Translating Baucis et Philemon and Otium

Word order stops helping

Everything you have practised on prose leans, quietly, on word order. A Latin prose writer is fairly predictable: the subject tends to come early, the main verb tends to come last, and an adjective usually sits beside the noun it describes. You may not have noticed how much work that habit was doing for you until you meet verse. A poet cannot put words wherever the sense would prefer, because the metre decides which syllables are allowed where. So an adjective can end up at the start of a line with its noun stranded at the end, five words away, and nothing in between belongs to either of them. Reading left to right and hoping the next word continues the phrase will now actively mislead you. The good news is that Latin gives you something better, and you already know it.

Practice Latin, not the set text

Read this before you go on. Every line of Latin in this module was written for practice. None of it is your set text, and none of it is by Ovid or Catullus. That is deliberate: printing an approximation of lines you are revising for a closed-book paper would do you real harm, because you would learn the approximation. Your prescribed passages are in your own printed edition, and that is the only place you should meet them. What this module gives you instead is the method, drilled on Latin you have never seen, so that when you go back to the real text you know what to do with a line that will not sit still.

Prose habit, verse habit

The same sentence, arranged as prose would and as verse might. Both mean the unlucky young man carries help through the city.

Match the phrase to its meaning

Which noun does it belong to?

In the verse arrangement infelix per urbem auxilium portat iuvenis, the adjective infelix is nominative masculine singular. Which word does it describe?

• iuvenis, the last word of the line
• urbem, because it comes soonest after it
• auxilium, because it is in the middle of the phrase
• portat, since the adjective describes the action

What agreement actually means

Agreement is a three-part match, and it is not about words looking alike. Learn the three parts and the pitfall together, because the pitfall is what costs marks.

Which two really agree?

Select the TWO phrases in which the adjective genuinely agrees with its noun.

• infelix iuvenis
• Romana manus
• Romanus manus
• facilis militis

Find its partner in the line

Here is a fresh practice line: validus per summum murum exercitus venit. The adjective validus is nominative masculine singular. Select the ONE word it agrees with.

• summum
• murum
• exercitus
• venit

The method in a sentence

In verse, stop relying on _____ and start reading the _____. An adjective agrees with its noun in case, _____ and gender, and it may sit anywhere in the line. Two words that end alike need not _____, and two words that agree need not look _____ at all.

Put the method in order

Put these five moves into the order that works on a verse line you have never construed before.

• Find the main verb, wherever in the line it has ended up
• Find the nominative, which is your subject
• Match every adjective to a noun by case, number and gender
• Work out what the remaining cases are doing: object, of, to, by
• Write English that says what the Latin says, in your own word order

A worked verse line

Take infelix per urbem auxilium portat iuvenis. First the verb: portat, he carries. Then the nominative: scanning the whole line rather than the front of it, iuvenis is nominative singular, so the young man is carrying. Now the adjectives: infelix is nominative masculine singular, and iuvenis is the only nominative masculine singular noun present, so infelix belongs to it however far away it stands. That gives the unlucky young man carries. What is left is per urbem, through the city, and auxilium, the thing carried. Final English: the unlucky young man carries help through the city. Notice what was never used: the order of the words. Every decision came from an ending. That is the habit to build, because on a real verse line it is the only one that survives.

Build the English

Complete an accurate English rendering of validus per summum murum exercitus venit.

Keeping the joke

The Otium extracts include a mock-invitation poem in which the poet invites his friend to dinner and then jokingly tells him to bring the dinner himself. Suppose a practice line reads nihil fero, literally I bring nothing. Which English rendering is best for a poem of that kind?

• I have got nothing to bring, because it keeps the accuracy and the light, conversational tone the poem is written in
• Nothing is borne by me, because a passive construction sounds more like poetry
• I am skint, because a modern joke replaces an old one
• Nothing whatsoever do I bring unto thee, because verse should sound elevated

Construe and choose

You are working through a verse passage under exam conditions. Take the decisions in order.

• The line opens with an adjective and you cannot see a noun it could belong to nearby. What do you do first?
• You find two candidate nouns. One ends with the same letters as the adjective; the other has the same case, number and gender. Which do you choose?
• You have construed the line correctly. The English you have written is accurate but reads awkwardly because you kept the Latin order. What now?
• The passage is from the light, friendly half of the component rather than the narrative half. How should that affect your English?

Explain your method

Open your own printed copy of your set text and pick any line you find difficult. Explain, in English, how you would construe it and what you would write.

• Say what makes the line difficult, in terms of where the words sit
• Explain which word you would find first, and why the main verb is a good starting point
• Explain how you would decide which noun an adjective belongs to
• Give one example of two words that end alike but do not agree, and say why
• Say how the tone of the passage would affect the English you finally write