Latin How to Read It Fluently - Dexter Hoyos

LATIN

HOW TO READ IT FLUENTLY 

 A Practical Manual

! 1997Dexter Hoyos

CONTENTS TEXTS AND READING RULES

I

I

Texts............... Texts ............................... ................................. .................................. ................................. ................................. ........................ ....... 1

II

Reading Reading Rules.......................................... Rules........................................................... .................................. ................................ ............... 3

WHAT THIS BOOK DOES § 1 The difficulty difficulty of reading reading Latin Latin................ ................................ ................................. .................................. ................... 5 § 2 Reading Reading Latin can be easier................. easier.................................. ................................. ................................. ..................... .... 5 § 3 The scope of this this book....................................... book....................................................... ................................. ........................ ....... 6 § 4 Contents Contents of the the book ................................ ................................................. .................................. ................................ ............... 6

II

WHY I S IT SO HARD TO READ LATIN? § 1 Obstacles Obstacles to fluent fluent reading ................................ ................................................ ................................. ........................ ....... 8

2.1.1

Much reading is translating ............................................................ ............................................................ 8

2.1.2

Reading by decoding: Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. ........................................ ........................................ 9

2.1.3

Reading by decoding: Word-by-Word.................................. Word-by-Word ............................................ .......... 10

2.1.4

Decoding not reading ................................................................ .................................................................... .... 10

§ 2 Anyone can can read Latin Latin directly directly from the page page ................................. ........................................... .......... 11 III BASICS IN READING § 1 First step: step: recognise recognise without without translati translating ng ............................... ................................................ ........................ ....... 13

3.1.1

The dictionary instinct: not good ......................................................... ......................................................... 13

3.1.2

Word-endings are crucial in reading................................................ reading.................................................... .... 13

3.1.3

Reading Rules 1 and 2................................................. 2...................................................................... ..................... 13

§ 2 Why you must understand before translating........... translating.. ................... ................... .................. .............. ..... 14 § 3 Recognising Recognising sentence sentence structure structure ................................. .................................................. ................................ ............... 14

3.3.1

A look at Passage A ................................................................. .......................................................................... ......... 14

3.3.2

Reading Rule 3 ................................................................. ................................................................................ ............... 15

§ 4 Words and their meanings.......................... meanings........................................... .................................. ............................. ............ 15

3.4.1

Find a range of meanings.......................................................... meanings................................................................... ......... 15

3.4.2

Decide which meanings work in the sentence......................................... sentence......................................... 16

3.4.3

Reading Rules 4 and 5 ................................................................. ..................................................................... .... 16

IV LATIN WORD-GROUPS § 1 Words work work in in groups groups ................................. .................................................. .................................. ............................. ............ 18

4.1.1

Word-groups, not just individual words, matter................................ matter .................................... .... 18

4.1.2

Types of word-groups............................. word-groups ............................................................... ........................................... ......... 18

§ 2 Recognising word-groups: two examples in English .................. ........ ................... ................. ........ 19

4.2.1

Hamlet mis-grouped................................................ mis-grouped.......................................................................... .......................... 19

V

4.2.2

Links between word-groups ................................................................ ................................................................ 20

4.2.3

Shakespeare using Word-by-Word............................ Word-by-Word...................................................... .......................... 21

UNDERSTANDING WORD-GROUPS § 1 Types Types of of word-gr word-groups oups................ ................................. .................................. .................................. ............................. ............ 22

5.1.1

Main Clauses: the frame for the sentence............................... sentence.............................................. ............... 22

5.1.2

Subordinate word-groups are phrases and clauses.................................. 23

5.1.3

Subordinate word-groups: sequences and embraces ................................ 23

5.1.4

The logic of the ‘embracing’ principle.......................................... principle................................................... ......... 24

5.1.5

Reading Rule 6 ................................................................. ................................................................................ ............... 25

§ 2 Recognising Recognising word-group word-groupss ................................. ................................................. ................................. ........................ ....... 25

5.2.1

Opening words are signposts...................................................... signposts............................................................... ......... 25

5.2.2

A word-group is usually only a few words long..................................... long..................................... 26

5.2.3

Word-groups begin and end with words closely linked in syntax or sense,

and often both......................................................................... both........................................................................................ ............... 27 5.2.4 The endings of words in a word-group word-group show how it works ....................... 29 Appendix: Appendix: Ablatives Ablatives absolute absolute ................................ ................................................. ................................. .......................... .......... 30 VI STUDYING LATIN STRUCTURES § 1 How word-gr word-groups oups relate relate to one another another ............................... ................................................ ..................... .... 33

6.1.1

Examples of relationships .................................................................. .................................................................. 33

6.1.2

An analytical table for Livy’s Sabine women............................... women ........................................ ......... 35

§ 2 More about line-analys line-analysis........................ is........................................ ................................. .................................. ................... 37

6.2.1

Using line-analysis................................ line-analysis .................................................................. ........................................... ......... 37

§ 3 ‘Arch’ ‘Arch’ diagrams diagrams ................................ ................................................. ................................. ................................. ........................ ....... 38 § 4 ‘Arches’ in action............. action.............................. .................................. ................................. ................................. ........................ ....... 40

6.4.1 One ‘arch’ can be fully over-arched by another...................................... another...................................... 40 6.4.2 One ‘arch’ does not intersect another........................................... another.................................................... ......... 40 6.4.3

Reading Rules 7 and 8................................................. 8...................................................................... ..................... 41

VII SENTENCE STRUCTURE § 1 Narrative Narrative Latin......................... Latin......................................... ................................. .................................. ................................ ............... 43

7.1.1

The Sabine Women: actions........................................................... actions............................................................... .... 43

7.1.2

Reading Rule 9 ................................................................. ................................................................................ ............... 44

§ 2 Descriptive/a Descriptive/analy nalytical tical Latin Latin ................................. ................................................. ................................. ..................... .... 44

7.2.1

The non-narrative statement............................... statement ............................................................... ................................ 44

7.2.2

The Sabine Women, descriptive and rhetorical...................................... rhetorical...................................... 45

7.2.3

Cicero on the death of Hortensius.............................. Hortensius ........................................................ .......................... 46

7.2.4

A Tacitean example ................................................................. .......................................................................... ......... 48

7.2.5

Reading Rule 10 ............................................................... .............................................................................. ............... 49

§ 3 Summary Summary ................................. ................................................. ................................. .................................. ................................ ............... 50

VIII

7.3.1

Latin sentences have a logical structure ................................................ 50

7.3.2

Practice makes perfect........................................................................ 50

TEACHING READING SKILLS § 1 Fitting them into the Latin course.............................................................. 51

8.1.1 An integral and continuing element...................................................... 51 8.1.2 Developing reading skills in class ........................................................ 51 8.1.3 Assessing and testing reading skills in class .......................................... 52 § 2 Comprehension......................................................................................... 53

8.2.1 Comprehension (a k a understanding)................................................. 53 8.2.2 Comprehension-teaching methods ........................................................ 53 IX TRANSLATION § 1 The limits of translating as a study tool...................................................... 56 § 2 Principles for translation from Latin .......................................................... 56

9.2.1 Do not use the English derivative, except in special cases........................... 56 9.2.2 Three common words: ‘ animus’, ‘res’, ‘res publica’ ............................ 57 9.2.3 Literal translation must be avoided, or LIAW......................................... 57 9.2.4 Broad paraphrase vs literalism............................................................... 58

Texts and Reading Rules These texts will be drawn on in the book for examples and discussion. It may be useful to photocopy them for easy reference while using the book, to save on turning back and forth. The Reading Rules are introduced progressively in Chapters III—  VII. I

 A

TEXTS

His et talibus rationibus adductus Socrates nec patronum quaesivit ad iudicium capitis nec iudicibus supplex fuit adhibuitque liberam contumaciam a magnitudine animi ductam, non a superbia, et supremo vitae die de hoc ipso multa disseruit et paucis ante diebus, cum facile posset educi e custodia, noluit, et tum, paene in manu iam mortiferum illud tenens poculum, locutus ita est ut non ad mortem trudi, verum in caelum videretur escendere. CICERO, Tusculanae Disputationes 1.71

B Dum haec in colloquio geruntur, Caesari nuntiatum est equites Ariovisti propius tumulum accedere et ad nostros adequitare, lapides telaque in nostros coicere. Caesar loquendi finem facit seque ad suos recepit suisque imperavit ne quod omnino telum in hostis reicerent. Nam etsi sine ullo periculo legionis delectae cum equitatu proelium fore videbat, tamen committendum non putabat ut, pulsis hostibus, dici posset eos ab se per fidem in colloquio circumventos. Posteaquam in vulgus militum elatum est qua arrogantia in colloquio Ariovistus usus omni Gallia Romanis interdixisset, impetumque in nostros eius equites fecissent, eaque res colloquium ut diremisset, multo maior alacritas studiumque pugnandi maius exercitui iniectum est. CAESAR, De Bello Gallico 1.46

C Tum Sabinae mulieres, quarum ex iniuria bellum ortum erat, crinibus passis scissaque  veste, victo malis muliebri pavore, ausae se inter tela volantia inferre, ex transverso impetu facto dirimere infestas acies, dirimere iras, hinc patres, hinc viros orantes ne se sanguine nefando soceri generique respergerent, ne parricidio macularent partus suos, nepotum illi, hi liberum progeniem. LIVY, Ab Vrbe Condita 1.13.1-2

D Sed quoniam perpetua quadam felicitate usus ille excessit e vita suo magis quam suorum civium tempore et tum occidit cum lugere facilius rem publicam posset, si viveret, quam iuvare, vixitque tam diu quam licuit in civitate bene beateque vivere, nostro incommodo detrimentoque, si est ita necesse, doleamus, illius vero mortis opportunitatem benevolentia

2 potius quam misericordia prosequamur, ut, quotienscumque de clarissimo et beatissimo viro cogitemus, illum potius quam nosmet ipsos diligere videamur. CICERO, Brutus 1.4

E Clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris tradere, antiquitus usitatum, ne nostris quidem temporibus quamquam incuriosa suorum aetas omisit, quotiens magna aliqua ac nobilis  virtus vicit ac supergressa est vitium parvis magnisque civitatibus commune, ignorantiam recti et invidiam. Sed apud priores ut agere digna memoratu pronum magisque in aperto erat, ita celeberrimus quisque ingenio ad prodendam virtutis memoriam sine gratia aut ambitione bonae tantum conscientiae pretio ducebatur. TACITUS, Agricola 1.1-2

3

II

READING RULES

RULE 1 A new sentence or passage should be read through completely, several times if necessary, so as to see all its words in context. RULE 2 As you read, register mentally the ending of every word so as to recognise how the words in the sentence relate to one another. RULE 3 Recognise the way in which the sentence is structured: its Main Clause(s), subordinate clauses and phrases) . Read them in sequence to achieve this recognition  and re-read the sentence as often as necessary, without translating it . RULE 4 Now look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary; and once you know what all the words can mean, re-read the Latin to improve your grasp of the context and so clarify what the words in this sentence do mean. RULE 5 If translating, translate only when you have seen exactly how the sentence works and what it means. SUB-RULE Do not translate in order to find out what the sentence means. Understand first, then translate. RULE 6 a. Once a subordinate clause or phrase is begun, it must be completed syntactically before the rest of the sentence can proceed. b. When one subordinate construction embraces another, the embraced one must be completed before the embracing one can proceed. c. A Main Clause must be completed before another Main Clause can start.

4

RULE 7 Normally the words most emphasised by the author are placed at the beginning and end, and all the words in between contribute to the overall sense, including those forming an embraced or dependent word-group. A word-group can be shown by linking its first and last words by an ‘arch’ line. RULE 8 The words within two or more word-groups are never mixed up together: ‘arches’ do not cut across one another . But an ‘arch’ structure can contain one or more interior ‘arches’: that is, embraced word-groups. RULE 9 All the actions in a sentence are narrated in the order in which they occurred. RULE 10 Analytical sentences are written with phrases and clauses in the order that is most logical to the author. The sequence of thought is signposted by the placing of word-groups and key words.

5

I:

What This Book Does Latin is a language  As dead as dead can be. It killed the ancient Romans,  And now it’s killing me. ( Traditional lament   )

§1

THE DIFFICULTY OF READING LATIN

As the school rhyme shows, Latin’s difficulty is almost sublimely proverbial. Students battle through months and years of learning tables, lists, rules and exceptions to rules. This is challenge enough, but they are struggling at the same time to apply all these details to reading texts that  vary from prose to verse, short to long, domestic to military (there is a great deal of military)—all with one predictable constant: baffling obscurity. It is hard to read Latin. This is probably the main reason why so many students, sooner or later, give it up. Declensions, conjugations and rules of syntax can be learned—often slowly and painfully to be sure, but repetition does foster familiarity. Not so real Latin texts, which can deal with any subject under the ancient sun and from practically any structural and literary viewpoint. Worse, it does so using a word-order (in fact many types of word-order) about as different from English as can be imagined. As we shall see, the usual techniques taught for reading Latin compound the difficulties. They really teach a process of slow translation into English, one so painstaking that the colour, depth and import of what is read tend to be lost on the ‘reader’ all too often, or at best to be glancingly appreciated.1

§2

READING LATIN CAN BE EASIER

Latin does not have to be read this way. Students of other languages—French, Spanish or Russian, for instance—expect that as time goes by they will be able to read and understand texts by a holistic method: they start at the beginning and read through to the end, gathering the sense of the sentence, and then the paragraph, as they do so without needing to translate it bit b y bit into English. It is hardly a secret that you can read Latin in exactly the same way. This manual shows how. It is not a Latin textbook, but is designed to be used with any Latin course. It can be used at any level, from beginners on, because the reading-rules it teaches are 1 On translating as a study-method,and its pitfalls, see B.D. Hoyos, ‘Cutting down (out?) translation in Latin’, Texas Classics in Action (Summer 1997) 14-25.

6 fundamental to the language and eminently logical. It is designed for teachers, who can adapt the rules and methods to suit their classes’ levels and their own teaching style, but older students (whatever their level) can use it directly too. It needs to be emphasized right away that learning to read Latin fluently and without having to translate it does not   rule out continuing to practise translating as well. Translating is widely if not universally seen as an important tool of study (in both Latin and Greek). But obviously enough, students who can read a sentence or longer text fluently, and without needing to translate it from the start in order to work out what it means, will achieve translations far more accurate—and well-executed—when the time for such work comes round.

§3

THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK

This book is designed to be used by readers of Latin at any level. It can be used by individuals for self-guidance and by teachers in classes at secondary and tertiary levels. Each user can choose what sections of it are most relevant to his or her needs. To follow the discussion in the book, users should know some basic Latin grammar (i.e. accidence and syntax), say two terms’ worth, or be in th e process of learning it. At the same time, the first five Reading Rules can be learned and put to use by beginners the moment they open their first Latin textbook or CD-ROM. The next five Rules will then follow as the grammar is learned. Beginners’ level Latin, and perhaps the level after that, involve short and simply structured reading—as a rule, sentences and short passages. For readers at these levels Chapters II to V are the most immediately relevant, and equally relevant to students at higher levels too (including high school or beyond) who have not previously been taught fluent reading methods. More advanced classes will benefit from Chapters II to VII inclusive. The remaining chapters and appendices are meant chiefly for teachers. Five sample prose passages, from the relatively easy (that is, less complexly structured) to the fairly difficult, provide examples for discussion. These are styles of prose that students with two or more years of Latin are likely to meet: the authors are Cicero (with two selections), Caesar, Livy and Tacitus. It is important to use a range of examples, both to show that the principles of correct reading do not change and to give practical guidance on how to use the principles with Latin of differing complexities. Since Latin reading-rules themselves are the same at every level, teachers are encouraged to use their own preferred selections as well as, or instead of, the ones given in this manual. Short sentences and paragraphs, of real or made-up Latin, are best for beginners: passages  A   and B, and others like them, can be used. B and C are representative of lengthier but not too complex texts for students at the next level. Advanced students can appreciate C, D and E, but the first two passages hold lessons for them too. What remains the same at all levels are the methods, which as the manual shows embody basic and logical principles in Latin expressi on.

7

§4

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

CHAPTER II discusses the problem of achieving accurate and flu ent Latin reading. CHAPTER III describes the most basic methods for correct reading. C HAPTERS IV–VII then show the importance of word-groups (i.e. main and subordinate clauses, and phrases), how sentences are structured from them, and how to recognise and comprehend them. CHAPTERS  VIII–X then outline how the methods can be taught in Latin courses, even at beginners’ level, and what the rôle of translation can still be. In CHAPTERS III–VII, most text-examples are drawn from the five passages (  A–E ) set out at the beginning of the book. It may be convenient to photocopy these for easy reference as the manual is worked through. In addition, ten essential R EADING RULES  are progressively given after being discussed. For convenience these have been printed together after passages A  to E. To sum up: anyone who knows Latin grammar can learn to read Latin texts fluently and without translating. Ideally, the method of doing so should be an integral part of learning the language from the very beginning. If not, then the sooner the better: when students see it taken for granted that Latin is to be read direct from the page, the battle has already begun to be won. Whatever method is used, regular practice is essential for building expertise and confidence. Then with expertise and confidence come greater in-depth comprehension and, in turn, far greater enjoyment. Latin (it turns out) can indeed be fun.

8

II:

Why Is It So Hard To Read Latin? §1

OBSTACLES TO FLUENT READING

As an inflected language Latin is more complicated to learn than English, and trying to read it is notoriously difficult for nearly everybody, as mentioned earlier. Even after we have acquired a sound knowledge of its grammar (i.e. accidence and syntax) and vocabulary, actual Latin texts are typically a slow and often painful grind. Not just word-meanings but word-order are constant problems. Subordinate clauses and phrases are hard to recognise. The structure of lengthier sentences baffles; the train of thought in a sentence or group of sentences is often opaque too. As a result many—perhaps most—readers get through only a fraction of the amount that they could read in the same span of time in their own language. The experience is often so painful that they then prefer to tackle Latin literature via translations. Why is it so hard?

2.1.1 Much reading is translating  The usual reading-technique that is taught is translating. The translation process itself is used as a principal way of finding out what a Latin text is saying. Similarly in grammar study, though translation into Latin (‘prose composition’) is no longer widely popular, for students to translate Latin passages into their own language remains a standard tool. 2 Since the word-order and verbal logic of a Latin sentence differ from those in English (and those in many other modern languages too), this is an obstacle-strewn and generally thankless method. It is not surprising that many students give up after a time—or take away with them exasperatedly unsympathetic memories.

2The assumption that studying Latin means a lot of translation into English is incidentally illustrated by the number of books of ‘unseen translation’ passages still available (an interesting one is A. Bowen,  Advanced Latin Unseens [Bristol Classical Pr., 1980]).

Unusually, M.G. Balme and M.S. Warman’s  Aestimanda: Practical

Criticism of Latin and Greek Poetry and Prose  (Oxford 1965) does try other approaches—though it is not concerned with reading & comprehension method, and still treats translation as a basic study tool ( Aestimanda, pp. 5, 9). An excellent older collection of prose and verse passages for ‘reading’, J.D. Duff’s Silva Latina: a Latin  Reading Book   (Cambridge 1912 and reprs.), advises in its preface: ‘A prefatory note has been prefixed to each  passage; this should be read before translation is attempted . … Each one of these passages should be read aloud  both before and after it is translated’   (pp. vi-vii; my italics). But Duff’s encouragement of reading aloud is very much to be applauded, provided that efforts are made towards correct pronunciation and accent.

9

2.1.2  Reading by decoding: Hunt- the-Verb- Etc Various techniques for ‘reading’ Latin (i.e. reading via translating) have evolved. A standard one is ‘Hunt-the-Verb-Etc.’ Confronted with passage A , for instance— His et talibus rationibus adductus Socrates nec patronum quaesivit ad iudicium capitis nec iudicibus supplex fuit adhibuitque liberam contumaciam a magnitudine animi ductam, non a superbia, et supremo vitae die de hoc ipso multa disseruit et paucis ante diebus, cum facile posset educi e custodia, noluit, et tum, paene in manu iam mortiferum illud tenens poculum, locutus ita est ut non ad mortem trudi, verum in caelum videretur escendere

 — first the student is guided to hunt through it to pick out its main verb (or verbs). Subordinate  verbs like  posset  and videretur need to be ruled out; so too the false friends that to the unwary may look like main verbs—e.g. educi   —but are not.  Posset, for instance, will be ruled out because it is subjunctive (not many main verbs of sentences are) and because cum  preceding can only be explained as a conjunction introducing a clause and therefore needing a finite verb. As there are in fact six main verbs to be identified, this process takes time. Next the hunt switches to the subject(s). In fact there is only one subject in passage A, but this may not be realised until A has been trawled through several times. Alternatively some students will first look for the subject form or forms, then for the verbs. But once the subject and its verbs are located, the reader—or more accurately the decoder of the hidden message—has to return to each verb in turn to work out whether it is transitive or intransitive; next what the accusative objects of the transitives are. and how the intransitives relate to the words n earest them. He or she must meantime ignore other word-groups in the sentence—‘his et talibus rationibus adductus’, ‘a magnitudine animi ductam’, ‘cum facile posset educi e custodia’, and so on. They get attended to only afterwards. When their turn comes, various ways of slotting them in have to be tried, requiring grammatical analyses of their component words and experimentation with  various ways of translating them.3

3 Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. is well illustrated by B.W.M. Young’s well-meaning Via Vertendi: A Latin Unseen Course (London 1952, repr. 1966), which offers advice like this (italics in the o riginal): [The first stage is] ‘how to find the “bones” of a sentence—subject, verb, and object or complement. Once you have found these, you can fit in adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc.’ (p. 1). Chapter I is entitled ‘Which is the Main Verb?’ and advises: ‘1.  Know what you are looking for. Participles and gerunds should be ignored in this first search. … 2.  Bracket off subordinate clauses in you r mind. … Ignore these for the present’ (p. 3). Chapter II is ‘Find the Subject’, and affirms: ‘The verb will tell you the person and number of the subject ’ (p. 8). Later advice includes (p. 76) ‘do not guess [the sense of the passage] too early: you will make many mistakes if you jump to conclusions before the Latin has been puzzled out.’ At least Via Vertendi offers explicit advice. Most collections of reading-passages simply assume the Hunt-theVerb-Etc. method, or worse.

10 Translating longer sentences often obeys the same formula: go straight for the main verb and its subject, and only slot in the rest of the sentence afterwards, one way or another. Most of the time this totally disrupts the logic of the Latin sentence, with particular catastrophes when a periodic sentence is being handled.

2.1.3  Reading by decoding: Word-by-Word  Another technique is the old Word-by-Word method. Each word in turn is scrutinised for its grammar and vocabulary meaning. Then once some words seem to form a phrase or a clause, a tentative meaning is worked out for them. The process has been well described as ‘translating Latin sentences by writing a string of English words up above the Latin’.4 Like Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. but even more emphatically, Word-by-Word rests on treating a Latin sentence as a tangled English one. For practical purposes, the Latin words are regarded as English ones which have been turned into their Latin equivalents and jumbled up. So all that is needed is to remove the Latin labels to find the English beneath, and then rearrange these into something like English word order. This task often needs more than one stage. So the start of passage  A  could be first puzzled out as: (1) ‘By-these [ = His ] and suchlike reasonings [ et talibus rationibus ] led-on [ adductus ], Socrates neither a patron sought towards the judgement of the head (life) nor tothe-judges was suppliant’ which might after various experiments be revised to: (2) ‘Led on [ or Influenced] by these and similar considerations, Socrates neither sought a defender on his capital charge nor offered entreaties to his judges.’ And so on through the passage, with the final version being a revision of the various revisions. An able student practised in either method can ‘read’—that is, acceptably translate—such passages without too much agony, though slowly compared with someone who can read the texts directly at sight. Most students meanwhile will take a much longer time again, suffer a good deal more, and their final version will include mistakes.

2.1.4  Decoding not reading  What happens in these processes is not reading as we read our own language. In principle we read a sentence in English by beginning at the first word and reading steadily through. By the time we reach the last word we have the meaning of the sentence clear in our mind. As noted earlier, so do practised students of French, Russian and other modern languages. By contrast, the ‘reading’ of a Latin sentence habitually treats its words and word-groups as manipulable blocks. Blocks to be shifted around, like jigsaw pieces, to form a sequence suited to the native language of the ‘reader’.

4 John Arthos, ‘Reading Virgil with Gadamer’s hermeneutics’, The Classical Outlook   72.4 (1995) 117–21, at 117.

11 This mechanical and formulaic approach owes something to the similar fashion in which its grammatical forms and rules are learned, as well as to its individual sentence-structure. The result is to drill into students the assumption that, basically, Romans chose to jumble their words out of the ‘correct’ order and left it to readers to rearrange them into correct (i.e. English) sequence. Deconstructive processes like these impose serious drawbacks. For one thing they are seriously time-consuming. For another, the focus on teasing out the individual word or small phrase means that students risk losing the thread of every medium-to-long sentence, and all too many do. Even worse, many or most students know only one way to ‘read’ a sentence or a passage: translate it bit by bit with the ever-present risk of a sin gle error leading everything else astray. The notion of Latin word-order being random or whimsical, and thus unpredictable, prompts guesswork and stabbing in the dark: verbs in subordinate clauses treated as main-clause verbs, adjectives linked to inappropriate nouns, phrases and clauses in illogical sequences, not to mention vocabulary guessed at. 5 One resigned attitude, apparently quite common, to coping with this is to maintain that ‘it isn’t necessary to get every detail right so long as the general sense is.’ Worst of all, when Latin texts present such a seemingly tangled front the prospects of developing appreciation of stylistic nuances, and analytical or narrative subtleties, are crucially lessened. Students have to take it on trust that what they are reading is great literature, and that the literary style of one author is in strong contrast to another’s (Cicero’s and Sallust’s, for instance, or Caesar’s vs Livy’s). After all, to many a student every Latin text seems to be in a uniform type of baffling code. In sum, reading Latin by these methods is time-consuming drudgery, and reading a lot of Latin quickly (a book of Vergil, say, in an evening) impossible—a sharp contrast to what someone can manage who has studied German, for instance, for just as long. By these techniques, the amount of Latin that can be read even over a lifetime will be small, and even so the ‘reader’ will at times seek help from translations.

§2

A NYONE CAN READ LATIN DIRECTLY FROM THE PAGE

But mechanical reading methods are not mandatory for Latin. Romans must have read—that is,

read   and understood   —things written in their own language in much the same way as we do ours.6 As just noted, we start with the first word, read the rest in sequence and, by the time we reach the end, have reasonably comprehended what the whole sentence is about. We never start a sentence by looking for the main verb and its subject, then move on to hunt its object, and so on.

5 A small and classic example is one rendition of Horace’s vis consili expers mole ruit sua:  ‘the unexpected weight of the consul fell upon the soft pig’ (from the UK Classical Association’s CA Review No. 14 [June 1996] p. 20; the line is Odes 3.4.65).

6 I am not concerned here with whether the Romans read texts aloud or silently.

12 (Nor of course do we feel a need to translate it into another language to grasp its full meaning.) Of course if it is long, its subject-matter complex, or the writer’s use and arrangement of words unusual, we read it more than once. Latin students can learn to read in the same way. All that is needed is a knowledge of accidence and syntax, along with common sense and (very important)  a commitment to

practising . The methods are easy to understand and straightforward to apply. As expertise develops, the speed of reading picks up, and this in turn improves comprehension. With regular study and regular practice, even a book of Vergil in one evening will be unimaginable no longer.

13

III:

Basics in Reading

§ 1 FIRST STEP: RECOGNISE WITHOUT TRANSLATING 3.1.1 The dictionary instinct: not good When a reader meets Latin words whose meaning is not known, his or her first instinct is to look them up in a dictionary. This practice fits naturally enough into commonly-used techniques like Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. or Word-by-Word, with their emphasis on dissecting the meaning through translating. Meaning found or thought to be found, the word-endings are then judged in translationterms: his ‘by/with/from these …’, rationibus ‘reasons/concerns/ reckonings/ accounts’,

quaesivit   ‘he/she looked for, sought’, and so on. Then by a process of comparison and contrast the more or less appropriate meanings are worked out. At bottom there is the assumption that the Latin sentence is virtually an English one with the words jumbled. As already noted, from the very beginning the aim ingrained into students confronting Latin is to translate it.

3.1.2  Word-endings are crucial in reading  Now obviously it is necessary to know what the words in a passage mean or can mean, but this is not really the initial need. The initial need is to recognise how the words of the sentence are shaped in Latin, and how they relate to one another to form phrases and clauses. The ending of a word indicates how it relates to others in the sentence, and so the ending must be mentally registered immediately the word is met. As a rule this is not done—instead the first thing looked at is the word’s beginning and the next is a dictionary. Correct reading method means dropping this habit and training ourselves in the other. It may be helpful (even if philologically inexact) to see a Latin word as in two equally important, sometimes overlapping, halves: the first half gives its dictionary meaning, the second its grammatical relationship to the rest of the sentence. Thus quaesivit   can be seen as quaes- (seek, sought) and -sivit   (perfect tense).

Some words do not change endings, of course—notably

prepositions and adverbs—but the principle holds for nearly all.

3.1.3  Reading Rules 1 and 2 Correct reading, in sum, means that each Latin word is recognised entire. Thus we have our first Reading Rules: RULE 1

A new sentence or passage should be read through completely, several times if

necessary, so as to see all its words in context.

14 RULE 2

As you read, register mentally the ending of every word so as to recognise how the

words in the sentence relate to one another.

§ 2 WHY YOU MUST UNDERSTAND BEFORE TRANSLATING RULES 1 and 2 hold good even if you mean to use Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. or any other translating technique so as to get at what the sentence is s aying. They are after all just common sense. The temptation to tackle a Latin passage by translating it is strong. Since it is commonly taken for granted anyway as the goal of reading Latin, the principle that ‘we translate in order to understand’ seems logical. This has in fact been been part of the bedrock of Latin teaching and learning since the Middle Ages. The hope is that the sentence’s meaning will gradually emerge, like a sculpture from the original shapeless block. In fact, to read Latin properly you must strictly avoid this temptation. As pointed out above, it is not only illogical but (more damagingly) counter-productive: it reinforces the ‘decodedisentangle’ approach and it normally takes a long and laborious time to achieve. It also means that as soon as one mistake is made the rest of the translation starts to go wrong. Perhaps worst of all, it reinforces the notion that Latin literature is meant to be u nderstood via the reader’s own language. If translating is to be done, the correct principle is to do it only  when you know what the sentence means. More compactly: understand first, then translate. RULES  1 and 2 by themselves will not make this possible (there are eight more to come) but they are the essential start. Once you know what the Latin means, then translating it becomes simply the job of finding suitably accurate English; and that is how things should be. Translation should not be a tool for understanding, but an offshoot from it.

§ 3 RECOGNISING SENTENCE STRUCTURE 3.3.1 A look at Passage A Let us now take the opening of passage  A : His et talibus rationibus adductus Socrates nec patronum quaesivit ad iudicium capitis nec iudicibus supplex fuit adhibuitque …

The common way of getting at what a sentence means—especially a difficult one—is of course to pick it apart via Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. or some similar technique, and then painstakingly translate out the bits. But as stressed before, this is the guaranteed way never   to achieve correct reading. Instead of starting by puzzling over what rationibus, adductus, iudicium capitis  etc. mean in English, the student should recognise that

15 [1]

his … adductus  is one phrase, for the words form a group completed by the

participle adductus, [2]

this participial phrase looks ahead to Socrates, since adductus is masculine singular ;

[3]

and Socrates  in turn is the subject of the main verbs that follow (notice that it

comes before all the main clauses). [4]

Now a series of co-ordinate main clauses is arriving, because a) nec … nec directly after Socrates announces the first two of them, each with its  verb ( quaesivit, fuit   ); b) then comes adhibuit , a third verb and one with -que emphatically attached.

[5]

Next, adhibuit  is transitive and therefore tells the reader that an object is coming,

[6]

and this proves to be the phrase liberam contumaciam a magnitudine animi ductam ,

[7]

with a magnitudine animi depending on ductam to form another participial phrase.

And so on through A . The entire layout of  A   can be recognised and analysed on these principles without a word of it being translated. The analysis does not need to go into every last detail of syntax, but aims at recognising the relationships between  A ’s word and what its constructions are: its Main Clauses, subordinate clauses, and phrases. Instead of fastening on individual words and figuring out the meaning of each, then stringing the supposed English equivalents together to produce a translated version of some sort, a reader can learn to recognise relationships (e.g. his et talibus

rationibus depending on and thus being grouped with adductus: [1] above), plus the implications of grammatical forms and word-positioning (as in [2] and [3]), and pointers or signposts (e.g. [4] and [5]).7 Training yourself to recognise the structure of a passage in this way takes time (incidentally,  you do it all the time in your own language). A student will usually need to read a sent ence more than once to see how it is structured—something again that we take for granted with difficult sentences in our own language, but there is a vague feeling of sinfulness about it in Latin. The effort is worth it, for this is perhaps the most crucial task of all in acquiring correct reading method and the rewards are immeasurable. With practice, the task will speed up; and it hardly needs to be added that, just as in your own language, practice is essential to improved reading method. Once the sentence has been read to register the endings of its words, and thus their relations to one another, then their meanings may be looked up. Not before.

3.3.2 Reading Rule 3 Here then is the next Reading Rule:

7 More detailed aspects of structure and of recognising structures will be explored in chapters to come.

16 RULE 3

Recognise the way in which the sentence is structured: its Main Clause(s),

subordinate clauses and phrases). Read them in sequence to achieve this recognition and re-read the sentence as often as necessary, without translating it . § 4 WORDS AND THEIR MEANINGS

3.4.1 Find a range of meanings A Roman reader would not know in any detail what was in a book that he or she was reading for the first time. But at the same time he or she would know a range of possible meanings for the words used by the author. At the start of passage  A , on meeting a word like adductus the Roman would recognise it as the past participle of adducere. Even apart from its verb, adductus  holds quite a varied range of meanings.  Rationibus and  patronum (also early in  A   ) are obviously nouns, and they have a broad range of possible meanings again. But only by reading the passage could the Roman find out which particular meaning suits each word here. Most Latin words have a flexible range of meanings, as do English ones. This can conflict with the beginning student’s expectation that Latin word x must always mean English word  y (or, at best, either  y or z ) and, if it doesn’t this time, something has gone wrong. Another problem is that the Latin range of meanings for most words hardly ever matches an English range exactly. Dictionary definitions have to be applied using common sense—a truism, but one often ignored all the same. So it is important for a reader to know the possible range of meanings of the words that are met. A good—that is, not a small—dictionary should always be available, but the reader should also practise (that word again) building a sound and varied vocabulary in his or her memory. The more he or she reads, too, the better the vocabulary becomes.

3.4.2 Decide which meanings work in the sentence If we hold off hunting for meanings in a sentence until its word-endings and the sentencestructure have been mentally taken aboard, we win the extra advantage that some dictionary definitions will now be automatically excluded, because they plainly do not suit this context For instance, in passage  A , we must rule out ‘financial accounts’ for rationibus, and ‘brought on’ or ‘pulled tight’(!) for adductus. The possibilities that remain are more quickly and satisfyingly narrowed down too, because their context is already known.  Adducere essentially means ‘to lead (towards)’. The words his et talibus rationibus   show that the sense of adductus  is metaphorical or intellectual; its singular, nominative and masculine form, with Socrates following, in turn shows that a male person is meant. So the sense here is better conveyed in English by a term like ‘influenced’ or ‘prompted’.

 Ratio  has a wide range of senses (‘act of thinking, calculation, business transaction, finance account, reasoning, regard’—to list but six) but the context with adductus  and then the line

17 following make it clear that we are dealing, not with finance accounts or business transactions, but with mental ‘calculations’ or ‘considerations’. 8

 Patronum  is shown by quaesivit   and ad iudicium capitis   to have a legal context and thus cannot here mean a ‘patron’ of freedmen or of a community. The legal context points to it meaning ‘advocate’, ‘defence counsel’ or the like. With both the structure of the sentence and its word-meanings clear, the sentence as a whole can be comprehended. Students should re-read the sentence or the passage in these ways as often as they need to comprehend it.

3.4.3 Reading Rules 4 and 5  We now have two more Reading Rules: RULE 4

Now look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary; and once you know what all the

words can mean, re-read the Latin to improve your grasp of the context and so clarify what the words in this sentence do mean. RULE 5

If translating, translate only when you have seen exactly how a sentence works

and what it means. SUB-RULE

Do not translate in order to find out what the sentence means. Understand first,

then translate. These Reading Rules are the fundamentals for both reading and translating Latin. Remember that translating is not only a slow, but also a counter-productive, way to understand and enjoy the language, and that our real goal is to make it unnecessary. The following chapters show how to develop the methods for this.

8 Note the v ery similar principle in the reading process in English: ‘th e meanings of individual words contribute to the meaning of the evolving whole [i.e.  sentence], yet the evolving whole also determines the appropriate meanings of individual words’ (Constance Weaver,  Reading Process and Practice [Portsmouth, NH, USA 1994] 209).

18

IV : §1

Latin Word-Groups WORDS WORK IN GROUPS

4.1.1 Word-groups, not just individual words, matter  Individual words by themselves, like individual chariot wheels, have limited use in communication.9 RULE  3 emphasized the importance of recognising the way a sentence is structured, for in Latin as in any other language the individual words come together in grammatical constructions to create the meaning of a sentence. We must now look more closely into this, because it is fundamental to correct Latin reading. Latin word-groups are as a rule taught simply, though importantly, as matters of syntax—the lush varieties of ablatives absolute, prepositional phrases and subordinate-clause constructions that are a standard and necessary drill in every Latin course. Unfortunately this one-sidedness imposes less desirable effects too. The theory or rather assumption is that, if enough accidence and syntax is studied and restudied, the problem of gaining reading skills solves itself. Supposedly, once students can tell a purpose clause from an ablative phrase of time they will see what each is about, and how each contributes to the sense of a sentence. In reality such piece-work techniques often cause the links between words and between word-groups to be overlooked, or guessed at, or wrongly inferred, or just forgotten about as students hack their zigzag way through a complex statement. Almost always, a student concentrates on individual words, short phrases and the individual meanings of each. These are commonly tackled (in practice, translated) separately, and afterwards get combined into a translated sequence. Misunderstandings, not to mention disasters, are all too common. Even if he or she gets the whole thing right, the process is often an agonizingly slow, back-and-forth, try-this-or-maybe-that struggle which bears scant relation to fluent reading. Even if a correct translation is finally beaten out, many of the wider implications—literary, intellectual, artistic—of the text are lost on the harassed and weary ‘reader’.

4.1.2 Types of word-groups For convenience’s sake we may define any one syntactical construction as a ‘word-group’. These points can then be made. [1] A word-group can be: ° a simple sentence:10

9 A purist may object that occasionally a single Latin word can convey a complete idea (thus ‘proficiscamur!’, ‘ecce’—or ‘vixerunt’). This does not apply to 999 out of every thousand statements.

10 Which of course may be a question or exclamation too.

19 Cicero Caesarem videt

° a subordinate clause: ubi Cicero Caesarem videt ut Cicero Caesarem videat dum haec in colloquio geruntur, etc.

° a phrase of any kind: Cicero Caesarem videns Caesare occiso per diem his et talibus rationibus adductus etc.

[2] As a sentence, subordinate clause, or phrase it is syntactically correct. [3] It conveys a single idea, action or descriptive item. [4] It may contain, or ‘embrace’, one or more other word-groups: e.g. Caesare qui dictator fuerat occiso Cicero cum Romam ad ferias celebrandas venisset Caesarem postero die vidit

(here the Main Clause embraces a clause, cum … venisset, and a phrase  postero die, and the cumclause in its turn embraces another phrase, ad ferias celebrandas ). Such ‘embraced’ groups are dependent on the ‘embracing’ word-group, because they are contributing extra details to the thought in it. This holds true even if, instead of an ‘embrace’, the dependent word-group is placed alongside: e.g. Caesare occiso qui dictator fuerat.

We shall come back to this pattern later. §2

RECOGNISING WORD-GROUPS: TWO EXAMPLES IN ENGLISH

4.2.1 Hamlet mis-grouped  We do not read English sentences primarily as individual words, but as groups of words—each forming a small sense-unit, all co-operating to build a sentence. This holds for poetry no less than prose, as this analysis of a famous passage shows: To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

20 and by opposing end them?

One basic word-group is shown in each line here. These points are important: [1] The words i n  each group connect most closely with one another. [2] Each group as a unit connects with those around it. This is so natural to us that it would seem perverse to make different links, but a newcomer to English might see things otherwise, especially if blind to punctuation. A non-English reading might then result (with punctuation changed to bring out the implications) in this: To be or not to be that. Is the question whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer? The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune! Or to take arms against a sea of troubles? And by opposing? End them!

Such mis-linkages may not look totally inconceivable to Latin teachers experienced in the  vagaries of learners’ translations. Correct reading in any language (not just our own) involves not decoding or ‘disentangling’ a sentence, but starting at its beginning and progressively recognising the shape of its words and word-groups, one after the other, until the full stop is reached. The meaning of the sentence emerges as you read.

4.2.2 Links between word-groups True, the type of word-order common in Latin is less so in modern English, but something like it can be found often enough in older poetry: When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst from heat did canopy the herd … Then of thy beauty I do question make. 11

Here we recognise, first, a temporal clause because line 1 opens with ‘when …’; next a relative clause (opening with ‘which …’) that qualifies the word ‘leaves’ in the first clause. Then the main clause follows.

11 Shakespeare, Sonnet  12, lines 5-6, 9.

21 Each of these lines consists of two word-groups: (i ) a clause (in line 3 a Main Clause), and (ii ) a phrase dependent on the clause. Note that the clauses in lines 2 and 3 embrace their subordinate phrases. In line 1 the subordinate phrase, though not embraced, is dependent on the clause preceding:

i When lofty trees I see

ii barren of leaves

i [ FIRST PART ] Which erst

ii from heat

i [ SECOND PART ] did canopy the

ii of thy beauty

i [ SECOND PART ] I do question

herd

i [ FIRST PART ] Then make.

In reading these lines we follow certain strategies, more or less unconsciously. [1] In each line we use a combination of context-recognition and common sense to recognise how its words relate to one another: °  ‘lofty trees’ is the object of ‘see’ because ‘I’ must be the subject—even though, in an ordinary English clause or sentence, the subject comes before the verb, and the object after; ° ‘barren of leaves’ qualifies ‘trees’ and not ‘I’; ° ‘from heat’ modifies the sense of ‘did canopy’ (i.e. the leaves once shaded the herd from the heat); ° ‘of thy beauty’, a subordinate phrase, is followed by the verbal phrase that governs it (‘I do question make’), again unlike the ordinary English format. [2] Note this crucial point: the words of each group relate most closely to one

another first . ° ‘Trees’ is qualified by the phrase ‘barren of leaves’, but ‘trees’ relates most closely to the other words in its group, and only then to ‘barren of leaves’. ° In line 2, ‘from’ and ‘heat’ relate most closely to each other to form an adverbial phrase; this then depends on the clause surrounding it (to be precise, it modifies the coming  verb ‘did canopy’). °  In line 3, ‘of thy beauty’ plainly forms a unit which, as such, depends in syntax and thought on ‘I do question make’.

4.2.3 Shakespeare using Word-by-Word  If these lines were Latin, ‘readers’ would commonly enough attack the words piecemeal. They would first work out whether trees or  I   is the subject of see; luckily the answer is obvious. Then they would experiment with different arrangements of the words in line 1 to decide whether

barren of leaves qualifies trees or  I; similarly whether  from heat   means ‘because of the heat’ (i.e. that the heat caused the leaves to canopy the herd) or is separative (that the leaves protected the herd against the heat); not to mention questions of vocabulary (‘erst’ at least). Of thy beauty  would be

22 fiddled with until the most satisfactorily rearrangement turned out to have it follow then I do

question make. This verbal phrase would next be dissected, until it yielded the modern meaning ‘I question’. This way of reading, or rather decoding, English would not just be drearily time-consuming but would certainly strike us as unnatural. Many ‘readers’, none the less, believe that this is the way to understand Latin texts.

23

 V :

Understanding Word-Groups § 1 TYPES OF WORD -GROUPS

Correct reading method means recognising the links not just between words but between wordgroups. Roman writers make this a rational and satisfying process. A Latin sentence is designed to let the reader recognise the correct word-groups within it promptly. After all the term simply covers the various types of Latin constructions, Main Clauses included. They are sense units which, more directly than the individual words, form the b uilding-blocks of any sentence. Word-groups within themselves are syntactically correct. Equally important, each wordgroup is placed where the author has a reason for it; and each relates in sense and position to those around it.

5.1.1  Main Clauses: the frame for the sentence The Main Clause is the syntactical frame of a sentence. It comes in one of two basic formats:

i

A simple connected word-group, or more than one in sequence, as in passage B’s

second sentence: Caesar loquendi finem facit seque ad suos recepit.

ii   A word-group embracing one or more subordinate groups. Thus in passage C, the Main Clause is set out in two parts: tum Sabinae mulieres … dirimere infestas acies, dirimere iras

 — 8 words in two places (in a sentence totalling 54 words). Contrary to a widespread notion, the Main Clause, especially when lengthy, does not always carry the most important information in a sentence. Phrases and subordinate clauses give details that may be just as crucial, sometimes more so. Thus in the second half of passage  A   the Main Clause, strictly speaking, is not just limited in sense but s carcely satisfactory by itself: et paucis ante diebus … noluit, et tum … locutus ita est.

When using translation as their ‘reading’ technique, students tend to seek out the Main Clause and its verb first, at whatever cost. Just by itself this practice can ruin their chance to understand the sentence. A Main Clause is basically a skeleton structure on which the rest of a sentence is laid out. Or, to change the metaphor, it is the clothes dummy over which the really interesting garments—the subordinate word-groups—are draped. The ‘subordinateness’ of a subordinate phrase or clause refers to its technical grammatical function, not  to its contribution to the message in the sentence. One further basic point needs mention. Once a sentence has begun, it has to finish before another one can start (except of course for something in parentheses). This may seem so obvious that to mention it is a surprise. But in reading Latin even obvious points need stressing at times.

24 Equally important, within a sentence, a second Main Clause cannot open while the first is still going on. This is all just common sense.12 What may come as a real surprise—until it is thought about carefully—is that exactly the same principle applies to subordinate phrases and clauses.

5.1.2 Subordinate word-groups are phrases and clauses Main Clauses apart, a word-group is either a phrase or a subordinate clause. These points are crucial for them too. First, a word-group is syntactically coherent; e.g. his et talibus rationibus adductus

the ablatives depend on adductus  and with it form a  participial phrase

dum haec in colloquio geruntur ausae se inter tela volantia inferre

a complete temporal clause a participial phrase embracing a prepositional phrase

By contrast, arbitrary groupings of words like ‘animi ductam non a’ from passage  A , or ‘in colloquio geruntur Caesari nuntiatum’ from B, are not coherent. This is even clearer with clauses short or long: Passage

 A  cum facile posset educi e custodia

concessive clause

B dum haec in colloquio geruntur B ut, pulsis hostibus, dici posset (+ indirect statement  )

temporal clause  purpose clause construction) ne se sanguine nefando soceri generique C indirect command

(governing

reported

speech

respergerent

5.1.3 Subordinate word-groups: sequences and embraces Word-groups commonly come in sequences, a major cause of headache for readers. The formats used by Latin writers are varied.

i The word-groups can form a progressive but simple s equence 1) his et talibus rationibus adductus

2) Socrates nec patronum quaesivit 3) ad iudicium capitis

4) nec iudicibus supplex fuit …

and so on.

ii  Or, like Main Clauses embracing subordinate word-groups, one subordinate group may embrace another. Now a basic principle of Latin structure is that once a word-group opens, you have to complete it before you can open another one, unless  the other one is embraced. This exception is logical because the embraced word-group is  grammatically a separate construction but 12 ‘I went to town and bought a book’ makes sense; ‘I went and to bought a town book’ makes none even though all the same words are used. The idea that in Latin word-order scarcely matters is an enduring and calamitous fantasy.

25 contributes a detail to the sense of the embracing one. A clause can embrace another clause or a phrase, a phrase can embrace another phrase or a clause. The same principle (and this is a vital point) still applies. If one word-group embraces another, then the latter must be grammatically completed before the writer can go back to the former and complete that. So in the purpose clause cited above, ut, pulsis hostibus, dici posset  …, once the embraced ablative absolute phrase has started with  pulsis  it must be completed with

hostibus before the ut-clause can continue. An intermixture like ut pulsis dici posset hostibus would be shunned, and with sound reason.13 Again in passage B, there is this concessive clause doing an embrace: 1A) etsi 2) sine ullo periculo legionis delectae 1B) cum equitatu proelium fore videbat.

Here, word-group 1 is in two parts ( 1A and 1B   ), one on each side of group 2; etsi  looks ahead to the rest of its clause that follows the embraced word-group of sine and its ablatives. Group 2 is embraced because it adds a detail relevant to the point made in 1.

iii Both principles are very often present in a longer construction 1A)  ut,

2) pulsis hostibus,

1B) dici posset

3A) eos ab se

4 ) per fidem

5) in colloquio

3B) circumventos.

In this extract from passage B, ut … dici posset are the two parts of word-group 1, and 1 embraces word-group 2. Group 3 eos ab se … circumventos  follows the completed group 1 and depends syntactically on it, being an Indirect Statement governed by dici. Group 3 in turn embraces the short word-groups 4 and 5, which add particular details to its sense. As for how these word-groups are numbered, each new group simply gets a new number as it comes along. A group which embraces another gets both a number and letters to make this clear. As a result the sequence 3A / 4 / 5 is followed by 3B. If this analysis were continuing on to the next sentence, then the number 6 would be given to the first word-group in that sentence

 Posteaquam in vulgus militum elatum est  (   ); and so on. This numbering is purely for convenience.

5.1.4 The logic of the ‘embracing’ principle The embracing principle applies to whole sentences too, of course—something we take for granted without thinking much about it. The Main Clause of a sentence in effect embraces all the subordinate word-groups, even if sometimes it is written down complete before or after them (e.g., quid fecissent rogavi   ). A new sentence does not break off the old one and leave it uncompleted, nor does a second Main Clause within a sentence do this to the first Main Clause. The only

13 An ‘embraced’ phrase may occasionally be spread out like this in verse, but only if this does not result in a mistaken linkage. For an interesting treatment of some aspects of word-order in phrases, but at an advanced  philological level, see M. de Sutter, ‘A theory of word-order within the Latin noun phrase’, Studies in Latin  Literature and Roman Histor y IV, ed. C. Deroux (Bruxelles: Latomus 1986) 151–83.

26 seeming exception is a Main Clause in parentheses, but this is really one Main Clause being embraced by another.14 The embracing principle is very logical. It shows which items are connected in sense as well as grammar and, at the same time, which of them is the dominant one in these connexions. It prevents the reader from mistakenly connecting different word-groups—for instance, from supposing that  pulsis hostibus goes in sense with eos ab se circumventos. Of course if the sentence is ‘read’ via Hunt-the-Verb-Etc., exactly such a mistake can occur.

5.1.5  Reading Rule 6  Thus our next Reading Rule RULE 6

a  A Main Clause must be completed before another Main Clause can start. b. .

Once a subordinate clause or phrase is begun, it must be completed syntactically before the rest of the sentence can proceed. c.  An embraced clause or phrase must be completed before the embracing one can proceed. § 2 RECOGNISING WORD-GROUPS Often readers feel defeated by the task of recognising when one construction is complete and another begins. It is even worse when they find one embracing another. The only recognisable guide to structure seems to be the full stop ending the whole sentence—and that is often dishearteningly far down the page. But though Latin flexibility makes word-order, and wordgroup order, very varied compared to English, several principles ensure that a sentence is logically and satisfyingly structured. No Roman author expects you to rely just on his spaced-out full stops. Because word-groups contribute logically and in sequence to building the meaning of a sentence, the words

in

each group must be written in logical order too. To read Latin

correctly, the eye recognises these links as the words are read and the mind grasps the pattern being revealed, precisely as we do when reading our own language. This takes practice, but it is completely achievable. It is, after all, the natural way to read any language.

5.2.1

Opening words are signposts

A word-group is structured so that, in particular, its opening word or words act as signposts, telling the reader what to expect. We saw how the first three words of passage C, for instance, tell a good deal about the structure to come. It is very important to practice recognising what each word in turn in a sentence is telling us this is the point of Rules 2 and 3. In decode-‘reading’ techniques, the signposts are too often ignored. When Latin text is treated as an encoded tangle, what matters is to find the keys to that code and this is usually 14 The rhetorical device of aposiopesis is not a true exception either. Aposiopesis leaves the complete meaning of the truncated sentence implied, and the context m akes that meaning clear.

27 done by first hunting down words likely to be finite verbs and nominative nouns, then seeking to shuffle the rest around these until something approximating an English word-order is found, so that translation (and thus comprehension) can take place. Naturally, modest items like a dum here or a quarum  there often pass unnoticed in the pursuit of a main verb or a likely-looking Main-Clause subject. Even when they are recognised, it is also close to de rigueur  that such subordinate constructions be set aside until the ‘bones’ of the sentence—the Main Clause(s), usually—have been picked out. The text is treated as a language jigsaw or Scrabble test (see Chapter II). Correct reading method requires you to realise only one basic fact. From the very beginning of a sentence the words are grouped in recognisable units, and each unit is recognisable because its words and its format both have their own meaning and  are signposts to relationships with other words and word-groups. Suppose your eye comes to dum in a sentence, any sentence. You recognise dum as a signpost to more than one item: ° a subordinate clause is starting, ° it is a temporal clause, ° and this clause will not be completed until a suitable finite verb arrives, even if the

dum-clause before then embraces some other word-group. This signpost-function occurs with any conjunction or relative pronoun that opens a clause. In passage B’s eaque res colloquium ut diremisset , where ut is delayed, we have seen how Caesar still makes the clause’s nature and rôle clear by other standard devices. Ut  then confirms and justifies that we are dealing with a subordinate clause, and that it is another indirect question like the ones just before.

5.2.2

 A word-group is usually only a few words long

The longer a run of words, the likelier it will consist of more than just one word-group. This is after all a natural tendency of the language, and it holds true even for passage D with its single 71-word sentence. The only common exception is where several items are given side by side—in effect a list, as in multo maior alacritas studiumque pugnandi maius exercitui iniectum est  (passage B ) where alacritas and

studium and their dependent words form subject-phrases for the verb, so that the Main Clause is 9 words long. Again, in a genuine list (like the list of conspirators who gather to hear Catiline in Sallust’s story) the word-group may be very lengthy indeed. 15  But its structure and function ought to be especially obvious for the same reason. If the reader of a sentence reads five, six or seven words and no pattern at all seems to emerge, something has gone wrong and it is best to start reading again.

15 Sallust, Catiline 17.3-4.

28 Phrases too are written to be as identifiable as possible. The last thing a Roman writer wants is for his readers to be stuck on some minor item that prevents them from taking in the full sweep of his message. A phrase is often short and clearly structured, so that the whole of it can be taken in at one go— supremo vitae die paucis ante diebus ex transverso impetu facto hinc patres hinc viros orantes.

Even when lengthier, they are still clearly structured, as we shall soon see in more detail with passage A ’s paene in manu iam mortiferum illud tenens poculum

and C’s ausae se inter tela volantia inferre.

Sometimes a phrase does embrace another word-group; thus the example given in Chapter IV, Caesare qui dictator fuerat occiso

 — which is really only a more complex version of the same format as supremo vitae die above. An author is normally careful in writing such structures to make them as readily recognisable as possible, and practice will improve your skills in recognising them.

5.2.3 i 

Word-groups begin and end with words closely linked in syntax or sense, and often both In a simple word-group this is obvious. In passage B, for instance, C a e s a r loquendi finem f a c i t

has its subject at the beginning and the verb at the end, with the object in between—the standard and perhaps notorious Subject-Object-Verb (S O V ) format often, though wrongly, thought to be the required one in Latin.16 As always, the word-endings are the key to understanding how words in a group link up. Word-endings grammatically signpost what is coming next or remind us of what has come before. Caes a r  signals that the statement will have a third-person singular verb.  Loquen d i , a genitive, needs another word to depend on.17  Fin e m  satisfies that need and at the same time, being accusative, foretells that the verb for Caes a r   will be transitive. Then the group is syntactically completed by fac i t  ,  which fulfils the expectation caused by Caes a r . Similarly, in the Main Clause multo maior alacritas studiumque pugnandi maius exercitui iniectum est

16 Balbus murum aedificavit  springs to mind. 17 Genitives nearly always depend on nouns, though a few verbs and adjectives also require them.

29 the subject-phrases open the word-group and the verb closes it. Here the verb agrees with

studium, the nearer of its two subjects, as often happens. This standard SOV structure is a simple Main-Clause application of the convention that a Latin word-group begins and ends with closely linked words . In English word-groups the grammatically dominant word or words usually come first, then the others follow so if English formatting were used in Latin we would see ‘Caesar facit finem loquendi’, and in passage C not Livy’s victo malis muliebri pavore but ‘muliebri pavore victo malis’. This format is occasionally found in Latin, but is uncommon enough to be noteworthy.18

ii 

Next the more complex sequence studied earlier (1A) ut,

(2) pulsis hostibus,

(1B) dici posset

(3A) eos ab se

(4)  per fidem

(5) in

colloquio (3B) circumventos.

This involves several subordinate word-groups, notably a clause (1A-B), an ablative absolute (2) and an accusative and infinitive statement (3A-B). Group 1 ( ut … dici posset   ) embraces another (   pulsis hostibus ) and group 3 embraces two. When the reader reaches ut   in the sentence, he or she still does not know what words will follow it, but ut   usually starts a clause, so it signposts here that a finite verb is coming.  Pulsis

hostibus,  following ut   directly, is obviously not that verb; instead the endings pretty well shriek Ablative Absolute. Then the next words are dici posset, which tell the reader several things °  posset  is obviously what ut was signposting, and thus it completes the word-group that began with ut ; °  posset, subjunctive, also shows that ut  introduced a purpose clause; ° dici   clarifies the use of  posset and in turn tells the reader to expect an reported-speech construction—an expectation confirmed by the fact that ° there is no stop after dici posset. We remember that punctuation marks are signposts too, even if most of them are due to modern editors. The sentence’s next stage is groups 3–5 eos ab se per fidem in colloquio circumventos.

 Dici   told us to expect a reported-speech construction; now eos,  accusative, opens it and circumventos (with esse understood), infinitive, closes it. This indirect-statement word-group is dependent on dici , but we note that the clause ut … dici

 posset  does not embrace eos … circumventos as it did the ablative absolute  pulsis hostibus. The reason presumably is that if Caesar had delayed dici posset   until after both word-groups, he would have so separated ut from dici posset  as to make the connexion much harder to recognise at sight.

18 E.g. ‘cum facile posset educi e custodia’ (passage vos non timetis eam ’

A:

see Chapter IV); with ‘scilicet res ipsa aspera est,

(Sallust, Catiline 52.28), this is surely deliberate inconcinnitas for emphasis.

sed

30

iii

Near the end of B there is another ut -clause (an indirect question) worth looking at eaque res colloquium ut diremisset, …

Here the conjunction ut is delayed—the clause opens with the subject and closes with its verb. This format is not the commonest one for a subordinate clause (conjunction first, verb last) but the opening and closing words are closely linked nevertheless. Exasperated students may ask, just how are they supposed to recognise this arrangement simply by reading it?—far less recognise what sort of word-group it is. But the regular principles for reading apply. Punctuation, grammar, word-endings, word-groupings and sequence are the signposts: ° the punctuation (… , eaque res … diremisset , … ) shows that these words are part of a sequence , ° two other word-groups have preceded, both with subjunctive verbs ( qua arrogantia …

interdixisset, impetumque … equites fecissent, … ), ° those two groups also began with abstract nouns—although arrogantia, impetum  and res are in different cases for variety’s sake , ° moreover the whole sentence began with a clause,  posteaquam … elatum est …, which prepared us for these constructions because  elatum est   was a signpost that reported speech would follow, and the construction directly after elatum est   was an indirect question qua arrogantia … ° then, after reading from  posteaquam to fecissent , we find that the next words are ea q u e

res colloquium &c. The connective - q u e  signposts that we are now starting on a further subordinate clause linked to the preceding ones, therefore on a further indirectquestion clause dependent on elatum est. The next words, res (nominative singular) and

colloquium (which has to be accusative since it cannot be nominative here), signpost an approaching finite verb which will link them as subject and object, ° and though Caesar delays ut , he does deliver it after only three words and follows it at once with its verb diremisset . So no sooner do we mentally register eaque res  as starting a third subordinate clause than we read colloquium ut diremisset   —and the clause is complete.

iv The order of words in a group always repays attention. In passage  A   there is this concessive clause: cum facile posset educi e custodia

 — which for a change has a word-order very much like its English equivalent (‘although he easily could be taken out of prison’). Why not a more textbook word-order like cum e custodia facile

educi posset ? Presumably Cicero wished to avoid placing  facile where it might be taken with educi  alone, and to lay some weight on e custodia. Another example comes from passage C, whose Main Clause amounts to this:

31 tum Sabinae mulieres dirimere infestas acies, dirimere iras.

Why does Livy end this with the objects and not the verbs? Perhaps because this emphasises the contrast between the peace-seeking women (who begin the statement) and the warring men, in which the women win. Placing dirimere at the end would have weakened this verbal image to the point of trivialising it ( ‘… infestas acies dirimere, iras dirimere’  ). And not much better if dirimere were used only once ( ‘infestas acies irasque dirimere’  ). In sum, the opening and closing words in a word-group are typically the ones which the author wants to highlight in that group. Therefore (1) the opening and closing words will be closely linked in syntax and (2) the supporting words are placed in the middle of the word-group.

5.2.4 The endings of words in a word-group show how it works This of course is R ULE 2 . Latin’s inflected forms are signposts to structures as well as meanings. Examples from our reading passages show how you apply the Rule.

i

If the opening words in a sentence are his  et tal ibus  rationibus , as in passage  A , the

reader mentally registers those endings as datives or ablatives, and logically enough expects something to arrive in the sentence to justify them. In  A   the next word turns out to be adductus and the expectation is justified they are ablatives and they depend on the participle.

ii

In A ’s nec iudicibus supplex fuit

the noun iudic i b u s (which comes right after nec ) must again be dative or ablative, and since

supplex fuit  comes next—an adjective capable of governing the dative, and the verb of being—it is pretty plain that iudicibus  is dative. Supp l e x

in turn must be nominative19  and supplex fuit 

plainly comes in a sequence of statements linked to the preceding nominative Socrates.

iii

In passage B, the words lapides telaque in nostros coicere

are preceded by two accusative and infinitive constructions, but lapides cannot be part of the one immediately preceding, because et ad nostros adequitare lapides   would be fatuous in meaning. Moreover a comma separates adequitare from lapides—punctuation again. It follows that the new word-group starts with lapides. So -que in telaque is not signposting that the word-group starts with

tela; -que must simply be a connective linking lapides and tela. The reader has just seen equites Ariovisti   performing first one and then a second action using historic infinitives ( accedere, adequitare ); the new word-group follows after these, with coicere a third infinitive.  Lapides telaque cannot be the subjects of coicere (that would be fatuous again) and so they have to be its objects.  Equites,  then, must be the subject of coicere  just as it is of accedere and

adequitare. The equites are performing a third action; and in nostros shows against whom.

19 Other technical possibilities, like vocative or neuter accusative, can be ruled out.

32 The next step is getting to know some further useful features of word-group and sentence structures.

 Appendix: Ablatives absolute Ablative absolute phrases can cause readers special bafflement, so some comments about them may usefully be added here.

1

Like every other word-group, Ablatives Absolute must be read and comprehended

 where they occur.  They add items of thought or information that are relevant precisely at that point. The common practice of pushing an Ablative Absolute phrase aside until the major construction—or the entire sentence—has been worked out, and only then coming back to it and trying to fit it in somewhere, is all the more undesirable for just this reason. Their most difficult type is the commonest one, a noun plus passive past participle (e.g.  pulsis

hostibus ). The problem is not helped by the frequent habit of translating them in straitjacketed formulae (   pulsis hostibus ‘with the enemy defeated’, or ‘the enemy having been defeated’; me duce ‘with me as the leader’) . Translations of these often read much more oddly than the original phrase would have done to a Roman. Here are three invented sentences:20

2

i Populus Romanus Cicerone consule nullas insidias timere debebit. ii  iii 

Populus Romanus Cicerone rem publicam curante nullas insidias timere debebit. Populus Romanus Cicerone consule creato nullas insidias timere debebit.

The first two Ablatives Absolute are clear enough; a variant of ii   is the combination of noun (or pronoun) plus deponent past participle, e.g.  populus Romanus Cicerone consulatum adepto gaudebit . But the full point of type iii   —the noun and passive past participle type—can be elusive to readers when the sentence does not explicitly state who has performed the action of the passive participle.

iii   would conventionally be translated ‘Cicero having been elected consul’ or, more imaginatively, ‘after Cicero is elected consul’. But it is important to realise the implicit senseconnexion between ‘the Roman people’ and creato—which may be brought out in English by rendering the Ablative Absolute as ‘after electing Cicero consul’ or ‘by electing Cicero consul’. In sum, the agent implied in such an Ablative Absolute phrase is very often the subject of the nearest finite verb. Phrases in reading passage C also illustrate this sense-connexion:

20 Which can claim at least a semi-respectable ancient parallel: ‘O fortunatam natam me consule Romam’ (Cicero apud  Juvenal, 10.122).

33 Sabinae mulieres, crinibus passis scissaque veste, victo malis muliebri  pavore, … impetu facto dirimere infestas acies &c.

Plainly, all the actions in these Ablatives Absolute were done by the mulieres. This convention is well established in Latin. To give a casual example, Caesar’s son, the emperor Augustus, in his Res Gestae can write Alpes … pacificavi nulli genti bello per iniuriam inlato,

where the implicit agent of inlato is himself, as subject of the nearby finite verb. 21

3

Making such connexions is a matter of context and common sense. In passage B’s third

sentence, where we read ut, pulsis hostibus , dici posset eos ab se … circumventos

the nearest finite verb is impersonal (  posset   ). But somebody had to be responsible for the action in

 pulsis. Caesar is the focus of the statement, as is already clear from (1) what precedes, i.e. non  putabat ; (2) the reflexive pronoun ab se  placed soon after; and (3) the logic of the situation—  Roman forces face to face with German. The phrase  pulsis hostibus  carries the implicit sense  pulsis

ab se (= ab Caesare ).

4

A sentence can open with Ablatives Absolute whose implied agent arrives later: Aucta magnitudine urbis, formatis omnibus domi et ad belli et ad pacis usus, … consilio augere imperium conatus est, simul et aliquod addere urbi decus. 22

Servius Tullius, whose achievements as king of Rome are being reported, must be the implicit agent of aucta and formatis : the context requires this. Common sense is needed. Augustus also writes how he appointed a certain Artavasdes to rule Armenia, [   Armeniam ]  … regendam tradidi … Artavasdi , then begins a new statement with an Ablative Absolute, quo interfecto Tigranem … in id regnum misi. 23

Common sense, not to mention the historical record, tells us that the emperor is not implying that he  caused the killing of King Artavasdes. The agent(s) of interfecto  are left to the reader’s surmise (Romans knew that Armenia was a highly unstable realm). The Ablative Absolute is used to give the occasion and the reason why Augustus then sent out Tigranes. Or again, the climax of the siege of Veii after a Roman commando force has burst into the besieged city via a tunnel:

21 Res Gestae D ivi Augusti 26.3. 22 Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.45.1. 23 Res Gestae 27.2.

34 Momento temporis deiectis ex muro undique armatis patefactisque portis cum alii agmine inruerent, alii desertos scanderent muros, urbs hostibus impletur. 24

Although the finite verb nearest the Ablatives Absolute is ingruerent   with alii   as its subject, the agents of deiectis and  patefactis are not alii   (the rest of the Roman army) who now break into Veii through its opened gates. As the word-order shows, their entry follows—and is made possible by—the ablative-absolute actions which are evidently the work of the commandos. Together, the structure of this sentence and its context make the sense clear.

24 Livy 5.21.12.

35

 VI:

Studying Latin Structures

In this chapter we look at some further aspects of structure in sentences, and how structures can be analysed for better understanding. Latin’s variable word-endings allow great flexibility of format in word-groups and the sentences that they build. Within fairly broad limits an author is free to decide which words deserve emphasis in a word-group, to organise it accordingly, and to do the same with the word-groups that make up a sentence. At the same time all Roman authors, in spite of the great differences in their literary styles, follow the principles we have been looking at: wordsignposting, group sequences and embraces, logical emphases and expectations. This means that these reading methods work for all. Once you have begun to practise correct reading method, these patterns become recognisable to the eye even at a first reading. As mentioned earlier, the meaning of the sentence unfolds as

you read. Of course you may have to read it more than once until its layout is fully understood. Does this sound familiar? We do it all the time in English.25 § 1 HOW WORD-GROUPS RELATE TO ONE ANOTHER

6.1.1 Examples of relationships  Just as the words within a group relate to one another in grammar and sense, so too a complete group relates to others close by. For example: ° A word in one group may link up grammatically with a word in another (‘trees’ to ‘barren of leaves’ in our Shakespeare example; adductus to Socrates  in passage  A ;

mulieres to orantes in C ), or refer to it ( quarum to mulieres, in C again). ° Two or more word-groups may share the same subject ( Socrates in passage A again is the subject of several) or the same object; this is simply one aspect of the previous point. ° One word-group (e.g. an ablative absolute or a relative clause) can be embraced by another and thus contribute to the latter’s sense. Recognising relationships between word-groups calls for nothing more than a knowledge of standard accidence and syntax, and a good dose of common sense. Here are some examples from our reading passages.

25 It would not occur, instead, to an English-speaking reader to try to make sense of a difficult English sentence  by translating it into, say, Fr ench. That would not occur to even an averagely experienced French-speaking reader of the English sentence, either.

36

i

Passage  A   opens with a word-group that is a participial phrase: his et talibus rationibus

adductus. The ablatives depend on the nominative masculine participle adductus,  and in turn adductus advertises that ° this phrase will soon link up with some nominative masculine noun in another wordgroup, as there is no semicolon or other break; ° that nominative noun will be, by definition, the subject of a finite verb or verbs in its own word-group. In other words the reader is being signposted to how the next part of the sentence is structured even before coming to it (the signposts principle). With the very next word, Socrates, the link to the next word-group is made.  Adductus relates to Socrates , and Socrates in its turn is the subject of several verbs, each in its own Main Clause word-group.

ii

All too often, the reader recognises the first, or first and second, word-groups pretty well

… but then starts to have problems keeping track. Take passage B: the opening groups dum haec in colloquio geruntur, | Caesari nuntiatum est

are fairly obvious to the eye. But then equites Ariovisti propius tumulum accedere et ad nostros adequitare, lapides telaque in nostros coicere

may look forbiddingly like an all-too-typical cascade of confusing nouns and verbs … so forbiddingly to some readers that it might tempt them to fall back on the usual chore of decoding-translating in order to understand it. This temptation must be resisted because it is unnecessary. All a reader needs to do is apply Latin grammar and common sense: °  Nuntiatum est  plainly announced that a reported-speech construction is coming. If we were reading a narrative in English and found the words ‘it was reported to Caesar’ at the bottom of one page without a punctuation break, automatically we would expect a construction in reported speech at the top of the next page—‘it was reported to Caesar | that …’ ° Punctuation—or here its absence—shows that the line of thought in the sentence flows straight on from nuntiatum est, and so the expected reported speech construction will follow directly. To stress the point anew, punctuation must not be ignored in reading (though it often is). °  Nuntiatum est   is impersonal, so equites  is not its subject and thus equites  is not nominative plural. Punctuation plus common sense show that it is not vocative(!) either, so it can only be the accusative needed in the reported-speech construction. This in turn signposts that the needed infinitive is drawing nigh.

37 ° Because word-groups usually begin and end with words closely connected in syntax, that needed infinitive should come at the end of the group which starts with equites  . No disappointment—we find equites Ariovisti propius tumulum accedere. This word-group (be it noted) has not a full stop after it, but et . °  Et   tells us that the reported-speech construction is not finished, and suitably we find two more accusative-and-infinitive statements following. Both have

equites

(understood) as their subject and their infinitives at the end—the triple sequence

equites … accedere et ( equites ) … adequitare, ( equites ) … coicere that was discussed above. Next let us take the purpose-construction from passage B quoted earlier: ut, pulsis hostibus, dici posset eos ab se per fidem in colloquio circumventos.

We see that ° it begins with ut, signposting to the reader that a clause is starting; we saw earlier that this is a purpose clause. ° Next arrives the phrase  pulsis hostibus  which (we also saw) can only be an ablative absolute, as shown by its position and punctuation. It interrupts the ut-construction but at the same time contributes to its overall sense, being an embraced word-group. ° Then the ut -construction is completed with dici posset. ° As we saw above, dici  in its turn alerts the reader that a reported-speech construction is coming. °  Eos ab se is then easy to recognise as the start of this construction, and signposts that a passive infinitive must follow soon: infinitive to go with eos, passive to accommodate the agent-phrase ab se. ° So the two short prepositional phrases which now intervene,  per fidem in colloquio,  do not disrupt comprehension but add to it, like good and proper embraced wordgroups. ° And the word-group that began with eos ab se  is completed by circumventos (+ esse understood)—which also completes the sentence. In sum, each word and each word-group in sequence gives the reader some  logical

expectation about what is to come (this is its signpost function), or satisfies an expectation that has been created earlier in the sentence (the reminder function).

6.1.2 An analytical table for Livy’s Sabine women Passage C, a single complex sentence, now deserves analysis. It opens with the subject of the Main Clause: Tum Sabinae mulieres , …   (and note the comma—punctuation again) . From just these three starting words the reader rightly expects that: ° the Main Clause’s verb(s) will be plural;

38 ° the Main Clause will be along the lines of Tum Sabinae mulieres + plural verb(s) + object or objects if a verb is transitive; ° but the verb(s) will not be arriving right away (remember the comma); ° and the intervening word-groups will add background and detail to whatever the

Sabinae mulieres  are finally going to do. The same principle of logical expectation guides you through the rest of the sentence. Its format can be analysed by putting each word-group on a new line:

39

PASSA 

TEXT

DESCRIPTION

GE

1 A  Tum Sabinae mulieres, 2

quarum { ex iniuria } bellum ortum erat,

start of Main Clause relative

clause

(–>

mulieres) 

embracing

 prepositional phrase 3,4

crinibus passis / scissaque veste,

two ablative absolute phrases

5  victo malis muliebri pavore,

3rd abl. abs. phrase

6

 participial phrase (–> mulieres)  embracing a

ausae se { inter tela volantia } inferre,

 prepositional phrase (inter + acc. )  prepositional phrase (directional)

7

ex transverso

8

impetu facto

abl. abs. phrase

1B

dirimere infestas acies,

completion of Main Clause

1C

dirimere iras,

co-ordinated second Main Clause 26

9

hinc patres, hinc viros orantes

 participial phrase (–> mulieres) start of negative indirect command

1 0 A  ne se sanguine nefando

abl. phrase of means

soceri generique respergerent,

completion of 10A

12

ne parricidio macularent partus suos,

co-ordinated second negative indirect command 

13

nepotum illi, hi liberum progeniem.

noun-phrases: illi  and hi  in apposition to subject

11 10B

implicit in macularent This can be termed a ‘line-analysis’, about which more below. It is important to note that this layout does not affect the word-order .  It shows, though, how each word-group contributes a particular detail—an action, a description or a psychological feature—to the developing sense of the sentence. Another very important point: each word-group is placed where it is most relevant. ° The ablatives absolute forming groups 3, 4 and 5 are placed to describe the Sabinae

mulieres as these burst on the scene. The relative clause (group 2) by contrast refers to a past event (their iniuria ) and so precedes 3, 4 and 5. ° The Main Clause verbs (in 1B/1C ) have to come after the participial phrase (6 ausae &c.) because such was the sequence of action. ° For the same reason the women’s pleas (groups 9–13) follow the Main Clause’s actions—they had to interrupt the combat first, then  plead with the combatants, and the narration matches this.

26 Here numbered

1c

for convenience (rather than 9, which would be more logical for this word-group in the

overall sequence but would look odd for a Main Clause co-ordinate with 1b ).

40 ° Word-group 13, in apposition to 12’s implicit subject and its object, follows 12 to close the sentence with a vividly antithetical figure. Thus the format of passage C, which to a new reader’s first glance might look like an indigestible tangle of verbiage, turns out to be commandingly rational. Just as important, the reader can learn to follow and understand this format while reading it—eventually, even when reading it for the first time. To repeat the good news: all literary Latin prose follows these principles of structure and sequence. § 2 MORE ABOUT LINE -ANALYSIS The goal in developing correct reading method is to be able to read Latin steadily and with prompt understanding. But in working towards the goal, it is useful—in fact important—to analyse sentence structures from time to time, especially longer or more complex ones. This trains eye and mind in accurate recognition and comprehension, and at the same time keeps  your grammatical expertise fit and alert. Two forms of structural analysis are worth looking at: line-analysis (introduced above) and

‘arch’ diagrams. 6.2.1 Using line-analysis This layout is a useful way of showing how any passage, partial or complete, is built up. Here is the start of passage A  (remember, line-analysis does not affect word-order): His et talibus rationibus adductus Socrates nec patronum quaesivit ad iudicium capitis

 participial phrase subject and first Main Clause  prepositional phrase

nec iudicibus supplex fuit

second Main Clause

adhibuitque liberam contumaciam

third Main Clause

a magnitudine animi ductam,

 participial phrase

non a superbia …

 prepositional phrase

The first word-group here can be termed a participial phrase because adductus  is its dominant word; the third, a prepositional phrase because ad  is; and so on. Next the first sentence of passage B: Dum haec in colloquio geruntur,

temporal clause

Caesari nuntiatum est

 Main Clause

equites Ariovisti propius tumulum accedere

 first reported-speech statement 

et ad nostros adequitare,

second r.-s. stmt.

lapides telaque in nostros coicere.

third r.-s. stmt.

41 Some of the word-groups above could syntactically be sub divided further, e.g.: dum haec { in colloquio } geruntur …: equites Ariovisti { propius tumulum } accedere:

{ } encloses a prepositional phrase { } encloses an adverbial phrase.

But at this stage it is the functioning of the main groups that interests us. Setting the groups out on separate lines shows how each sentence consists of coherent sense units. The layout may look complicated, but in reality it only tabulates normal Latin practice with word-groups. As Latin’s word-group structures are the basis of many of the problems with word-order that so bedevil and dishearten students, to understand the structures helps to solve those problems. Line-analysis can be applied as desired, from parts of sentences to whole paragraphs. 27 Here is the structure of passage B’s now well-studied ut-clause in line-analysis. For clarity, the embraced word-groups are indented this time: 1A  2

ut pulsis hostibus

1B

dici posset

3A 

eos ab se

4

per fidem

5

in colloquio

3B

circumventos.

Which groups are embracing which, and how the entire purpose-construction develops, should be clear at a glance. § 3 ‘A RCH’ DIAGRAMS We have seen how word-groups typically begin and end with words closely linked in grammar, with the most obvious such arrangement forming the classic S O V sequence, e.g. Caesar  loquendi finem  fecit .

Other words, though, may be placed first and last in a group depending on what construction the author uses and how he wants to arrange the wording for best effect: etsi  sine ullo periculo legionis delectae cum equitatu proelium fore videbat ausae se inter tela volantia inferre.

These links can be drawn on paper:

27 And in principle to even longer texts, but life is short.

42

etsi sine ullo periculo legionis delectae cum equitatu proelium fore videbat

ausae se inter tela volantia inferre.

The curved spans look rather like architectural arches. This concept is not offered as a visual fancy: it illustrates fundamental points.

i Because the ‘arch’ spans a word-group, all the words under it belong in that group and RULE 6 applies. Putting it the other way round, any word-group can be illustrated as an

‘arch’. Even a complete sentence, since it consists of a Main Clause plus dependent constructions. But if this is not practicable on a single lin e, a line-analysis can be used instead.

ii

If one word-group embraces another, the ‘arch’ shows that the embraced group too

belongs within the embracing one. The embraced group, in turn, can be illustrated as a smaller arch. The relationships between word-groups then look like this:

paucis ante diebus, cum facile posset educia e custodia, noluit

(a time-phrase opens this co-ordinate Main Clause—the fifth so far in the sentence—then comes an embraced concessive clause, and the Main Clause is then completed with its verb);

etsi sine ullo periculo legionis delectae cum equitatu proelium fore videbat

(the entire sentence from passage B is too long to fit on one line, but in principle—on a wide enough page!—it could be similarly shown as a system of ‘arches’);

ausae se inter tela volantia inferre.

Another example (abbreviated from passage C ):

tum Sabinae mulieres ex transverso impetu facto dirimere infestas acies, dirimere iras

43  — here the subject phrase Sabinae mulieres opens, and the objects acies and iras  end, the Main Clause constructions (while tum modifies the entire statement). ‘Arches’ are useful for showing these relationships visually. They are a useful device for analysing word-groups and shorter sentences. For lengthy ones, line-analysis is more convenient—or very wide sheets of paper! §4

‘A RCHES’ IN ACTION

6.4.1 One ‘arch’ can be fully over-arched by another Where this occurs, the over-arched, i.e. ‘embraced’, word-group remains a unit. It contributes to the overall sense of the outer group, but the words of the two groups are not mixed

together (remember RULE 6). 6.4.2 One ‘arch’ does not intersect another This is the related principle that one word-group cannot include just one word or some words from another, leaving the rest to turn up somewhere else in the sentence. Even if embraced by or dependent on another group, a word-group keeps all its own words together. And each group, once begun, must be completed in its turn. What then of the clause in passage B, qua arrogantia in colloquio Ariovistus usus omni Gallia Romanis interdixisset

where the ablatives qua arrogantia are governed by usus (a perfect participle) , while Ariovistus is the subject of interdixisset  ? This seems to produce two ‘arches’ crisscrossin g like this:

qua arrogantia in colloquio Ariovistus usus omni Gallia Romanis interdixisset

But the words qua arrogantia in colloquio Ariovistus usus should be considered one word-group (equivalent in sense to quam arroganter in colloquio Ariovistus   which, perhaps for variety, Caesar avoids) acting in effect as the subject of  interdixisset :

qua arrogantia in colloquio Ariovistus usus omni Gallia Romanis interdixisset

Usus is almost unnecessary to syntax and sense, in fact. How significant these principles of word-group-structure are can be appreciated best by looking at some examples with the words written in normal English order. This would be represented by mostly small ‘arches’ linking pairs or triplets of words, as happens in English:

44

etsi videbat proelium fore cum equitatu sine ullo periculo delectae legionis

ausae inferre se inter volantia tela

ut dici posset pulsis hostibus eos circumventos ab se in colloquio per fidem

tum Sabinae mulieres dirimere infestas acies, dirimere iras impetu facto ex transverso

If the words were in a totally jumbled order—for instance etsi ullo sine fore proelium legionis cum equitatu videbat delectae periculo impetu tum infestas Sabinae facto dirimere ex transverso mulieres acies

the statements could not be read at sight and ‘arch’ lines would crisscross and tangle one with another. A Roman reader would judge them barbaric—though they could still be decoded via Hunt-the-Verb-Etc.! In the following participial phrase in passage  A , the ‘arch’ diagram has an interesting aspect:

paene in manu iam mortiferum illud tenens poculum.

Even though the action of the phrase is given by tenens, there is a clear connexion in sense between in manu  at the start and  poculum at the end. The layout of the words in the phrase matches the physical image of a hand clasping a cup. (  Paene, the first word, cannot modify tenens alone but applies to the entire phrase, like tum  in the Sabine Women example looked at in Chapter V.28 ) Tenens directly precedes and obviously governs  poculum, thus reinforcing the verbal image.

28  I.e. Socrates locutus ita est

almost  up

to when he was holding the poison cup.  Iam  likewise modifies the

whole tenens- phrase. If paene were strictly modifying tenens alone (= ‘almost holding’), this would imply that Socrates locutus ita est   while physically not quite grasping the cup. The point would be a rather odd one—and, in any case, Cicero would surely then have written the two words much more closely together.

45

6.4.3 Reading Rules 7 and 8  Here then are the ‘arch’-format Reading Rules: RULE 7

Normally the words most emphasised by the author are placed at the beginning

and end, and all the words in between contribute to the overall sense, including those forming an embraced word-group. A word-group can be shown by linking its first and last words by an ‘arch’ line. RULE 8

The words within two or more word-groups are never mixed up together: ‘arches’

do not cut across one another. But an ‘arch’ structure can contain one or more interior ‘arches’: that is, embraced word-groups.

46

 VII:

Sentence Structure

 Just as individual Latin word-groups have a logical format, so do sentences. A sentence is a purposeful organization of word-groups. What gives trouble is that Latin sentence logic is not usually English sentence logic, and so students whose ‘reading’ is actually translation—especially if their method is to treat Latin sentences as tangled-up English ones—tend to see only a dishearteningly impenetrable mass of print. This leads to the lucky-dip style of tackling such statements, a version of Hunt-the-Verb-Etc.: the harassed or impatient ‘reader’ plunges in to grab at what looks possibly like a main verb or a subject, and then battles to weave the rest of the Latin into an English fabric around it. The correct method as always is to start recognising a sentence’s format the moment you begin to read it. As stressed in earlier chapters, Roman writers take pains to set out ideas and events in logical progression, either of events or of thought. Even if the sentence has to be read several times, this logic should be sought. The Rules already given, plus those still to come, show how to seek it. In basic terms, a sentence ° gives a narrative of events, ° conveys ideas, descriptions, analysis or other non-narrative topics ° or (as in Passage C ) combines the two. §1

NARRATIVE LATIN

7.1.1 The Sabine Women: actions We can start by repeating Livy’s Sabine Women sentence (passage C ), as line-analysed earlier. Remember that word-order does not change: we are analysing the Latin as the author wrote it. PASSA 

TEXT

DESCRIPTION

GE

1 A  Tum Sabinae mulieres, 2

quarum { ex iniuria } bellum ortum erat,

start of Main Clause relative

clause

(–>

mulieres) 

embracing

 prepositional phrase 3,4

crinibus passis / scissaque veste,

two ablative absolute phrases

5  victo malis muliebri pavore,

3rd abl. abs. phrase

6

 participial phrase (–> mulieres)  embracing a

ausae se { inter tela volantia } inferre,

 prepositional phrase (inter + acc. )  prepositional phrase (directional)

7

ex transverso

8

impetu facto

abl. abs. phrase

dirimere infestas acies,

completion of Main Clause

1B

47 1C 9

co-ordinated second Main Clause 29

dirimere iras, hinc patres, hinc viros orantes

 participial phrase (–> mulieres) start of negative indirect command

1 0 A  ne se sanguine nefando

abl. phrase of means

soceri generique respergerent,

completion of 10A

12

ne parricidio macularent partus suos,

co-ordinated second negative indirect command 

13

nepotum illi, hi liberum progeniem.

noun-phrases: illi  and hi  in apposition to subject

11 10B

implicit in macularent We saw earlier that each word-group is placed where it is most relevant. With the events it narrates, what is relevant is their chronological order. Latin reports events in the same

order that they happened. This explains the sequence of word-groups 6, 8, 1 B – C, and 9. Their events are: ausae (6) , then

impetu facto  (8), next dirimere  twice (1B, 1C) and after that orantes  (9).30 The two statements with dirimere  are themselves in logical order: the women’s rush into the fray caused first a physical effect (on the acies ), then a psychological (on the iras ); and it could hardly have happened vice  versa. This contrasts with English event-order, which is far less strict, mainly because we like to bring in our Main-Clause actions as early as possible and only then append the subordinate constructions. It is perfectly natural in English to write ‘I finished my essay after reading another article on the subject’. A Roman writer would think this order of events unusual and to be avoided. Passage  A   is another example of narrative, and with a simpler structure. Try making a lineanalysis of it in order to understand how it functions.

7.1.2  Reading Rule 9 So the next Reading Rule is: RULE 9

All the actions in a sentence are narrated in the order in which they happened.

Apply common sense with this Rule. For instance, if someone in a story is narrating a series of events which the author and reader know is a pack of lies, that does not change the Rule.

§2

DESCRIPTIVE /ANALYTICAL LATIN

29 Cf. note 26 on the numbering of this group. 30 The events in a sentence must not be confused with the finite verbs. For instance, impetu facto is one of the events here and orantes reports another. We are not dealing with the grammar of these words but the reporting of the actions.

48

7.2.1 The non-narrative statement  As noted above, non-narrative sentences have very varied contents: ideas, descriptions, analysis, rhetoric. This can also be true of parts of sentences, of course, as we shall see in a moment. Rather than apply a negative label like ‘non-narrative’, we can for convenience term such statements descriptive/analytical— so long as we remember that this really covers rhetorical and deliberative texts too. Sentences of this type discuss, describe or analyse ° an intellectual topic, ° an emotional or political or legal situation, ° someone’s character, ° a physical scene or object, and so on. The word-group sequences in such a sentence depend on how the writer arranges his line of thought. As a result, such sentences are usually harder to follow than narrative ones, because readily recognisable signals (like actions) are missing or rare, an d also because the author’s line of thought may not be clear to a reader. But there is no cause for gloom. Structural and syntactical signals are present, necessarily so, and an author places them carefully.

7.2.2 The Sabine Women, descriptive and rhetorical  In passage C, besides the actions of the Sabine Women we read of their appearance, their emotions and their dramatic appeal to the two armies (word-groups 2–5, 10–13). The sequence of these word-groups depends on how Livy sees the logic of the situation. Thus °  group 2 precedes 3 because the iniuria  to the Sabines, and the resulting bellum, preceded their current dishevelled state; ° 3 then comes before 4 because Livy clearly envisages the women making themselves dishevelled (the standard picture of grief and fear) before  overcoming their terror and  venturing into the thick of battle; once again, it would hardly happen in the reverse order; ° 9–13 build up a sequence of rhetorical indirect command clauses, within which the rhetoric rises in intensity: the final group (10) anounces, in effect though not in so many words, that the women are pregnant. This revelation ends the war on the spot and thus is a logical climax to the entire sentence.31

31 Why, incidentally, did Livy not write a more conventional period? He could have turned dirimere  into a  participle or an ablative gerund (dirimentes/dirimendo infestas acies, dirimentes/-ndo iras), and could have written oraverunt   at the very end (hinc patres, hinc viros ne … respergerent, ne… macularent … progeniem, oraverunt ). The entire period would then form a conventional ‘arch’, because it would begin with the subject of the Main Clause and end with its verb (the interior arch-forms would of course remain, with appropriate changes to the syntax of a couple).

49

7.2.3 Cicero on the death of Hortensius Passage D is a complex descriptive/analytical sentence. Cicero is commenting philosophically on the death of his old friend and rival Hortensius. It may be useful to reproduce the text here: Sed quoniam perpetua quadam felicitate usus ille excessit e vita suo magis quam suorum civium tempore et tum occidit cum lugere facilius rem publicam posset, si viveret, quam iuvare, vixitque tam diu quam licuit in civitate bene beateque vivere, nostro incommodo detrimentoque, si est ita necesse, doleamus, illius vero mortis opportunitatem benevolentia potius quam misericordia prosequamur, ut, quotienscumque de clarissimo et beatissimo viro cogitemus, illum potius quam nosmet ipsos diligere  videamur. 32

This certainly bears reading more than once in order to recognise its component word-groups and how they relate to one another—but not of course to pick it apart for main verbs, subjects and other basic grammar-items, still less to translate bits of it and by trial, error and repeated rearrangement fumble towards some idea of what the whole thing means. Let us apply the principles already set out.

i 

What word-groups does D consist of?

This is not really difficult. For instance, it begins with sed quoniam … , and quoniam is the signpost of a causal clause. Until this clause is syntactically complete, everything that follows must be part of it, or part of an embraced word-group in it. After quoniam, ablative words are followed by an ablative-governing participle (  perpetua quadam

 felicitate usus ): a word-group plainly embraced by the quoniam-clause and meant, therefore, to contribute to its sense. The next words, ille excessit e vita,   must continue the quoniam-clause, for they include a subject and an appropriate verb (plus the phrase e vita which obviously connects in sense and position to a verb of departing). Now to the next group of words, suo magis quam suorum civium tempore . The eye recognises that

But this would have meant a lengthy set of phrases in the middle of the sentence without the satisfaction of a resolved, finite action— crinibus passis scissaque veste, victo … pavore, ausae se … inferre, dirimentes … acies, dirimentes … iras, …  — followed by further subordinate constructions dependent on the finite verb at the end: hinc patres, hinc viros ne se … respergerent, ne … macularent … oraverunt. There is a further drawback: the reader, reaching the ne-clauses, would not know whether these denoted  purpose or indirect command, or even a fearing-cons truction. It would also weaken or throw away the rhetorical impact of word-group 10 that was noted above. Livy’s structure for the sentence avoids all these flaws. His artistic sense is sound.

32  In an effort perhaps to make the structure clearer, some texts (e.g. the Oxford) print a colon after bene beateque vivere; but this could wrongly suggest to the reader that there is a sens e-break at that point when, in fa ct, it simply completes the quoniam-clause.

50 ° this phrase cannot depend grammatically on any other word in the quoniam-clause

usus governed the earlier phrase; if it also applied to this one, a connective like et  ( usus would have been given),33 ° the phrase is quickly recognisable as one of ‘time when’, ° it is another word-group within the opening quoniam-clause and completes the thought centred on excessit e vita. Tempore makes satisfying sense here only if it means more than plain ‘time’; as quite often, it means ‘due time’ or ‘proper time’. The sense of suo tempore then is something like ‘at a time [ or   moment] fitting for himself.’ or  moment] Cicero then writes a connective et: et tum occidit cum … Signposts again: ° a second finite verb quickly arriving, occidit,  makes clear that this is another, co-ordinate quoniam-clause (or we could consider it the second half of the one clause), ° tum, emphatically placed here, signposts that a temporal clause is on th e way, ° and swiftly cum arrives with that clause: cum lugere facilius rem publicam posset … ; °  facilius, comparative adverb, in its turn signposts a coming comparison, fulfilled very soon with quam iuvare. And so on.

ii  The structure of passage D  may now be set out in line-analysis, with embraced wordgroups indented for clarity: GROU

TEXT

COMMENTS

PS

1A  Sed quoniam 2

perpetua quadam felicitate usus

start of group 1, causal clause  participial phrase embraced by 1

ille excessit e vita

completion of 1

3

suo magis quam suorum civium tempore,

temporal phrase adds to sense of 1

4

et tum occidit

second causal clause (sc. quoniam )

1B

5A  cum lugere facilius rem publicam posset, 6 5B

si viveret, quam iuvare,

temporal clause following up tum conditional clause embraced by 5  completes 5 and justifies facilius in 5  A

7  vixitque tam diu

third causal clause (sc. quoniam )

8

comparative clause, forecast by tam diu

quam licuit in civitate bene beateque vivere,

9A  nostro incommodo detrimentoque,

start of (first) Main Clause

10

conditional clause, embraced by 9

9B

si est ita necesse, doleamus,

11A  illius vero mortis opportunitatem

completion of (first) Main Clause start of second Main Clause

33 It might be easy to misread suo misread  suo as  as sua  sua and  and see it as qualifying vita. But vita. But this is prevented by the rule that you always read both  halves of a word with equal attention.

51 12 11B

abl. phrase of manner embraced by 11

benevolentia potius quam misericordia

completion of 11

prosequamur,

signposts start of a purpose clause

13A  ut, 14

temporal clause embraced by 13

quotienscumque de clarissimo et beatissimo viro cogitemus,

13B

illum

potius

quam

nosmet

ipsos

diligere

completion of 13 and of sentence.

 videamur.

iii

Some further points:

1–8   ), how does the ° Since this sentence opens with so many subordinate constructions ( 1–8  9–11 )? reader recognise the arrival of the Main Clauses ( 9–11 Essentially because, when the quoniam-constructions arrive at vivere, the next wordgroup nostro incommodo &c. opens without et, sed  or  or the like and without a conjunction. This tells the reader that the quoniam-constructions are over and this is something new. A new construction but no introductory conjunction ?—it must be the Main Clause at last.

illius vero mortis ° When this new construction is complete with doleamus, the next words ( illius n o et, sed  or  or conjunction either, but vero is an emphatic contrastive opportunitatem ) have no adverb—and the sense of this further word-group is quickly established by the arrival of  prosequamur,  which matches doleamus  in person, tense and mood. These signposts tell us that we are reading a second or co-ordinate Main Clause. By contrast, the emphatic ut  following  following  prosequamur  signposts  signposts the arrival of a new subordinate clause. ° The logical progression in this sentence is clear. Hortensius had enjoyed a fortunate life; he died at a time better for himself than his countrymen. For had he lived, he could only grieve for, not help, his country. In any case he had enjoyed a full and happy life; so Romans should grieve, if grieve they must, over losing him, but they should wish Hortensius himself well and thus show love for him, rather than for themselves. ° The thought moves steadily from contemplating Hortensius’ life and death to considering how Cicero and his countrymen should cherish the dead man’s memory. The ideas in the second half of the sentence develop out of those set out in the first half—‘since X  has  has happened, let us do Y, so that Z  may  may result.’ As a reading-passage, the crucial point is that the logical progression in thought is matched by the logical structuring of the sentence.

52

7.2.4  A Tacitean example Logical progression of thought can also be shown in the firs t sentence of passage E:

infinitive phrase treated as noun-phrase (cf. 2),

1A  Clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris tradere,

turns out to be object of omisit  participial phrase qualifying 1 A

2

antiquitus usitatum,

3

ne nostris quidem temporibus

ablative phrase of time

4

quamquam incuriosa suorum

adjectival phrase qualifying aetas

aetas omisit,

completes word-group 1

quotiens magna aliqua ac nobilis virtus vicit ac

(lengthy) temporal clause developing the point

1B 5

supergressa est vitium

made in 1–3

6

parvis magnisque civitatibus commune,

adjectival phrase qualifying  vitium

7

ignorantiam recti et invidiam.

noun-phrase clarifying/amplifying vitium

These word-groups have some individual features, and some unexpected ones, as we would expect in Tacitus: ° in 1A ,  facta moresque are accusatives (objects of tradere )  ) although at first glance they might be taken as nominatives; ° the entire infinitive phrase itself ( clarorum  ) turns out to be the object (of clarorum virorum … tradere )  ); omisit  ° with the phrase quamquam incuriosa suorum, quamquam modifies incuriosa alone (it does not introduce a clause), and this adjectival phrase precedes its noun;34 ° as for word-group 5, a single group this lengthy is unusual in any author, but clearly all its words relate directly to one another. It is so extended because Tacitus writes a series of several words where (arguably) one apiece would suffice: magna aliqua ac

nobilis, vicit ac supergressa est  —more or less a type of list. list. The line of thought, helped along by the punctuation too, is:

moresque  posteris tradere35 ° topic announced: clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris ° topic then commented on, to begin a contrast: antiquitus usitatum ° second part of contrast follows: ne nostris quidem temporibus signp ost to aetas ahead): quamquam incuriosa suorum ° comment about ‘our times’ (and a signpost ° main idea completed grammatically: aetas omisit ° closer definition of this main idea: quotiens … vitium ° comment on the vitium: parvis … commune ° identification of the vitium: ignorantiam recti et invidiam . 34  Incidentally ne nostris quidem temporibus aetas  aetas  is a less-predictable (and more verbose!) equivalent to ne nostra quidem aetas.

35 Not only the topic of this sentence, the first in the Agricola the  Agricola,, but a pointer to the subject of the work.

53 Each element in the sentence is properly positioned for sense, with links to the next and, where necessary, to preceding ones. The signposts and logical expectations are clearly set out. Even the position of quamquam incuriosa suorum  has point: (i) it immediately clarifies the hint of criticism in ne nostris quidem temporibus; (ii) it separates temporibus from aetas, words which might look pleonastic if side by side; and (iii) it prevents us reading quamquam as a conjunction with omisit   its  verb.36

7.2.5  Reading Rule 10 The appropriate Reading Rule for such types of sentence is: RULE 10

Descriptive / analytical sentences are written with phrases and clauses in the

order that is most logical to the author. The sequence of thought is signposted by the placing of word-groups and key words. §3

SUMMARY

7.3.1  Latin sentences have a logical structure A sentence (especially a lengthy one like passage D ) may sometimes look to a student reader as though structural logic of any kind has deserted it—or at least as though the author has distorted its logic for literary effect. The reader might then assume that the only way to find the meaning of the sentence is to translate it, or at least apply Hunt-the-Verb-Etc. to it. This assumption is often accompanied by another: that there is one logical format for any given word-group (phrase, clause or sentence). That, for instance, a clause must begin with its conjunction and end with its verb. These notions are to be resisted no matter what. We have seen that authors structure clauses in other ways often enough, even if the conjunction-first/verb-last layout may be the commonest format. It is equally wrong to suppose that the  logical structure for a sentence puts the main verb or verbs at the end; in reality, the author will place them where they are most suited to his thought and to the literary effect that he seeks.

7.3.2  Practice makes perfect  Once context, arrangement and signposts are recognised, the logic of how an author structures any type of sentence turns out to be natural and recognisable. Recognising sentence-structures is again a task that improves with  practice. The more the principles of correct reading are practised, the more accustomed and comfortable they become, and the easier to apply to new texts. Confidence and fluency improve together. Nothing—not even memorising this entire manual—  is a better trainer than

STEADY

PRACTICE

for correct and ultimately enjoyable

reading.

36 Contrast it with this arrangement of the words: … ne nostris quidem temporibus aetas quamquam incuriosa  suorum omisit  …

54

55

 VIII:

§1

Teaching Reading Skills FITTING THEM INTO THE LATIN COURSE

8.1.1 An integral and continuing element  Correct reading skills can and should take their place in ordinary Latin language classes. The class time usually devoted to translating sentences and passages is readily transferrable, in whole or in part, to this. If in part, that does not make reading-skills work impracticable: it simply means that the work will be spread over a longer span, for instance covering in two years what otherwise might take one. The one requirement is that reading and its logical corollary, understanding or comprehending the import of a text, must be major components of a

course. Typically in the language-study segment of a Latin course, topics in accidence and syntax (i.e. in grammar) are worked through one after another, and not only written grammatical exercises are set but also sentences or passages for translation. In a typical literature segment (for instance the study of  Aeneid   Book I or a chunk thereof), the text, or some of it, is ‘read’ in class—i.e., is translated out—with teachers’ comments and maybe class-discussions intervening from time to time. At a more advanced level, students may prepare their own translations so that class time can be used for commentary and discussion (both still including considerable translation). Little if any time is given to developing correct reading skills. Rather it tends to be assumed that with assiduous work on grammar and vocabulary—and perhaps with some form of linguistic osmosis—the student will somehow pick these up for himself/herself. It should be noted that work on correct reading skills does not exclude doing translation in the Latin course as well. Some translating tasks can be useful, especially at earlier learning levels. Some of the class work outlined below can include them too. In practice the more fluent a student is in direct reading and comprehension, the better her or his translating is going to be. Translating does require some basic guidelines of its own, and these are dis cussed in Chapter IX. Later, as students gain proficiency in direct reading, translating should be lessened and finally let go.

8.1.2 Developing reading skills in class The methods set out in previous chapters form a basis. A minimum of one class period or session a week would be needed (assuming a period of between 40 and 50 minutes). As noted above, work on reading skills should get at least part of the time previously spent on translating. Thus ° where translating sentences or passages was used for discussing points of grammar, the grammatical side would not be affected but comprehension-and-analysis

56 questions would accompany or replace translating (see below for examples of such questions); ° where sentences or a paragraph were translated out and discussed so as to help develop vocabulary and translating skills, they would now be read and discussed again along lines indicated below; ° in classes involving literary works, analysis and discussion of content would be unaffected but straight line-by-line translating would give way to analysing meanings, structures and grammar sentence by sentence.

8.1.3 Assessing and testing reading skills in class Class work and homework can be devised on real Latin passages or, at beginner’s level, on simplified (or synthetic) texts. Class work is as important as take-home assignments, to encourage students in a ‘hands-on’ approach. The texts used should be studied in a variety of ways. This not only maintains interest and stimulates thought, but throws light on different aspects of expression and comprehension. Thus:

i A passage can be handed out or written on the blackboard, for students to practise direct reading. Naturally the class gets time to read it through before the ‘hands-on’ work starts: the teacher acts as class-dictionary (and does not complain at any inquiry, however elementary!). The passage is then translated orally by the class, or replaced by comprehension-and-analysis questions (§ 2). Otherwise these questions form part of the ensuing discussion, which also includes questions of structure and grammar put by the teacher, again to explore the students’ grasp of what they have just read. ‘Arch’ and line-analysis formatting can be used as aids. This sort of work would be spread over more than just one class period. Some of it, for example preparing ‘arch’ or line-analysis diagrams and some of the comprehension work, could be set as take-home assignments. As always, flexibility is the key to impact.

ii

Students can be given a passage a day or a week in advance, with the job of reading

it through and preparing a vocabulary-list of words whose meanings they do not know or are unsure about—but they are not to prepare a translation. The vocabulary-list should include a sensibly chosen range of possible meanings for each word, from a reasonably-sized dictionary.37 Students will in fact be putting themselves, as nearly as possible, in the position of our Roman reader. The Roman reader knew what the Latin words could   mean, but found out how the current writer was using th em only through reading his text. 37  Students should be encouraged to obtain adequate dictionaries, at least of the size and scope of Lewis & Short’s  Latin Dictionary for Schools  or (more limited) Cassell’s  Latin Dictionary. Small or mini- dictionaries do not greatly help to build up a versatile vocabulary or illustrate the importance of context for determining wordmeanings.

57 Any translating is then done in class, but the emphasis should remain on structureanalysis (with line-analyses or ‘arches’ as appropriate) and other discussion. Comprehension questions are also brought in as a major component in both class work and assignments.

iii  Reading passages can be used to build comprehension skills in many different ways. These are looked at next. §2

COMPREHENSION

8.2.1 Comprehension (a k a understanding) Comprehension may be defined here as recognising what ideas and allusions the words on the page convey and how these affect (or how we think they are meant t o affect) the reader. These aspects are just as vital as correct reading, and they do not emerge automatically from plain reading or translating, despite this being widely assumed. In reality where ‘reading’ depends on translating, comprehension can be crippled—supposing there is time for it at all. Fluent reading allows more accuracy and more time for proper comprehension of aspects such as: ° how passages are structured for narrative and/or descriptive effect; ° what literary, emotional and/or intellectual impact the author is aiming to make; ° how the same or similar events are differently presented when handled by different writers (cf. method 5  below); ° what we thus learn about the uses of language and the literary power of Latin. Only some of these can conveniently be explored in a class—time is limited—but the variety of possibility is plain. In turn the levels of sophistication for dealing with the issues can be varied to meet class needs.

8.2.2 Comprehension-teaching methods These methods can be used both in class discussion and via written assignments.

i

Comprehension-and-analysis questions

Here are examples of such questions based on our reading passages. It can be seen that some of the questions can be answered more or less by translating the appropriate words or groups of words (another reason why straight translating can be cut down). These are marked with an asterisk (*), but it is important to stress that a student should be encouraged to give more than  just a translation, if comment or interpretation is also possible (as in the last question on A   ). Other questions call for thinking and interpreting the author’s message. The result is that a passage can be widely and flexibly explored to bring out much more than its plain word-forword meaning:

58 (Passage  A   ) What did Socrates fail to do when prosecuted?* What does this failure seem to imply about Socrates? What words and word-groups make you think that Cicero admires him?* How was his death brought about? How did he deliver his final words?* (Passage B) What news was brought to Caesar and what did he do after hearing it?* What was his order to his men and why did he give it?* What considerations made Caesar’s troops keen on a battle?* What points make you think that he wishes to put Ariovistus in the wrong? (Passage C ) What was the appearance of the Sabine women as they ran onto the battlefield?* Why did they beg the two sides to stop fighting?* How does Livy convey the drama and urgency of their appeal? What did this appeal imply? (Passage D ) How does Cicero characterize Hortensius’ life?* In what way was his death timely? What does Cicero consider the real grounds for mourning? What does he wish his readers to do quotienscumque de clarissimo et beatissimo viro cogitemus , and why?* How convincing do you find his line of argument? (Passage E ) What time-honoured custom does aetas nostra still practise on occasion?* What occasion prompts it to do so?* What led, and what did not lead, men of distinction in olden times to achieve virtutis memoriam ? What in your view is Tacitus implying about his own work?

ii

Grammar and vocabulary questions on a reading passage

These will be devised at a level to suit the class. Ques tions would involve ° analysing and explaining the g r a m m a r of words and word-groups; ° v o c a b u l a r y analysis, to explore some words’ range of meanings and why some are suitable while others are not; °  s y n t a c t i c a l manipulation—for instance, from passage C  students might be asked to recast

crinibus passis scissaque veste, victo malis muliebri pavore using present participles and/or relative clauses; and

ne se sanguine nefando soceri generique respergerent, ne parricidio macularent partus suos using nolite + infinitives and making other necessary changes. Questions which in these ways explore the language of reading p assages

i

enable teacher and students to revise or explore a good deal of grammar;

ii

maintain the link with reading and comprehension.

See also method iv .

59

iii

Error-fixing 

An exercise that can be designed for any level of Latin, except perhaps absolute beginners. The teacher hands out or writes up a passage with a stated number of carefully designed grammatical errors in it. Students rewrite it, correcting and explaining the errors. Explaining them as well as identifying them deters mere guesswork and encourages grammar-revision.38 See also method iv .

iv

Studying format and structure

°  a passage chosen by the teacher is handed out for the class to write out in lineanalysis, with its word-groups suitably numbered and explained as shown in Chapter VI; ° or the sentences and their word-groups are to be diagrammed by the ‘arch’ method; each ‘arch’ should then be grammatically explained, in numbered paragraphs following the diagrammed text. These activities were already mentioned above ( 7.1.3 i–ii ) among the methods for developing reading skills in class. They apply the principles of structure-analysis set out in Chapter VI, and it is vital that students develop awareness and skills in this area as early as possible. So they can be given more prominence from time to time, or as time passes and expertise builds up, and be used as either class exercises or take-home assignments. A mix of both is a good idea.

 v

Comparison strategies

This method suits fairly advanced students, who again can undertake it as work in class or as a home assignment. They read (without translating), study and discuss a pair of passages on the same or very similar topics. For examples we need to go outside our old passages  A–E, but pairs are not hard to find; e.g.

° Cicero’s assessment of Caesar and Livy’s of Cato (  Philippic 2.45.116;  Ab Vrbe Condita 39.40);  AVC   1.57–60; 3.44–50); ° Livy’s stories, shortened, of Lucretia and Verginia ( 

° Caesar on the first landing of his legions in Britain, Tacitus on Suetonius Paulinus’ landing on Anglesey  B. (  Gall. 4.24–25; Annals 14.29–30). Many other pairs (and probably some triplets) can be found by a teacher. In comparing such texts students would be encouraged

i

to discuss specific examples of similarity and difference between passages;

38  Nor, incidentally, are such exercises time-consuming to mark afterwards. If the teacher feels that translation should be included, this can be done as the next assignment on the corrected passage.

60

ii

to analyse how each author uses syntax, sentence-structure and vocabulary to

achieve drama, pathos, surprise, irony (or whatever features are present);

iii

to discuss which features are especially outstanding in each passage, how they

compare across the passages, and what they suggest about each author’s aims. This method helps students discover how writers of Latin exploited their language to achieve differing aims, ideas and methods. They thus reinforce their skills in reading, comprehension and analysis, while also gaining experience for areas of possible later study like stylistics and literary criticism. These need not be the only methods that can be quite readily developed for teaching reading and comprehension skills. Variety is important—otherwise ennui and academic rigor mortis all too easily set in. Continuing study of grammar, and even translation, have their necessary place but at the same time other approaches are vital as well, especially at more advanced levels. The rewards will prove to be very worth the effort.

61

IX : §1

Translation

THE LIMITS OF TRANSLATING AS A STUDY TOOL SCENE: A class studying the Russian language. Ent er Russian tutor.

TUTOR: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the new academic year. As you know, this year our literary text will be War and Peace.   To study it we’ll be translating it into English and discussing it. There’s quite a lot of it so we must move quickly. I’ll ask each member of the class in turn to translate two paragraphs at a time. Volume One, Book One, Chapter One—first two paragraphs then, Mr  Jones … ? [ etcetera ]

The prospect would be startling to say the least. What class, however advanced, could expect to translate War and Peace  in one year’s study? But then again, what Russian class would be expected to read a literary work by translating it—even if the text were a shorter work like The

Cherry Orchard ? Substitute ‘Latin’ for Russian, though, and a book of the  Aeneid   or Livy for The Cherry Orchard , and Latinists would feel very much at home. As for a text to match War and  Peace—say all the surviving speeches of Cicero in one year—this would merely prompt a mass dropout. We have seen that, despite its pedigree as a study method stretching back to the Middle Ages, translating has serious drawbacks as a technique for ‘reading’ texts. 39 But we have also seen that it can be useful as a limited tool, both at beginners’ level Latin and as one technique in developing reading skills (see especially Chapter VIII). So some remarks on it may usefully be made, as long as we keep in mind that, as students improve their reading skills, translating must play less and less of a rôle in their work. § 2 PRINCIPLES FOR TRANSLATION FROM LATIN In language study, at early levels, translating helps explain to learners what is going on in a statement; though this should be balanced by carefully-planned exercises in direct reading. At a more advanced level, translating a passage from Latin may be worthwhile as an oral classroom activity from time to time or as a written assignment. But at no time should it be treated as ‘the’  language-study method, for that again reinforces the notion that Latin can be fully understood only through becoming English. As was stressed earlier, translating must not   be used as a tool for finding out what a passage means. The correct principle is our RULE 5: first read the text to find what it means, then translate. 39  On traditional construing cf. the interesting remarks of John Arthos (note 4 above) quoting the modern German thinker Hans Gadamer. On the problems and contradictions of translating as a tool of study: Hoyos, art. cit. (note 1 above).

62 In translating, these basic principles apply:

9.2.1 Do not use the English derivative, except in special cases This is a sometimes difficult but always important principle. The reasons for it are:

i  More often than not, the English meaning of the word has changed from that of the Latin original.

ii

It is valuable to develop vocabulary skills by making use of other words that suit the Latin as well or better.

Exceptions can be made: technical terms like magistracies and other institutions and objects for which the same word, or an English form of it, is normal (e.g. consul, augur, senatus, legio,

 praefectus 40 ); and a few terms for which alternatives are difficult or impossible (e.g. natura ). As usual, common sense should guide.

9.2.2 Three common words: ‘animus’, ‘res’, ‘res publica’ [i] animus  means ‘spirit, soul, feelings, attitude’ and other things; but the translation ‘mind’ should be avoided because it almost never fits as well as one of the alternatives. Keep ‘mind’ for some contexts of mens and ingenium. [ii] res never means ‘thing’. Depending on its context, it can bear a wide range of meanings—  ‘item, matter, business, affair, concern, practice, activity, issue (etc.); notice also res Romana ‘Roman interests’ or even ‘the Roman state’, rem gerere ‘to campaign’. ‘Thing’ is best left for id  in some contexts. [iii] res publica  should not be translated as ‘republic’ unless from dire necessity, and as ‘the state’ only if the Latin term is defined further—as in res publica populi Romani . Basically it means ‘the people’s business’ and therefore enjoys a broad range of senses depending on context (‘politics, public affairs, constitution, political system, the national interest, one’s country, the government, society, the community’ etc.).

9.2.3 Literal translation must be avoided, or L I A W  Of course when Sallust’s Cato says ‘scilicet res ipsa aspera est, sed vos non timetis eam’, it would be perverse not to translate it more or less literally: ‘all right, the situation itself is bitter, but you do not fear it.’ 41 But most Latin does not lend itself so easily to word-for-word transfer into English. 40  Army terms sometimes get ‘translated’ (legio  ‘regiment’ or ‘brigade’, tribunus militum  ‘colonel’) and occasionally so do some political ones ( praetor   ‘judge’, legatus Augusti  ‘viceroy’), but such equivalents can be seriously misleading, nor can every term in such groups be given a simple modern equivalent. It would be nearly as  pointless to ‘translate’  Noricum  as ‘Austria’,  provincia Africa  as ‘Tunisia’, Gallia  as ‘France’ and so on (as is occasionally done too).

41  Sallust, Catiline  52.28. Cato is making an ironic concession to his hearers: this to be sure ( scilicet ) is how they feel—but he implies that they are foolish to do so.

63 Literal translation can produce grotesque or ludicrous results of the ‘wherefore, the mountains having been perceived, after he had taken up his plan, the men having been assembled he exhorted that they might not grow fearful’ kind, at any rate when tackled by less proficient students.42  Even if this does not happen, literalism is to be avoided. With some students, especially beginners, a literal translation may be us eful for seeing the Latin skeleton of a sentence, but once that is achieved a more natural rendition is necessary for the finished version. As illustrated above, a literal version reads unnaturally in English more often than not. In any case, on the same principle as avoiding derivatives, literalism is a very poor way of developing translation skills. An important oxymoron therefore is: L I T E R A L I S A L W A Y S W R O N G (even when technically right)

9.2.4 Broad paraphrase vs literalism An obvious question is: how far from literalism is too far? This is a matter of individual  judgement and taste. This study is about reading Latin directly rather than turning it into another language, so does not pretend to have universal answers; but a few points may be made. There is plainly a wide gap between the following versions of the same passage from Livy. 43 The first basically follows the literal, the other the paraphrase approach: a The troops indeed feared the enemy, the remembrance of the former war not being yet obliterated: but much more did they dread the immense journey and the Alps, a thing formidable by report, particularly to the inexperienced. Hannibal, therefore, when his own resolution was fixed to proceed in his course and advance on Italy, having summoned an assembly, works [ sic ] upon the minds of the soldiers in various ways, by reproof and exhortation. He said, that ‘he wondered what sudden fear had seized breasts ever before undismayed: that through so many years they had made their campaigns with conquest; [etc.].’

b The rank and file of the Carthaginian army had a wholesome respect for Roman arms, as the former war was not yet forgotten; but they were much more alarmed by the prospect of the long march and, especially, of the passage of the Alps—about which stories were told dreadful enough to frighten anyone, particularly the inexperienced. In view of this, Hannibal, once he had made his decision to go ahead and to make straight for Italy, paraded his troops and delivered an address calculated to work upon their feelings by a judicious mixture of reproof and encouragement. ‘What sudden panic is this,’ he said, ‘which has entered those breasts where fear has never been? Year after year you have fought with me, and won; [etc.].’

42 An invented item, loosely reminiscent of Livy 21.30. 43 Livy 21 .29.7–30.2, a  in the Bohn’s Library transl. (late 19th Century) and b  by Aubrey de Sélincourt in Penguin Classics (1959).