Templum Luciferi, qui noctem Lucifer odit, Qui, quanto voluit celsior esse, ruit. Duxeris unde genus

[Pacifica]

Hello, could anyone please help me with this? Page 70, I give the link as always just in case: http://ia600409.us.archive.org//load_djvu_applet.php?file=14/items/liberadhonorema01siragoog/liberadhonorema01siragoog.djvu

This, among other very pleasant things, is addressed to the guy who advised Tancredus's wife to send the empress to be kept in a quite unpleasant place.

Templum Luciferi, qui noctem Lucifer odit,
Qui, quanto voluit celsior esse, ruit.
Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Nam Cartago tuos dirruta misit avos;
Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?

First I have a problem with the qui's in the first two lines. Is their antecedant Lucifer? But it seems strange: "Temple of Lucifer, Lucifer who hates the night, who, as much as he wished to get higher, fell"?

Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Where you got your race from, no race requires from me??? Makes no sense.

Nam Cartago tuos dirruta misit avos;
For your ancestors came from the destroyed Carthage (lit. Carthage sent them).

Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
They came to Salern clad with poor rags,

Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?
And what else could one do than cry over their poverty? I guess it means something like this but literally it's strange: we have the subject pauperies and the infinitive flere can be nothing else than its predicate so literally... "what was their poverty except to cry?" It's strange. If it was really "what was to do except cry over their poverty", pauperies shouldn't be in nominative. Unless the infinitive is used instead of a gerund or so?

Ideas?

 

[Imber Ranae]

First I have a problem with the qui's in the first two lines. Is their antecedant Lucifer? But it seems strange: "Temple of Lucifer, Lucifer who hates the night, who, as much as he wished to get higher, fell"?

Your interpretation of the relative-internal lucifer is correct. Maybe translate it "the [same] Lucifer who hates the night".

Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Where you got your race from, no race requires from me??? Makes no sense.

The verb requiro, despite it's modern derivative, does not usually mean "require". It just means "enquire after/seek to find out".

I'd interpret Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat to mean "From whence you trace your origin/ancestry, no people/race/tribe may enquire of me", i.e. no one can get him to explain where tu comes from. Why he says that right before immediately doing so, I have no idea. The entire poem is just so much senseless pap to me.

Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
They came to Salern clad with poor rags,

Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?
And what else could one do than cry over their poverty? I guess it means something like this but literally it's strange: we have the subject pauperies and the infinitive flere can be nothing else than its predicate so literally... "what was their poverty except to cry?" It's strange. If it was really "what was to do except cry over their poverty", pauperies shouldn't be in nominative. Unless the infinitive is used instead of a gerund or so?

Well, it would also require a different verb in addition to pauperies not being nominative, if that were truly the case. I suppose it means something like "And what reason was there for their poverty except to weep over it?" I can't be sure, though.

 

[Pacifica]

"And what reason was there for their poverty except to weep over it?" I can't be sure, though.

I still don't understand... Pauperies is nominative, so it can't be "what reason was there for their poverty..."

 

[Aurifex]

I still don't understand... Pauperies is nominative, so it can't be "what reason was there for their poverty..."

The most literal interpretation may be the correct one. You touched on it in your opening post: "what was their poverty except to cry?" In other words "what was their poverty but (a cause for) weeping".
This whole poem's a cause for weeping, actually, or it would be if I were forced to read it from beginning to end.

 

[Pacifica]

The most literal interpretation may be the correct one. You touched on it in your opening post: "what was their poverty except to cry?" In other words "what was their poverty but (a cause for) weeping".

I din't know the infinitive could be used this way to express a cause... That's what confused me, even if I got the message I didn't get the construction.

This whole poem's a cause for weeping, actually, or it would be if I were forced to read it from beginning to end.

I'm not forced to I just feel like. Kind of a challenge, I started, I will finish. Just a whim.

 

[Aurifex]

I din't know the infinitive could be used this way to express a cause...

It isn't expressing a cause; the words in brackets are to elucidate the writer's meaning.

 

[Pacifica]

Well, the meaning is to express a cause, then... So it expresses a cause. Otherwise it doesn't really make sense.

Edit: No, rather the result in fact.

 

[Kosmokrator]

Your interpretation of the relative-internal lucifer is correct. Maybe translate it "the [same] Lucifer who hates the night".

maybe here Lucifer here must be interpreted as the morning star ... venus

Your interpretation of the relative-internal lucifer is correct. Maybe translate it "the [same] Lucifer who hates the night".



The verb requiro, despite it's modern derivative, does not usually mean "require". It just means "enquire after/seek to find out".

I'd interpret Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat to mean "From whence you trace your origin/ancestry, no people/race/tribe may enquire of me", i.e. no one can get him to explain where tu comes from. Why he says that right before immediately doing so, I have no idea. The entire poem is just so much senseless pap to me.

I'd use this punctuation;

Duxeris unde genus? gens a me nulla requirat

Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit ... rather awkward i'd say

Whose pauperty, what was else than weeping?

 

[Imber Ranae]

I still don't understand... Pauperies is nominative, so it can't be "what reason was there for their poverty..."

I'm taking quid as adverbial "for what/to what purpose", since it has an infinitive as as a predicate. The translation I gave is a paraphrase to make it sound more like English, not a literal word for word rendering. More literally: "and for what was their poverty other than to weep [over it]?"

 

[Pacifica]

I didn't know quid could mean "for what". Just "what" and "why". But it seems to me that we shouldn't have an infinitive here but rather a gerundive a supine or something. Normally "for smth" takes the dative. It's weird. I'm just confused by that double nominative. For me, nom. est nom. = something is something, not something is to/for something...

 

[Imber Ranae]

I didn't know quid could mean "for what". Just "what" and "why".

"for what" and "why" is really the same idea, though.

But it seems to me that we shouldn't have an infinitive here but rather a gerundive a supine or something. Normally "for smth" takes the dative. It's weird. I'm just confused by that double nominative. For me, nom. est nom. = something is something, not something is to/for something...

I understand the infinitive to be one of purpose or tendency, and I'm not taking fuit as copular: "Why/for what did their poverty exist except for them to weep over it".

 

[Pacifica]

That's what I said, in some way, the infinitive replaces a gerund or a supine (or a ut + subj... reminds me of abc123) I'm really not familiar with infinitives of purpose/tendency, I know they're rather rare and poetic but I don't know if they happen in particular cases, if there are rules on the matter?

 

[Imber Ranae]

I'm not sure. I know it's most common after verbs of motion, just like the supine. But unlike the supine it isn't limited to just that.

 

[Pacifica]

Supines are not limited to verbs of motion, for example you can say mirabile dictu "wonderful (thing) to say"... Or also dignus + supine. But maybe you just meant when they express purpose.

 

[Imber Ranae]

You know what I meant. We've been talking about expressions of purpose: the -u supine is irrelevant.

To be more precise, it's not verbs of motion so much as verbs that imply a destination or goal, so it also includes vocare, collocare, dare and a few others.

 

[Pacifica]

Yes of course we were talking about purpose, sorry !

 

[Kosmokrator]

i recall the augustinian ut quid ... why, absit iniuria, don't you read Tibullus, Propertius, Ovidius instead?

 

[Pacifica]

Don't know. I started reading this and I will finish reading it. Surely one day I'll read those you talk me about as well.

What's so terrible about this text, really, for everyone to complain about it so much...?