Bloggus Sum

Glug glug, good morning all. See what you can make of this:

quod mare non novit, quae nescit Ariona tellus?
carmine currentes ille tenebat aquas.
saepe sequens agnam lupus est a voce retentus,
saepe avidum fugiens restitit agna lupum;
saepe canes leporesque umbra iacuere sub una,
et stetit in saxo proxima cerva leae,
et sine lite loquax cum Palladis alite cornix
sedit, et accipitri iuncta columba fuit.
Cynthia saepe tuis fertur, vocalis Arion,
tamquam fraternis obstipuisse modis.
nomen Arionium Siculas impleverat urbes
captaque erat lyricis Ausonis ora sonis;
inde domum repetens puppem conscendit Arion,
atque ita quaesitas arte ferebat opes.
forsitan, infelix, ventos undasque timebas:
at tibi nave tua tutius aequor erat.
namque gubernator destricto constitit ense
ceteraque armata conscia turba manu.

The challenge set by my prof was to identify the tenses of the verbs in the passage; something I sorely needed given how lazy I normally am. My answers are here:

What land did not know, what sea did not know Arion?	novit: perfect (for present sense) nescit: perfect (incorrect: present)
He would hold the flowing waters with his song.	tenebat: imperfect - repeated action.
Often the wolf following a lamb was held by his voice;	retentus est: perfect passive sequens: present participle
Often the lamb fleeing the greedy wolf halted;	restitit: perfect fugiens: present participle
Often dogs and hares lay down beneath common shades	iacuere: poetic contraction from iacueverunt
And the deer stood in the rocks near the lioness	stetit: perfect
and without strife the chattering crow sat with Pallas' bird,	sedit: perfect
and the dove was joined by the hawk.	iuncta fuit: perfect passive
Cynthia often was transported by your music, singer Arion	fertur: perfect (incorect: present)
As if she were halted by her brother's.	obstipuisse: perfect
The name of Arion had filled Sicilian cities	implereverat: pluperfect
and he captivated the Italian shore with the sound of his lyre;	capta erat: pluperfect passive
whence returning home Arion boarded a ship	repetens: present conscendit: perfect
and thus was carrying the wealth earnt by his art.	ferebat: imperfect
Perhaps, unhappy one, you had feared the winds and waves:	timebas: imperfect
but the ocean was safer for you than your ship	erat: imperfect
For the steersman stood with his sword unsheathed	constitit: perfect destricto: perfect participle
And the rest of the conspiritorial band with arms in their hands

And an easy commentary I made as I went.

Line 5
Ariona is the accusative of Arion. It looks odd because Arion is a Greek name being used in Latin poetry, and thus has special rules.

Tellus is a very lofty word for "land", and is frequently used in comparison to sea.

Far more rhetorical than what we could achieve in Latin, with the two interrogatives and two verbs to say the same thing.

Line 6
Note the vivid position of ille, surrounded by all the other words.

Line 7
Anaphora with the repeated saepe, linking to the saepe in line 13. Latin doesn't have a lot of punctuation, but the punctuation is built into it - with words like saepe here shaping a "paragraph" of sorts. Saepe would not be needed with an imperfect verb, as the imperfect implies it.

Line 9
The second animal here is lepus, oris: hare. NOT, as I originally thought, leopard...in class my prof here added "not rabbits, please. Hares. Get a sense of the tone."

iacuere is a poetic shortened version of iacuverunt

Line 11
ales, alitis is literally "winged", and is used poetically to mean "bird". The bird of Pallas Athene is, of course, an owl. I particularly like the use of lite...alite. Though the two words are not connected - lis, litis means strife - alite sounds as if it should be its negative regardless.

Line 12
Horrible line if you don't know that accipiter, tris is a hawk - at which point it becomes easy.

Line 13
Cynthia refers to Diana. I confess this line still confuses me - fertur seems to be present, which seems bizzare because everything else so far has been in the past. Perhaps it is meant to be especially vivid: "Cynthia is often transported by you, Arion"

fertur is a present verb, but it's treated as past because obstipuisse is a perfect. So it does the verbing for both of them. Note that Ovid introduces a note of doubt for what the Gods have done, but not the incredible behaviour of animals.

modis is used with both tuis and fratris.

Line 14
Another line which caused me a headache. The brother referred to is Apollo.

tamquam - "as if" - introduces a comparative clause, but these are followed by proper conjugated verblike-verbs not by infinitives; furthermore, a comparative clause is only in the indicative if the comparison is a real one. In unreal comparisons such as this, the verb should be subjunctive. So what is going on with obstipuisse?

One solution is that it should be imperfect subjunctive obstipuisset and my text is wrong. But that seems rather an extreme solution.

Line 15
Siculas: Sicilian

My prof notes that a shift to the pluperfect is often used to indicate a change in what's going on.

Line 16
Go and find the subject first before plunging in. Ausonis, idos means Ausonian a.k.a. Italian

ora's root meaning is "edge", and thus "shore"

Line 17

Puppis is the rear of a ship, and here just means ship. The front of a ship is prora.

Line 20
nave tua is in the ablative, because it is part of a comparative after tutius

Headaches

• Line 14. Is my text wrong?