Incautum means "incautious", and is agreeing with the (implied) direct object "him". Somni would modify incautum, literally "incautious of sleep", i.e. with regards to sleep or so.
quum, ne violentia somni Incautum opprimeret, languidiorque quies
- Thread starter Rocit
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Oops, yes, I didn't state what I meant very well -- but I see what you mean in any case. So literally this would be:
"lest he, incautious of sleep, be overwhelmed by violence and a too sluggish respose..."
Yes, though it's also an active sentence in Latin rather than passive. My translation wasn't meant to be exactly literal.
It's unusual, but Lucretius's vehemens violentia vini makes it not totally outlandish, I suppose. At least the verb opprimeret is appropriately matched in sense to violentia as well as quies.
Though, again, the word "shameful" at the beginning does suggest it's something he's doing by choice -- out of a sense of duty or moral obligation (either to his people, or simply his own idea of what a great leader is) -- and not that he's staying awake because he thinks enemies will kill him in his sleep.
Thanks, though it feels there that Lucretius is making reference more to the power of wine itself over the mind and body than specifically to the stupor it induces, which is only mentioned alongside its capacity to inflame (iurgia gliscunt).
Do you think somni is then more likely to modify violentia here or incautum?
Losing was itself considered very shameful to a general, especially if he survived. For that reason it seems to me a mistake to assume that the sentiment is one of mere self preservation, as if he were only worried that his own life might be taken in his sleep by an assassin or such. As general he would need to able to respond at a moment's notice to any attack on his forces, which is a concern much greater than just his own survival.
Hmm, I see your point. So the reason why it would be shameful for him to fall asleep is that he would be unprepared and vulnerable (and could, potentially, be caught off guard by an enemy attack.) I suppose that does make more sense than him having some idealistic notion that great leaders never should need to sleep (or whatever.)
There's an inconvenient dissimilarity, I agree.
There do seem to be some instances* of the phrase violentia somni in medieval writing. In the ones I've seen (there are one or two others besides those in the links) violentia looks like it's being used as a colourless synonym for vis, but, who knows, maybe there was felt to be a subtly different nuance to it: not just power but irresistible power or something.
If I saw the phrase ne violentia somni incautum opprimeret in isolation I'd certainly be very tempted to take incautum with somni; probably more tempted than I would be to make sense of violentia somni. Here, though, the sense of the passage as a whole, the syntax and the line break do seem to combine to make that interpretation relatively unlikely.
On a more general note, the emblem is a bit irritating because I can't really see the logic of a leader wanting to prevent himself from falling into a sustained or deep sleep. A leader is as useless to his country while he's half asleep just as surely as when he's deeply asleep. Instead of holding a metal ball that will jolt him awake if he lets go of it, why doesn't he just appoint ministers to be awake while he sleeps who can waken him if the need arises? That way, he'll be a lot more alert when he does have to deal with a crisis the minute after he's woken up.
*p.148 left marginal note, about third of way down - somni violentiam
p. 336 right column, 11 lines down - violentia somni
line 1 - violentia somni
Not to mention the horrible effect that prolonged lack of REM sleep has on the body and mind in general...poor Alexander is not going to be very good at fighting off an enemy attack if he's sleep-deprived...
Still, I guess the point isn't really what Alexander did or didn't do, it's the moral of the story for us: ETERNAL VIGILANCE! (As Mad-Eye Moody from the Harry Potter books would say.)
So maybe violentia should be translated as 'forcefulness' or something similar along those lines.
I agree that this legend comes across as unusually silly, even as far as legends go. I wonder how old it is. Is it only medieval?
There's a mention in Ammianus Marcellinus (chapter 5), but it doesn't go into any detail.
A modern work (p.48) gives a different and more plausible explanation for Alexander's self-imposed wakefulness, though I don't know where it gets its version of events from.
It seems the anecdote may have got a mention in Curtius Rufus, if this supplement to him by Freinshemius is anything to go by. See p.16.
A modern work (p.48) gives a different and more plausible explanation for Alexander's self-imposed wakefulness, though I don't know where it gets its version of events from.
It seems the anecdote may have got a mention in Curtius Rufus, if this supplement to him by Freinshemius is anything to go by. See p.16.