Timeline for Cethegus (...) recitatis litteris debilitatus atque abiectus conscientia repente conticuit. (Cic. Catil. 3, 10)
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18 events
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| Apr 4 at 8:47 | answer | added | Tyler Durden | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 25 at 16:43 | comment | added | Mitomino | @d_e Just to clarify the point, the two readings suggested in my question have to do with two different syntactic environments. The 2nd option above is not an AA. So I understand that what you mean is that, within the 1st option above, one cannot in principle (cf. your "theoretically/syntactically" above) distinguish between the temporal & the causal interpretations of the AA. Yes, I agree with you in this respect but I don't agree with you when saying that the "AA has semi-causal attributes". As noted, these "attributes" are external to the AA: i.e. they are given by the particular context. | |
| Mar 25 at 16:23 | comment | added | d_e | @Mitomino, in short I don't see how we can distinguish between the two readings suggested. I say AA (despite its name) has semi-causal attributes. | |
| Mar 25 at 16:10 | comment | added | Mitomino | @d_e What do you mean when saying that "even if theoretically/syntactically AA is temporal"? In my opinion, from a "syntactic/theoretical" point of view, the AA is not basically temporal: i.e. theoretically speaking, AAs do not have semantic interpretations that are inherently associated to them. Rather the temporal and causal interpretations, i.a., are to be drawn from each particular context. | |
| Mar 25 at 13:58 | comment | added | Mitomino | @d_e Why do you say that acceptīs litterīs is not an AA "per your definition"? Cf. latin.stackexchange.com/questions/15055/… for some apparently "problematic" examples from a classical author like Caesar (!). | |
| Mar 25 at 13:51 | comment | added | Mitomino | @@cmw In my opinion, the particular syntactic context and the stylistic parallelism with abiectus conscientia makes the 2nd option more natural than the 1st one. NB: recitatis litteris is a typical example of AA found in some important textbooks of Latin syntax: e.g. Woodcock 1959 and Pinkster 2021. As noted above, this example is mentioned MANY times by Pinkster. Perhaps he just followed Woodcock (1959: 34-35), who also omits the particular syntactic context involved but I don’t know if there is a better reason for choosing the 1st option, the one selected by the Loeb translator. | |
| Mar 25 at 13:31 | comment | added | d_e | In A&G the first example of AA is Caesar, acceptīs litterīs, nūntium mittit -- which already makes clear that AA is is perhaps ablative indeed, but absolute not so much (per my definition) - in particular it is many times more than "temporal" but it provides the relevant context which is very close to casual. (i.e, whithout this AA happening it is clear the next action would also not happen). In other words, even if theoretically /syntactically AA is temporal is to be understood as casual. | |
| Mar 25 at 11:06 | comment | added | cmw♦ | Since both are possible, would a Roman have necessarily felt the difference here? Or might they also have teased out which was meant? If listening to this speech, would they have re-analyzed an ablative absolute upon hearing debilitatus, which follows it? | |
| Mar 25 at 3:07 | history | edited | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
new link added
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| Mar 25 at 2:57 | history | edited | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
some specific pages of Pinkster's (2021) OLS added & Loeb translation added & some clarification added
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| Jul 9, 2023 at 5:35 | history | edited | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
link to a similar example added
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| Jul 9, 2023 at 5:28 | history | edited | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Link added & reference OLS added
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| Jan 29, 2023 at 1:25 | history | edited | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typo corrected and link added
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| Jan 28, 2023 at 18:14 | comment | added | Mitomino | @tony I've just taken a look at the translation by C.D.Yonge in the Perseus site: 'Cethegus...being stricken down and dejected at the reading of his letters, convicted by his own conscience, became suddenly silent'. Note that his translation is more in tune with my option 2) above. However, it is based on the addition of the participle convictus (please see note 6 on the Latin text). In addition to the two analyses above, the analysis (the third one!) involved in C.D. Yonge's translation would be [recitatis litteris debilitatus atque abiectus] [conscientia convictus] repente conticuit. | |
| Jan 28, 2023 at 16:28 | history | edited | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Pinkster's (2021: page 394) translation added
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| Jan 28, 2023 at 16:17 | comment | added | Mitomino | @tony You'll see some people quoting it as "Cat(il). 3.5.10" but I prefer doing it following the standard guidelines provided by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae: thesaurus.badw.de/en/tll-digital/index/a.html . Cf. also: thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/cat3.shtml and latin.packhum.org/search?q=conscientia%7Erepente%7Econticuit , where the line 15 is added to facilitate the search in PHI Latin Texts. | |
| Jan 28, 2023 at 9:34 | comment | added | tony | According to Perseus, this reference is Catil. 3.5. | |
| Jan 28, 2023 at 5:00 | history | asked | Mitomino | CC BY-SA 4.0 |