Cicero sentence

Question

I have some difficulties to understand this sentence from Cicero - De Legibus

"praeter Idaeae matris famulos eosque justis diebus ne quis stipem cogito"

remark : Idaeae matris stands for Cybele.

I have found some translation, that looks like : "Expect for the priests of Cybele and during some specific days, no one should be allowed to ask for alms."

The part that seems obscur to me is "ne quis stipem cogito".

Cogito might mean "I indend that"

Quis might be an indefinite subject : "someone". So, ne quis would be translated into "no one"

stipem is an accusative for stips stipis (alm)

But there is no verb. Is it omitted ? Or I am wrong in my analysis ?

Answer 1

Note the forms of the other verbs in this passage:

Ex patriis ritibus optuma colunto.
From the ancient rites, let the best be cultivated.

This is a third-person imperative, something we don't have in English, and even in Classical Latin it was seen as rather archaic and formal. But it means exactly what you'd expect from the name: it's commanding that a third person (not the person being spoken to) should do something.

In this case, cōgitō is the same: it's not cōgit-ō "I think", but cōgi-tō "let [someone] collect" (from cōgō, which is a contraction of cō-agō).

Thus, the law says to let no one (nē (ali)quis) collect alms (stipem cōgitō) except the servants of the Idaean Mother (praeter Idaeae matris famulōs), and those (eōsque) only on appropriate days (justīs diebus).

From the comments: it's true that imperatives usually cannot be negative. But this is specifically an archaic formulation, using nē with an imperative instead of with a subjunctive. I'm not sure if it's actually more acceptable with third-person (or future) imperatives than normal second-person ones, or if writers using one archaic feature are simply more likely to use another.

Answer 2

That translation is about right, although famulus usually means an enslaved domestic servant of some kind, not a priest. In the context of a temple, the famuli would be acolytes.

cogito is the future imperative of cōgo, to collect (it's tricky because the word is exactly the same as the first person singular present of cogito, to think)

The rest of your translation is correct, "noone shall collect an alm".

iustis diebus would be on the proper days; the Romans had an elaborate system of approved days for doing specific things