Trouble with dragons.

I have had some questions about the phrase Hunc Graeci draconta vocant.

I thought it was a decent, but surmountable, little challenge. What I've said to two students is that I expected that, not having found the right word in your Cassell's, you would use the online Lewis & Short (in the instructions: "although for “draconta” you might want to see Lewis & Short"; the link among the favourites list to the right of this entry), find draco and under it find the Greek, which you would connect to the hunc Graeci vocant. So, to the best of your ability, put something in there for draconta which fits hunc Graeci vocant. For comparison, consider: "The Romans called it the "senate," but the Spartans the "Gerousia."

And remember that it is only one word in an assignment worth five percent of the year.

Assignment 2 and Lewis & Short

In case anyone needs another copy, here is the second assignment.

I mention that you might want to consult Lewis & Short, which I have mentioned several times before in this blog and in class. In case you can't remember, it is a large dictionary that includes a fair number of later Latin authors through the fourth century or so. That makes it useful for reading later Latin. At the right-hand side of the blog, under "Useful links," you will find a link to the online version hosted by The Perseus Project.

Note that, using that version, you can search the entire text of the dictionary, not just the headwords. You have to be careful to make sure you're using the right fields, etc. If you click on the link, the page you are taken to should have four grey boxes at the right, titled "Dictionary Entry Lookup," "References," "Search," and "Display Preferences." You might need to play around with these to get familiar with them, but for the moment you should know that if  you use the "Dictionary Entry Lookup," and choose Latin for the "in" field, you will search both the full and abbreviated versions of Lewis & Short. You can use this search feature to find many inflected forms that you might be having attaching to a Latin headword. The "Search" field lets you search English definitions.

The Table of Contents field on the left lets you browse entries like you can do with hard copy and see what entries are near the one you are interested in. Sometimes they can help you find something that doesn't at first seem to be in the dictionary.

Adjustment to schedule of readings

Last class I told you to cross off R.M.L. 7.1(b) from your list. Today I'm making that all of Aldhelm in R.M.L., i.e., 7.1. Therefore, after M.M.'s Vita Sancti Ciarani de Saigir we will go to Bede's Ecclesiastical History in R.M.L. (7.2).

Key for the first midterm

Here is the key for the first midterm.

On the whole the marks were good: 2 A+, 3 A+/A, 1 A, 1 B, 3 B-, 1 D/D+, 1 F.

Those students that did not get an A grade all showed continued weakness with basic morphology and grammar. This was particularly notable in the questions. If you didn't know that a gerund is a noun and that they are neuter and decline like second declension nouns, you are in trouble. If you didn't know that bibentibus is a present active participle, as well as being masculine dat. pl., your basics are weak. If you thought solius was nom., when there was no nom. it could be modifying, you need to do lots of review. Similarly, in the translations there were too many instances of someone simply not paying any attention to case endings that go back to early in first-year Latin and so translating accusatives as subjects, nominatives as objects, plurals as singular etc.

By the next midterm you will have two more months of the course behind you and my standards and the difficulty of at least some of the material on the exam will increase.

Last bit o' Boethius

The last sentence...

I said in class that there are three ways I can see taking key parts of the sentence (more as one adjusts certain words), but I'll restrict myself to the more probable two.

First is as Godfrey does: intuitus (not in Cassell's: it is a fourth-declension noun, rarely used, meaning a look or a view; L&S say that in the sense regard or consideration it is used only in ablative, but this work is out of the date range) is the subject. If that is the case, then I don't see that ille can modify anything else, or stand as a substantive. We have to note that there is one finite verb from Quae to cernit, and the et before suis starts a new clause. There is no conjunction nor any punctuation in the first clause. Therefore:

1. All which things (quae ... cuncta taken together, although quae is the relative pronoun and cuncta is the antecedent -- this is common -- and cuncta is simply everything; that is the intuitus sees everything), however, looking forth upon from eternity, that (ille) consideration (i.e., providence is doing the considering) of providence discerns, and disposes whatever is predestined by one's merits.

          1.a. (preferable in many ways) That consideration of providence, however, looking forth from eternity, discerns all these things....

2. Which things (what has gone before), however, that consideration of providence discerns, looking upon everything (cuncta is now a neut. pl. substantive and not directly connected to quae) from eternity, and ....

But, ille is quite removed from intuitus, and so intuitus could be acc. pl., and the object of cernit, whose subject is ille, God:

3. But God, however, looking upon all these things (all which things--quae being what has gone on before) from eternity, discerns the view of providence and ....

Extra "help" for Boethius

Here are some extra notes on the excerpt from The consolation of philosophy in Medieval Mosaic. I apologize for being so emphatically didactic, but I want to help you find the answers as much as give them to you. 

lines 12-13: est ends a clause (and note the following conjunction cum);

        necesse est: sets up an acc./inf. construction;

        liberiores: predicative (see A&G 283 and 284);

13-14: cum: introduces new clause;

        conservant: understand as subject the subject (in this case, the subject accusative) of the previous clause;

        se: acc.;

        speculatione: see Lewis and Short and note how this passage is cited as an example of one definition; note also the typical word order when something is modifying the noun in a prepositional phrase;

        dilabuntur: = di-labor; still the same subject; Cassell’s doesn’t offer a genuinely satisfactory definition—I would say “sink down.” Just for your reference, look up the entry dis-, di-, dir- in Cassell’s;

15: colligantur: none of the other verbs in this series of clauses is subjunctive, so this almost certainly isn’t; therefore it is from conligo –are, not conligo –ligere;

        extrema: feminine, so modifies the next feminine noun, which is the subject of est;

        servitus: look it up for a suitable definition;

        cum starts a new clause;

16: vitiis deditae is parenthetical and I would put it within commas; there is only one word in your dictionary that could generate vitiis, and it is not vitis –is;

        deditae: for its number, compare conservant, dilabuntur, colligantur, and ceciderunt (that is, it’s plural, so it must be fem. nom.; it does not modify rationis, which is followed by an adjective that can agree with it and does);

        vitiis predictable case after verb dare;

        possessione: from the noun posessio and so can only be ablative, the basic use of which is to indicate separation—take with ceciderunt;

17: ubi: “when”—probably used here just for some variation after all those cums;

        oculos: obviously accusative, there is no preposition before it so it is most likely going to be the object of the verb;

        a summae luce veritatis: interwoven word order again; note that a(b) can only govern the ablative, so there should be no confusion as to what noun it governs (the first ablative that follows it);

17-18: ad inferiora et tenebrosa: this is very close to the typical substantive use of the neuter, but I think one is supposed to supply loca or some such noun;

18: deiecerint: still the same subject… ; note that it is not deiecerunt and that ubi does not take the subj. in CL;

        caligant: Cassell’s gives both transitive and intransitive uses: is there a nearby accusative noun that could be its object?

19: turbantur: one would expect this after affectibus, at the end of its clause;

        affectibus: “states of mind”;

        quibus: antecedent is the last plural noun; dative

        quibus accedendo consentiendoque: see Godfrey;  -endo –endo: ablative; gerund or gerundive? Note that there is nothing around here that an ablative masc. or neuter could be modifying;

        quam: rel. pronoun, so introduces relative clause; here it does not end with the verb, but rather with sibi, which, as a reflexive, is so closely linked to invexere that it wouldn’t give a reader any real trouble; as a pronoun it needs a fem. sing. antecedent and nube is fem. sing., but in this case the relative clause is coming before its antecedent, servitutem. This ends the clause (note the following et) that started with quibus (quibus accedendo consentiendoque adiuvant servitutem, quam invexere sibi);

20: invexere:  < inveho (and so cannot be an infinitive--see A&G 163a);

        adiuvant: Cassell’s gives “support,” which would work; L&S has “further,” and “sustain”;

        quodam modo: quidam + modus (Cassell’s, s.v., 3); parenthetical; translate the abl. by using “in”;

        propria libertate: perhaps an instrumental abl. (A&G 409), maybe an abl. of specification (A&G 418), possibly an ablative of cause (A&G 404); whichever way, take with captivae (i.e., sunt propria libertate captivae [sunt captivae propria libertate]).

Boethius

Just in case anyone was having trouble staying calm in the face of such excitement, I thought I'd better say that I have to delay posting the extra help for the Boethius. It will come today, just later in the afternoon.

Philosophy visits Boethius. On the right is Fortune with her wheel, which symbolizes the fickle nature of fate: sometimes one is rising in the world or on the top, and at other times one is falling or is at the bottom. Note that Philosophy is playing a viol: music was one of the seven liberal arts advocated by Boethius. By the Coëtivy Master (Paris) about 1460 - 1470.