Who can blame : culpaverit?

[Gregorius Textor]

114. Who can blame the steward in whatever way he may have attacked that furious rustic?
Quis villicum culpaverit, quoquo modo iratum illum rusticum oppugnaverit?

-- The Mastery Series. Latin. By Thomas Prendergast. Fourth edition, 1880. Retrieved Jan. 1, 2021.

What's going on here? I would expect "Quis villicum culpet" (present subjunctive). If it's "culpaverit" (perfect subjunctive), shouldn't the English be something like "Who can have blamed" or "Who could have blamed"?

 

[Pacifica]

The perfect subjunctive is sometimes used with little difference in meaning from the present subjunctive. The difference, if any, is that with the perfect subjunctive there is some emphasis on the completion of the action, some kind of aoristic nuance.

"Who could have blamed" would normally be quis culparet*, and "who can have blamed"... I'm not sure; it doesn't sound like a very common meaning.

*That's literally more like "who would (back then potentially) blame", but it can idiomatically translate to "who could have blamed".

 

[Gregorius Textor]

I don't see anything in the English that would give a sense that the action is completed. Okay, so I am understanding this as: "who can blame" could be rendered in Latin with either "culpet" or "culpaverit", and his choice of "culpaverit" here is just one of the many arbitrary choices he makes to show that there are many different ways to say the same thing in Latin. He does that a lot with word order, sometimes in spectacularly unexpected ways.

 

[Pacifica]

I don't see anything in the English that would give a sense that the action is completed.

It is not completed yet, of course, but it would potentially be completed in the future (if there were anyone to blame the man).

 

[Gregorius Textor]

Okay, it will be, or it might be.

But what do you mean by "aoristic nuance": "with the perfect subjunctive there is some emphasis on the completion of the action, some kind of aoristic nuance."? I don't know Greek (well, I know very little Greek), but I believe (as my dictionary tells me) that the aorist tense "typically denot[es] simple occurrence of an action without reference to its completeness, duration, or repetition", but you seem to be implying that the aorist nuance does emphasize completion?

 

[Pacifica]

I'm not a Greek expert, but from what I learned, for instance, while the Greek aorist infinitive often corresponds to the Latin perfect infinitive, referring to a previously completed action, it is also used in non-past contexts to refer to the doing and completion of the action once, whereas the present infinitive has a more continuous kind of meaning, a little like "to be doing such and such". The same applies to the imperative, subjunctive and optative. For example, with the imperative, if I tell you to "do this" in the aorist imperative, I'm telling you to complete that action, whereas if I tell you to "do this" in the present imperative, I'm telling you to "be doing it", sort of; to do it continuously or as a habit or something.

 

[Pacifica]

Now maybe the aorist is not so much about completion properly speaking as about the mere "doing" — like, the idea of the action in its simplest form. The idea of completion could simply be contingent in some contexts. Maybe you need a Greek expert here.

 

[Godmy]

I don't see anything in the English that would give a sense that the action is completed.

These aspects are naturally present in infinitives, future and past in the Slavic languages (so yet another reason, why to try study some) - as well as in the Attic Greek in non-finite forms (aorist vs. present). The more depressing thing is sometimes that Latin is inconsistent in using the aspect (through either present vs. perfect; or imperfect vs. pluperfect subjunctives).

 

[Gregorius Textor]

Godmy, I would love to learn some of the Slavic languages. Unfortunately, my linguistic skills and my time on earth are limited. But I enjoyed listening to the Czech radio station that you linked here a while back!

 

[Anbrutal Russicus]

quis culpāverit = rēs ācta·st: nescio·quō·modo rūsticum vīlicus oppugnāverat, et nēmō eum culpāvit, atque id rīte, quia nōn meruit; nec jam amplius rē·fert sī·quis culpet
quis culpet = rēs sub jūdice·st et dēcernitur: rogō sententiam, sī·quis vestrum vīlicum culpandum censeat, aut quis hominum omnīnō, ut vōs opīnāminī

 

[Gregorius Textor]

Thanks for your comments. I doubt that I have understood them completely, but here is my interpretation:

quis culpāverit = rēs ācta·st: nescio·quō·modo rūsticum vīlicus oppugnāverat, et nēmō eum culpāvit, atque id rīte, quia nōn meruit; nec jam amplius rē·fert sī·quis culpet

quis culpaverit = The thing (= attacking the steward) is done: I do not know how the steward attacked the rustic, and no one has blamed him, and that (i.e., not blaming him) is rightly (done) because he does not deserve (to be blamed), and now [the next part seems strange to me:] it doesn't matter any more if anyone blames (him).

quis culpet = rēs sub jūdice·st et dēcernitur: rogō sententiam, sī·quis vestrum vīlicum culpandum censeat, aut quis hominum omnīnō, ut vōs opīnāminī

quis culpet = the thing is under (before) the judge and is being decided: I ask for your opinion (decision), if any of you would judge that the steward is blameworthy, or [again, the next part seems strange:] who of all men, as you suppose.

 

[Anbrutal Russicus]

Thanks for your comments. I doubt that I have understood them completely, but here is my interpretation:

• The thing (= attacking the steward) is done >> the judicial process is finished (<=> sub jūdice, which is idiomatic for the opposite)
• I do not know how >> in some way (hence spelled as a single word)
• who of all men >> anyone, any man (with an indefinite quis) at all
• as you suppose >> specifically as far as you can imagine other people's thinking to be

Everything else seems to be correct!

 

[Gregorius Textor]

So, making those corrections:

quis culpaverit = The thing (= the judicial process) is done: I do not know how the steward attacked the rustic, and no one has blamed him, and that (i.e., not blaming him) is rightly (done) because he does not deserve (to be blamed), and now it doesn't matter any more if anyone blames (him).

quis culpet = the thing is under (before) the judge and is being decided: I ask for your opinion (decision), if any of you would judge that the steward is blameworthy, or anyone at all, as far as you can imagine (other people's thinking to be).

While in English "the judicial process" would strongly support some kind of proceeding in a court of law, I believe that you mean instead the process of the speaker and his listener deciding whether to blame the steward.

Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Anbrutal Russicus]

I suppose I can just give my own idiomatic translation:

quis culpaverit = The process is over: the steward did attack the villager in whatever way, and no one has blamed him, and for a good reason, since he didn't deserve to be blamed. Nor does it matter now if someone blames him.​

​

quis culpet = The process is ongoing and a decision is being made: I ask for your opinion (as a juryman), whether any one of you considers the steward to be in the wrong, or if anyone at all is likely to, in your opinion.​

While in English "the judicial process" would strongly support some kind of proceeding in a court of law, I believe that you mean instead the process of the speaker and his listener deciding whether to blame the steward.

Latin and law often go hand in hand, and in this case it seems to be about an actual legal process. But the terms are vague and idiomatic enough that it doesn't have to be, and can be said informally. I did intend to represent it in these terms because once a legal process is over, it puts a clear end to the situation, which is what the perfect cuplāvit expresses.

 

[Gregorius Textor]

Ah! Prendergast gives very little (or no) context for these sentences, and it did not occur to me that this might be something said in a court of law. But it could be! I will have to keep that in mind (somewhere) in the future.

 

[Anbrutal Russicus]

Ah! Prendergast gives very little (or no) context for these sentences, and it did not occur to me that this might be something said in a court of law. But it could be! I will have to keep that in mind (somewhere) in the future.

To be absolutely clear, it's my example situations and not the original sentence that are likely to involve a legal process; I wouldn't expect the original sentence to be heard in the court of law because it's not talking about an ongoing situation, but a concluded one; my example situations illustrate the difference between an ongoing and a concluded situation. The original sentence with culpāverit can be said in reference to one of them but not the other, which needs an original sentence with culpet.