28
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "dies illa" from Dies Irae
This means "illa" definitely doesn't refer to "dies".
But it does!
The word dies can be feminine, and it is here.
The feminine gender is rarer but it is the typical choice for a special day like an ...
- 116k
17
votes
Accepted
Why does Catullus use "odi" instead of "odio" in Catullus 85?
The verb Catullus uses is odisse, not odire (from which you would get an imperative odi).
This verb only has forms in the perfect system but the meaning is that of the present system.
That is, what is ...
- 116k
16
votes
Accepted
How do we know the quantity of vowels followed by several consonants?
The length of vowels with “hidden quantity” can often be discovered from one of the following sources of information:
Explicit descriptions of vowel length in ancient texts
“Lachmann’s law” is a well-...
- 29.8k
15
votes
Accepted
Where does our knowledge of the ancient poetic meters come from?
We know that meter existed because Aristotle in his Poetics flatly tells us so. Moreover, we have quite a bit of testimony from ancient grammarians like Quintilian and Victorinus, whose work on meters ...
cmw♦
- 57.7k
14
votes
Why does Catullus use "odi" instead of "odio" in Catullus 85?
Joonas's answer is entirely correct, but to give a slightly different explanation:
Some verbs in Latin are defective. Some of their forms are outright missing, for no obvious reason. For example, the ...
- 69k
13
votes
Accepted
What exactly is brevis brevians?
For reference:
iambus: light + heavy
pyrrhicus: light + light
creticus: heavy + light + heavy
dactylus: heavy + light + light
Brevis Brevians is a tendency in early Latin, first attested in early ...
- 1,470
13
votes
Meaning of "dies illa" from Dies Irae
It is the feminine nominative and refers to dies. It means “that day.”
You do not say why you think you can definitely rule it out, but I guess you think dies is masculine, which is indeed the case. ...
- 35.4k
13
votes
Word order in Virgil's Aeneid - why so scrambled?
I suspect that any reply to this broad a question will always be rife with conjecture, but the reason for the convoluted word order is always a combination of the metrical cadence, and the effect that ...
- 1,470
13
votes
Accepted
Word order in Virgil's Aeneid - why so scrambled?
I think you're still assuming that English-style word order is in some sense natural or default, despite your correct disclaimer that "sentences that appear 'scrambled' in English might not be ...
- 31.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Omnia vincit amor: vincere or vincire?
As a first point, you are certainly not the first person to recognize this. I found a delightful little poem composed in the 19th century by a certain Piré that uses this same word-play:
Omnia Vincit ...
- 42.6k
12
votes
Accepted
A poem that works in both Latin and Italian
This page (in Italian) has three bilingual Italian-Latin poems.
"Salve Regina" by Anacleto Bendazzi (1883-1982) seems to be the Christian-themed one (though I don't know either Italian or Latin well ...
- 1,332
12
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "τρίχας" in Anacreon's Περι Γέροντος
Accusative of respect: 'He's old/an old man with respect to his hair(s)' – i.e., his hair is that of an old man.
Draconis has alluded to this in the other answer, but it's worth making explicit that ...
- 20.5k
11
votes
Accepted
How to translate these few lines? Met. 1.94–96
Let me offer a translation attempt piece by piece.
My translations are not perfectly literal, but the way I build it up should clarify what it each Latin word does.
I reordered the words to make the ...
- 116k
11
votes
Meaning of "τρίχας" in Anacreon's Περι Γέροντος
To add on a bit to cnread's (completely valid) answer: this is a form that's also called the "accusative of body parts" or the "Greek accusative" (since it wasn't common in Latin ...
- 69k
11
votes
Accepted
Why does Müller read "accusatius" in Satyrica 119.11?
When you see "daggers" (properly obeli) in a critical text, it means the word is (or words are) corrupt. If the editor cannot make sense of the meaning, they are obelized, which is ...
cmw♦
- 57.7k
11
votes
How do I scan the hexameter "faunique satyrique et monticolae silvani"? (From Metamorphoses I, 193)
You're right, the -e in the first enclitic is long. The reason is obscure, but is accessible in Allan and Greenough's (rev. Fowler 1890) student commentary on the Metamorphoses:
faunique : the ...
cmw♦
- 57.7k
10
votes
Accepted
Choosing -ter or -iter for adverbs from third declension adjectives
I have run a quick analysis using data from latinlexicon.org. I included adverbs ending in -ter (about 820). Most end in -iter (the rule). A good number end in -nter (which as you know are formed with ...
- 216
10
votes
Accepted
Does "laviniaque" from Vergil's Aeneid point to Romance palatalization?
This is a phenomenon called synizesis (συνίζησις), and it happens in both Greek and Latin poetry. For example, at the beginning of the Iliad:
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
To fit in a hexameter, ...
- 69k
10
votes
Accepted
John Owen's poem: Umquam or numquam?
It seems plausible that Latin version you quoted is corrupt and the original had numquam, in which case "numquam rediturus ad ortum" would refer to the fact that the sun's course in the sky ...
- 29.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Change of tense from present to imperfect
It's actually quite common to switch from the historic present to other past tenses. Here are some examples from Pinkster's Oxford Latin Syntax, vol. I, 7.16, with the historic present in bold and ...
- 42.6k
10
votes
Unusual grammar in Ars Amatoria 1.509 f: 'a nulla tempora comptus acu'
Theseus is a nulla tempora comptus acu, whose parts can be understood as follows:
Comptus is roughly "tied together".
Acu is a normal instrumental ablative, "with a pin".
...
- 116k
9
votes
Do shorter words tend to come before longer ones in verse?
After doing a rudimentary corpus analysis of the Vergil's Aeneid, my conclusion is that Latin verse does not show any meaningful relationship between syllable length and word position.
To test this, ...
- 42.6k
9
votes
Accepted
Does the letter "X" at the end of a line make that syllable long?
In scansion, a vowel is long by position if there are more than two consonants between it and the next vowel.
This is the usual way of putting it, but it's inacccurate/misleading in a couple of ways.
...
- 31.5k
9
votes
Is there a poetic term for breaking up a phrase, rather than a word?
I believe this is called an anastrophe or a hyperbaton.
For Wikipedia, a hyperbaton is a phrase being interrupted by the insertion of words not belonging to the phrase. Your example would meet this ...
- 35.4k
9
votes
Accepted
Meaning of a present participle in a verse of Vergil's Eclogue 8
It is a typical feature of Latin that participles are used instead of finite verbs, even where we would not expect that in our own languages, or it would sound stilted. This is frequently encountered ...
- 35.4k
8
votes
Accepted
Translation of Samuel Garth's Harveian oration
There are a couple of Greek loan words here:
agyrta(?) (ἀγύρτης), vagabond
theriaca (θηριακή [sc. ἀντίδοτος]), antidote against a poisonous bite (e.g., snake bite)
pyrium (πύρινον [sc. φάρμακον]), ...
- 20.5k
8
votes
Accepted
Locating One of Martial's Epigrams
You indicate that this "translation" comes from Martial via AI, but here's the note of caution with using AI to gather facts. I don't believe there is such a couplet in Martial.
Chat-GPT and ...
cmw♦
- 57.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Where does this (Sappho?) fragment come from
It's an uncertain fragment, fr. 27.1 in Lobel & Page's Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, per the TLG. It comes from P.Vindob. 29777a.
It's on p. 454 of the Campbell's Loeb on Sappho and Alcaeus. If ...
cmw♦
- 57.7k
7
votes
Can one recreate the ambiguity of the (incorrect) sentence "You can learn writing." in Latin?
There are at least three ways of creating the sort of ambiguity you describe.
.1. Polysemy:
You can use a broader word for 'learn.' A Latin phrase such as perago scribere,
creates the same ambiguity ...
- 8,693
7
votes
Accepted
"exoritur" in Ennius' dactylic hexameter
My source for this answer is A. Ernout, Morphologie historique du latin, Paris 1974.
1. orĭtur/orītur
Verbs in -iō (originated by a well-known indo-european -ye/o- suffix attached directly to the ...
- 3,256
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible