Many men were so foolish that they despised Quintus...

[ihatequintus]

Hello everyone,

I've been learning latin for about 2 years now and I require some assistance with relative clauses. Here are a few that are bothering me that I have trouble translating to latin. If anyone can translate them, itd be well appreciated.

Many men were so foolish that they despised Quintus because he was the son of a freedman.

But Maecenas valued highly all who were talented.

He did not ask whether they were the sons of freedmen or nobly born.

Maecenas was so busy that he did not call Quintus back at once.

But in the ninth month he callled him back and told him to be one of his friends.

He said that he had been delighted by Quintus' poems; he promised hat he would help me.

Thanks

 

[Iynx]

Salve, Ihatequinte.

1. First, please let me assure you of my sympathy. You are by no means the first Anglophone to have trouble with the Latin penchant for relative clauses, often tangled almost beyond human comprehension.

2. But this question of yours makes me wonder whether you and I have the same understanding of the term "relative clause". What is your definition of the term?

2. Let us (in the meantime) consider the second of your sentences:

"But Maecenas valued highly all who were talented."

Of course it is possible that there is something tricky here that I'm missing. It wouldn't be the first time. But this looks to me like the simplest sort of relative clause, in which the clause ("who were talented" / qui ingeniosi erant) acts like an adjective modifying a substantive ("all"/ omnes).

So I think we might render this:

Maecenas autem magni faciebat omnes qui ingeniosi erant.

Or, if we wanted to place the subordinate clause first and the main verb last (a construction much more common in Latin than in English), we would have:

Omnes autem qui ingeniosi erant Maecenas magni faciebat.

4. What Anglophones most often find difficult about sentences like this is, I think, the "dual allegiance" of the relative pronoun (qui). It must take the number and gender of its antecedent (here omnes, masculine and plural), but its case is determined not by the case of the antecedent, but by the relative's role in the subordinate clause. Omnes is here accusative (as the object of faciebat) but qui is nominative (as the subject of erant.)

5. But I am speculating. I think that we can be of more help to you if you can explain to us what it is that you find difficult about this sentence-- and the others.

 

[ihatequintus]

Thanks for your help. Can anyone else shed some light on the rest of the sentences?

 

[ihatequintus]

SENTENCE NEEDS TRANSLATED! HELP!

He said that he had been delighted by Quintus' poems; he promised hat he would help him.

Can anyone translate this into latin?1

 

[Iynx]

Same sentence as in your earlier post.

I don't want to seem unhelpful. One reason I asked you to come back in the earlier thread is that as far as I can see there is no reason to involve a relative clause in this sentence.

It has two parts, doesn't it? In each a statement (he had been delighted, he will help him) is being uttered by someone. Now as you probably already know, such indirect discourse (oratio obliqua) is generally handled in Latin by a subject accusative with an infinitive. It is true that if subordinate clauses occur within the indirect statement, things can get a lilttle complicated. But as I say, there's no need for such a construction here.

There is a potential stumbling-block however. It has to do with the tenses of the infinitive in constructions like these. The rule is simple: the tense of the infinitive is relative to that of the main verb. If the action of the infinitive is simultaneous with that of the main verb (contemporaneous infinitive), one uses the present infinitve. If the action of the infinitive in a time earlier than that of the main verb (prior infinitive) one uses the perfect infinitive. If the action of the infinitive occurs after that of the main verb (subsequent infinitive) one uses the future infinitive.

I may be paranoid, but this looks to me like a sentence deliberately constructed to see whether someone knows this or not.

"He said" = dixit

that he had been delighted= se + passive infinitive of, say, delecto

Ah, but which passive infinitive: delectari, delectatus esse, or delectatum iri? Well, clearly the delighting had to occur before the saying. So this is a prior infinitive:

Dixit se poematibus Quinti delectatus esse...

Literally: "He said himself by the poems of Quintus delighted to have been..."

Now what about the second half? I'll help, but you need to do it.

"...he promised that he would help him".

He promised= pollicitus est (or if the promising was durative pollicebatur)

that he would help him se + eum+ infinitive

If you come back with the second half, I'll tell you what I think, and correct it if I think it's wrong. Or if you're just plain stuck, on this or on the sentences in your other post, please come back and tell us where you're stuck.

 

[Iynx]

Afterthought: I've been treating the two halves of your sentence as independent entities (which as far as the English syntax goes, they are). But if from context we knew that the subject "he" of each half were the same person, and if we knew that the object "him" of the second half were Quintus (and not, say, Quintus' son), then I think we could improve the Latin by connecting the two halves of the sentence more closely: dixitque for dixit, and eundem for eum.