) the color imagery of the previous verses, while also preparing the way for the appearance of Iris at the close of the book: the rainbow goddess will preside over the departure of Dido from life, and rainbow imagery now accompanies the Trojans as the fleet at last takes its leave of Carthage."
"...we have preferred arquatis because the picture it provides is more vividly, precisely and immediately renderable; it accords with imagery both contextual and foreshadowable from elsewhere in the book; and its corruption is easily enough explained."
vidit et aequatis/arquatis classem procedere velis
"Arquatis to describe the convex sails of the ships would continue (via allusive reference to the rainbow) the color imagery of the previous verses, while also preparing the way for the appearance of Iris at the close of the book: the rainbow goddess will preside over the departure of Dido from life, and rainbow imagery now accompanies the Trojans as the fleet at last takes its leave of Carthage."
"...we have preferred arquatis because the picture it provides is more vividly, precisely and immediately renderable; it accords with imagery both contextual and foreshadowable from elsewhere in the book; and its corruption is easily enough explained."
F&S definitely with the former:
"The sword foams with gore, and the hands of the queen are now bespattered with blood. For the verb cf. 486; 512; 584; 601: a diverse, rich set of uses. But the principal echo here is of 21 ... et sparsos fraterna caede penates, in Dido’s recollection of the grisly slaughter of her husband at the hands of her own brother. Some since antiquity have interpreted the meaning to be that the hands are now stretched outward as the queen struggles in her death agonies (and so Henry in a long note, followed by Austin), but this is intolerably flat. As Conington notes, the verb “is so frequently used of sprinkling with blood that it can hardly bear any other sense in a context like this ...” Again, it is a moment of aesthetic horror; Argento could film it."
I tend to agree with that (it's how I instinctively read the line anyhow).
ter sese attollens cubitoque adnixa levavit,
ter revoluta toro est oculisque errantibus alto
quaesivit caelo lucem ingemuitque reperta.
I know it’s ablative, but how plausible do you think it is to take reperta as nominative?
My thinking was that Dido herself was actively searching for the light (struggling while still alive), but instead of finding it, it found her, with her made passive (signaling how close she was to death).
ter revoluta toro est oculisque errantibus alto
quaesivit caelo lucem ingemuitque reperta.
I know it’s ablative, but how plausible do you think it is to take reperta as nominative?
My thinking was that Dido herself was actively searching for the light (struggling while still alive), but instead of finding it, it found her, with her made passive (signaling how close she was to death).
I kind of like the idea of the nominative—I mean, it's clever to even think of it; it wouldn't have occurred to me—but I too think it's unlikely. With quaesivit just before that, you really expect her to be the finder, not the found; and even if Vergil had wanted to be original/a bit weird, he couldn't fairly have expected the reader to take reperta as nominative in that context. He'd probably have reserved that trick for a masculine subject, lol.
Done!
Definitely the strongest of their three commentaries. You can tell they've gotten more confident over time with their writing. And the content of the book helped too. There were some things they would mention a little too much (e.g., the acrostics), but 832 pages of discussion/parallels/citations at that price? A great resource.
If they plan to do more, I'm hoping they tackle Book 1 since it hasn't had a thorough (English) commentary since Austin's in 1971. Still unfortunate that Horsfall never got to publish his.
I guess the only other grammatical thing I was wondering about was:
Definitely the strongest of their three commentaries. You can tell they've gotten more confident over time with their writing. And the content of the book helped too. There were some things they would mention a little too much (e.g., the acrostics), but 832 pages of discussion/parallels/citations at that price? A great resource.
If they plan to do more, I'm hoping they tackle Book 1 since it hasn't had a thorough (English) commentary since Austin's in 1971. Still unfortunate that Horsfall never got to publish his.
I guess the only other grammatical thing I was wondering about was:
Is quid just a "what" here or is it more connected as a "for what reason..."?
Just a "what" makes more sense to me. There's no grammatical rule to make the other interpretation impossible but it just doesn't seem to fit the context so well. Aeneas is leaving; Dido is angry about it and asking if he would still abandon her even if Troy was standing. This makes more sense than for her to ask why he would return to Troy if Troy was still standing.
As I recall, doest/doeth was for the main verb and dost/doth was for the auxiliary verb.magicas invitam accingier artis
I was thinking of using an archaic ending to capture the archaic infinitive, but it seems there isn't one for the first person? Of course...
Archaic English Grammar -- dan.tobias.name
If you're going to use archaic English, get it right!
"Conscience doth make cowards of us all." (Shakespeare)
"let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth" (KJV)....I guess you could argue that one isn't irregular.
So just to confirm: there's nothing to be used with a first-person verb?
The OED has examples of "doest" used as an auxiliary, though none of "dost" used as a non-auxiliary.