![]() ![]() but you have not addressed the linguistic commonalities that can allow one to translate 1. as it was the one in 2.? That is to say, you have emphasized the (otherwise quite obvious) morphosyntactic & semantic differences between 1. ![]() One could say: "ok, Mitomino, nice long story but, in my opinion, the interesting part of the question raised by the OP remains unanswered: why is it the case that some translators (even excellent ones such as C. See also the comment below by Cerberus and my answer to it. NB: interestingly, some old dictionaries do give the reading infirm us (nominative sg.), hence modifying the subject nemo, instead of infirm is (ablative pl.), which modify viribus: e.g. "Nemo Agrigenti neque aetate tam affectus neque viribus tam infirmus fuit qui." "Nemo Agrigenti neque aetate tam affectā neque viribus tam infirmis fuit qui." but is an ablative of specification/respect in 2. Ditto for viribus: this noun is an ablative of description in 1. ( nemo) aetate affectā ((no one) 'with a weakened age') and ( nemo) affectus aetate ((no one) 'weakened by age') aetate tam affectā is an ablative of description in 1., whereas aetate in aetate affectus is an ablative of cause ('weakened by age') or, alternatively, an " ablative of specification": 'weakened with respect to age' in 2. To conclude, Latin offers both grammatical possibilities (see the original one in 1. ad-fecta aetate with con-fecta aetate, etc.).Īdfecta enim, sicuti Marcus Cicero et ueterum elegantissimi locuti sunt, ea proprie dicebantur, quae non ad finem ipsum, sed proxime finem progressa deductaue erant. ![]() Gellius, which, by the way, provides a very useful native intuition to learn the aspectual value of Latin prefixes (e.g. 184) by including the following nice text from A. Wilkins provided a grammatically relevant comment on adfectaque iam aetate in his Cicero. Muci ianua et vestibulum, quod in eius infirmissima valetudine adfectaque iam aetate maxima cotidie frequentia civium ac summorum hominum splendore celebratur. aetate affecta in both texts, which can lead us to conclude that this parallel modification with these two identical (!) adjectives was very pleasant to Cicero):Įst enim sine dubio domus iuris consulti totius oraculum civitatis testis est huiusce Q. viribus infirmis in your text with infirmissima valetudine in the text below and cf. This combination is not restricted to a context of non-prepositional "ablative of description" but can also be found in other contexts like the one exemplified below (by the way, cf. 2.20).įurthermore, as noted above, the modification of aetas by the participle affecta is also very natural. Tertium genus est aetate iam adfectum, sed tamen exercitatione robustum quo ex genere iste est Manlius cui nunc Catilina succedit (Cic. In fact, it is important to point out that Latin offers the two grammatical possibilities, as can be shown by comparing your example above with the following one, also from Cicero: However, translations are translations and grammar is grammar. Yonge (1903): "No one in Agrigentum was either so advanced in age, or so infirm in strength". Well, in my opinion, this is a good translation, which is, by the way, very similar to the one given by C. If I interpret you correctly, you're saying that there appears to be a sort of syntax-meaning mismatch involved here: on the one hand, as you point out, the syntax clearly forces us to interpret the nominal predicates as ablatives of description ("with such weakened age and with such infirm power"), but, on the other, a more natural interpretation (at least for you) would be the one whereby the participle/adjective should modify not the ablative noun but the nominative subject (contra the original text above and in agreement with "nemo Agrigenti neque aetate tam affect us neque viribus tam infirm us fuit qui.").Īccordingly, as you point out, a good translation of this text would be "No one in Agrigentum was either so weakened by age, or so infirm in strength.". ![]()
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