Tacitus Annales XIV:43

Symposion

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The Roman writer of history Tacitus uses is his work Annales in book XIV at 43 the word adversatus in his sentence "neque sum adversatus". The word adversatus is Singular Masculine Nominative perfect passive participle of First conjugation verb adverso. Right? Then it would mean directed in English. This while he should have used here adversus meaning against. Right?
 

Pacifica

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Adversatus sum is the first person masculine singular perfect indicative of the deponent verb adversor, "to oppose". It being deponent means that the form is passive but translates as active.
 
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Symposion

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You write "masculine singular" can a perfect passive indicative be of other genders?
 
 

Matthaeus

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The PPP has to agree in number, case, and gender.
 

Pacifica

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I'm sorry, I made a typo in my first post (now corrected). Adversatus sum is first person, of course, not third.
You write "masculine singular" can a perfect passive indicative be of other genders?
Yes. If a female had been speaking, it would have been adversata sum, for instance.
 

Symposion

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Helsingia (Finnia)
I think the speach is very difficult to understand. How should "neque sum adversatus, non quia dubitarem, super omnibus negotiis melius atque rectius olim provisum et quae converterentur in deterius mutari, sed ne nimio amore antiqui moris studium meum extollere viderer" be interpreted as? I have the sentence like "And I did not oppose, not because I would doubt, regarding all once better and more correctly conceived things and those that altered the change for worse, but ..." How should the rest be interpreted? The structure is weird and new for me here. I do not even know why! :(
 

Pacifica

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I'm not entirely sure how best to translate studium and extollere here, but it's something like:

And I did not oppose them, not because I doubted that better and righter measures has been taken in the past regarding all affairs and that the things modified were being changed for the worse, but lest I seem to be magnifying my preference with excessive love for ancient custom.
 

Symposion

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Yes it is especially "antiqui moris studium meum extollere viderer" that is the problematic. What structure is used here to make it so very difficult???
 

Pacifica

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For me it's not the structure that's difficult but rather finding the best translations for the individual words extollere and studium in this context.

The structure is the following:

You have ne which introduces a negative purpose clause (lest/so that... not). This kind of clause takes the subjunctive, here viderer.

Viderer
in turn has an infinitive, extollere, depending on it (videri + infinitive = to seem to...).

Extollere has a direct object, studium meum.

And then there's an instrumental ablative, nimio amore, with a genitive modifying it, antiqui moris.
 
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