Seven Lines for Book the Seventh

Tu quoque litoribus nostris, Aeneia nutrix

aeternam moriens famam, Caieta, dedisti;

et nunc servat honos sedem tuus ossaque nomen

Hesperia in magna, siqua est ea gloria, signat.

At pius exsequiis Aeneas rite solutis,

aggere composito tumuli, postquam alta quierunt

aequora, tendit iter velis portumque relinquit.

- Aen. 7.1-7

 Book Seven is the more Iliadic latter half of the Aeneid, the portion just past the sections required for grades; in this way it is much like Doctor Seuss' On Beyond Zebra. The first four lines form an epigram. Aeneid Book Seven is a beginning, just not the beginning. As a beginnig, it must observe the conventions of that position, at least in part.

The first line of Book Seven violates the standard pattern of the ending of the dactylic hexameter line by ending in two spondees rather than a dactyl and spondee. The end of a line is an important location for identifying the meter of a poem; without establishing and reconfirming the predetermined meter, poetry devolves into elevated prose. Such a break in the standard pattern here, therefore, in such a prominent position, must have a purpose. Virgil establishes this intentionality in line five, which not only carries the right pattern of dactyl and spondee, but even contains the phrase rite solutis "after they had been done properly." Thus the Watsonian sense of proper funeral rites and the Doylist of continuing the narrative are resolved.

The first four lines of Book Seven form two couplets, since the couplet is the appopriate number of lines for the epigrammatic tradition. The first of these couplets in composed of the first two lines, These lines are an invocatio, an invocation of Aeneas' nurse Caieta, hitherto unmentioned and probably eponymous with a local coast feature. The Roman and the Greeks loved words, but to say that they understood linguistics would be lie. The first line begins with tu quoque "thou also," suggesting that addressee as someone known to the original audience. The spondaic conclusion of the line, Aeneia nutrix "nurse of Aeneas," further supports a known identity. Yet this nurse, Caieta, has not received a single mention in the preceding six books! The nurse of Aeneas appears posthumously like that of Dido, but at least she recieves a name, like that of Anna! Caieta's death provides eternal fame. This contrast is mortality is fitting in the transition between Book Six, in which Aeneas spent most of his time in the Underworld with the Sibyl, and the rest of Book Seven, in which he has returned to the upper world. The mention of a mortal rather than an immortal indicates that this is not true invocatio, which would require a goddess, Muse, or august patron close to the divine. On a more grammatical angle, the phrase litoribus nostris is probably either locational with an elided preposition or else a direct object of dedisti. Also note the alliterative alternation of a and n in nostris Aeneia nutrix/aeternam.

The preferred alliteration in the second couplet switches out a for s. The second couplet also switches from second person to third and from perfect tense to present. The bones of Caieta now receive honor in Italy. It is notably, however, that the word for Italy is the poetic synonym Hesperia and the form of honor is archaic honos. Both could be the result of internal and line-initial alliteration and assonance, but honor and Italia would fit the meter equally well. The final portion of the funerary epigram contains an element of memento mori in siqua est ea gloria "if this is any kind of glory." This sentiment is appropriate for a funerary epigram, but it also indicate the vacillation of the hero Aeneas, who continually turns over matters in his mind, whether or not the other Trojans know.

Caieta's brief appearance is also an indicator, a prefiguration of the many characters who will appear in this half of the Aeneid only to die at the hands of a mightier or more plot-relevant warrior. The manner in which Caieta brought fame to Italy remains unknown.

The next three lines of Book Seven are a series of three clauses related to past actions followed by a generic statement, Their unity can be measured by the alliteration of a in the first words of each line - at, aggere, and aequora - as well as the structure of the three clauses. The first two clauses are ablative absolutes, while the third is a temporal clause with postquam. Aeneas, here given his epithet of pius Aeneas, is the grammatical subject of the main verb relinquit, but the ablative absolutes exclude him and the calming of the sea was not his doing. The final past tense subordinate clause is bound to the main clause in the similarity of postquam alta quierunt and portumque relinquit. Not only do they posess an identical metrical pattern, a similarity insufficient by itself for argument, but they also contain an identical consonant inventory. The only consonant present in the sixth line and absent in the sevent in the s of postquam. Both portions start with p and contain t as the third consonant. The phrases alta quierunt and relinquit are almost anagrams. The -am of postquam is elided according to the rules of Latin poetry, but both lines contain a nasal consonant - n in the former and m in the latter.

The actions in the latter three lines are not just third person, but third person narration in the past leading to the present. Both quierunt and relinquit reinforce the temporal change. Aeneas has performed the rites correctly; he has built the burial mound; the sea has become calm.

The combination of the funeral rites, calm sea, and the sailing forth is a reminder of the opening of the Trojan War, of which the Iliad related a part. Aeneas is a better man than Agamemnon, however, whom his former analogue Odysseus witnesses in his own catabasis. The member of the family for whom Aeneas mourns is his beloved nurse rather than his daughter cruelly deceived. The resulting departure, however, leads to wars for both men.

The first seven lines of Book Seven of the Aeneid are a complex work. The first four lines are a funerary epigram combined with a false invocatio and covert refrences to prior nunrses and mental states, The next tree lines are a tightly composed triplet to move the story to the next point. The use of alliteration and assonance helps to define each section. When both sections come together, the seven lines from a reference to the beginning of the Trojan War, an apposite reference for the Iliadic half of the Aeneid.

Catalectic Converter: An Ode to Dactylic Hexameter

 If you want to read, recite, and interpret dactylic hexameter, the meter of Latin epic poetry, if not the native form, you must first understand how it works. The traditional account is as follows: the name dactylic hexameter tells us about important details for its construction. 'Dactylic' indicates that it is composed of dactyls, a metrical unit of one long followed by two shorts. 'Hexameter' indicates that this pattern repeats six times to create a single line of dactylic hexameter. Yet this sextuple repetition is not reflected in the canonical line of dactylic hexameter, which ends in a spondee, a pair of longs. Most of the feet of the hexameter can change from dactyl to spondee, except the fifth and penultimate. This foot must remain dactylic to reinforce the nature of the meter. Very rarely is this consistency breached and even more rarely at the beginning of a section. If the nature of the meter requires reinforcement, why does the last foot of the hexameter not fulfill this role? The final foot of one line and the initial of the next are often bound by grammatical enjambment. Even the use of an extrametrical syllable to tie them together is not sufficient, since the vowel always undergoes elision. The neophyte Latinist learns that the sixth and last foot is a spondee. The last vowel of the final syllable which is pronounced would be short or long in prose; but it is always treated as long in scansion. Most of the time this default intervention does no harm. Sometimes, however, the natural length of the vowel is significant. 

There is a better way to analyze dactylic hexameter, a way in which a journeyy through complexity creates a more thorough understanding. Dactylic hexameter is not merely dactylic hexameter; it is dactylic hexameter catalectic. What does 'catalectic' mean? Catalexis, and its adjective catalectic, is metrical circumcision, the omission of the last syllable. The identity of the meter as dactylic is confirmed by the spondee rather than a single long syllable, while the placement of the syllable at the end of the line is established by the final long syllable, irrespective of any condition which migh force an otherwise short syllable to be treated as long.

This possibility of long or short, sometimes called 'anceps', at the end of a line of dactylic hexameter is one of the mechanisms to vary a potentially soporific metrical pattern. It is also a reminder that the terms first presented to learners are simplified version of the whole rather than the only way in which one can view such a phenomenon.

Absolutes and Absolutions

            In the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas the initiate finally reaches his father in the Underworld and is ready to learn the secrets of the cosmos. Aeneas needed no expiation, only the original Hell House exhibition, because he is, as the poet firmly insists, 'pius', The soul of Anchises, Aeneas' father, is contemplating the souls of the purified in a pleasant valley by the River of Forgetfulness. In this holy place, Here Anchises explains the cycle of expiation and rebirth, governed by the One Above All, the Unmoved Mover. This single governing force might seem at odds with the bickering pantheon of the Aeneid, but the trip through the Underworld has already demonstrated this rigidity is not part of the cosmology of the Aeneid. The world is vast and contains many perspectives, from the fading ghosts of the Stygian shores to the eternal torment of the Titans and irredeemable mortals, to the cleansing and reincarnation of reclaimable souls. Neither the Sibyl nor Anchises can claim absolute knowledge; the former received her knowledge from Hecate, of which only a part is revealed to Aeneas, and Anchises, as a virtuous soul, never suffered the torments of expiation.

            There is a possibility that a modern audience might see a monotheist element in Anchises' cosmology. Although this perspective is not entirely wrong, especially from a diachronic, or historical trend, view, the modern sensibility is far more based in dualism than that of the Imperial Roman period. The distance between polytheism and monotheism is not a bright line in the sand, but a continuum. Islam and Judaism are indisputably monotheistic; is Christianity? If it is, which sorts of Christianity does one include? The theological perspective in this portion of the Aeneid is somewhere between henotheism, in which there are many gods, of equal or near equal power ("thou shalt have no other gods beside me") and monotheism ("thou shalt have no other gods besides me"), in which there is one. But then, a cult into which one must be initiated in order to achieve rebirth is unlikely to focus on a plethora of gods; the most likely number is one, and it is unlikely to have more than three. The universalist perspective of Anchises' cosmology is a unifying one, designed to soothe Aeneas' constant anxiety from the continuous conflict in his life and an aspirational one for the future generations of Romans, including those who comprise Virgil's contemporary audience. Jupiter and Juno are currently at odds, but they will reconcile and share patronage of the Roman race; Venus will see her descendent Caesar conquer both lands, lads, and lasses; Neptune will allow his domain to become Nostrum Mare, "Our Sea," to the Romans. Yet  none of this is intended to deny the potency of the Roman pantheon in the preservation of republican and imperial power. The worship of the gods is essential for political stability, but spiritual comfort will be sought more and more in the belief in a unitary power, whether that be Augustus Divus or Sol Invictus.

Hypermetricals False and True: Aeneid Book 6.560-1, 602-3

 The use of hypermetrical verses in Vergil's Aeneid is rare; but when it occurs, one should consider its effect. The Aeneid is written in dactylic hexameter, which consists of dactyls (long-short-short) and spondees (long-long). The last two feet of the hexameter, with rare exceptions, consist of a dactyl and a spondee. In any poetic meter with predetermined line length, it is important that the final feet return to the default pattern. If this were not the case, then it would be challenging to recognize the particular meter. The other component one must consider in a discussion of hypermetrical verse is elision. In Latin poetry, the final vowel or final vowel plus m elides, or disappears, if the next word begins with a vowel or h. The quantity (short or long) of the final vowel is irrelevant. This is the default situation; if it does not occur where one would expect to occur, this is called hiatus. Elision, however, does not occur between the sixth foot of one line and the first foot of the next line. The sentence or thought often connects the sixth and first foot through enjambment, the delay of a critical word until the beginning of the following line; but this is a literary device rather than a sound-based one. A hypermetrical verse is one in which the last vowel of the last syllable in one line elides due to the first word in the next line beginning with a vowel. It cannot be stressed too much that this is not the default situation! The existence of a hypermetrical verse is dependent on the final vowel of the preceding verse rather than the initial vowel of the following verse.

Aeneas' journey through the Underworld in Book 6 features examples of both false and true hypermetrical verse; in each case, its presence or appearance thereof reflects its context. The first case, the false one, occurs at line 560, while Aeneas and the Sibyl are experiencing the terrifying cacophony of Tisiphone, one of the Furies whose job it is to guard the door to Tartarus, where the truly evil people go. This passage (6.557-561) is filled with words for noise (exaudiri, gemitus, sonare, stridor, strepitum, effare, plangor) and instruments of noise, especially in reference to punishment (scelerum, poenis) and torment (saeva, sonare, verbera, ferri, tractaeque catenae, exterritus). The few words not subsumed in these categories are mostly proper names and function words. Two of these words are verbs of hesitation (constitit, hausit) applied to Aeneas. The overall impression is one of abundant and discordant noise to such a degree that it is disruptive. Aeneas stops to address the Sibyl because he is affected even though is not a prisoner in Tartarus.

"Quae scelerum facies, O virgo, effare quibusve

urguentur poenis? Quis tantus plangor ad auras?"

"Tell me, o maiden, what manner of crimes, and by what punishments are they confined? What is this so great clamor which reaches to the skies?"

Aen. 6.560-1

At first glance, these verses seem well balanced against the chaos of the passage. The vocative "O virgo" is in the middle of the line after the caesura. The three qu- clauses form a triad but they all are ultimately one question. The discordant element in this couplet is the enclitic -ve. The enclitic is necessary, but its presence disrupts the flow of the clause. Without the -ve the phrase would be "quibus urguentur poenis," in which the verb is centered between the adjective and noun, and in which the the verb and the noun participate in enjambment, while the less critical adjective does not. Such a phrase, however, does not meet the requirements of the meter. The addition of the enclitic -ve satisfies the grammatical structure of Latin and the metrical structure of the poetry at the expense of the smaller harmony. The constraints are in irresolvable tension to match the mood of the passage.

The second case, the true extrametrical verse, occurs in the Sibyl's description of Ixion and Pirithous' punishment (6.601-606). The two mortals never enter Tartarus, but the Sibyl's patron goddess, Hecate, taught her the secrets of the realm. Their punishment is to have a rock suspended over their head forever and to have a feast they can see but never reach. Both Ixion and Pirithous had desired congress with goddesses married to other gods.

"Quid memorem Lapithas, Ixiona Pirithoumque?

Quos super atra silex iam iam lapsura cadentique

imminet adsimilis."

"What shall I recall about the Lapiths, Ixion and Pirithous? Over whom a black rock, about to fall any minute now and is alike in threatening the falling person."

(6.601-3)

These verses contain only two qu- words, commensurate with the two sinners. The future participle "lapsura" combined with the reduplicated "iam" creates a prospective effect of future never accomplished. The key phrase, "cadentique imminet adsimilis," once again displays the verb in enjambment, although its companion here is adjectival rather than nominal. Here the hypermetrical verse connects "candentique" and "imminet," and therefore the entire phrase "lapsura cadentique imminet adsimilis." This connection is unifying through its use of transgression inherent to hypermetric verse, yet the same hypermetric verse prevents resolution and reflects its lack within the action of the text.

Vivat Regula Variatio!

 As a Latinist and a Christian, my pronunciation loyalties are divided according to the occasion. When I read Classical texts, I generally use the Erasmian pronunciation, but when I read Christian texts, devotionally or otherwise, I prefer the Ecclesiastical pronunciation. These, however, are but two of the historical options for Latin pronunciation - musician are familiar with a third, more Teutonic variety. The French also insist on doing diction according to their own customs. Yet each country within Christendom, until the Reformation, treated the more common Latin phrases as a register of the vulgar tongue rather than an elevated idiom, by which mechanism many Latin terms were nativized. Legal formulae, in particular, have a tendency to evolve and then resist further evolution; thus the traditional English pronunciation of vivat in the formula vivat rex fossilized as waiwat rex. If the absence of v is surprising, recall the following facts: firstly, English words beginning with v are almost exclusively borrowed from French whereas w was a native English sound, and secondly, the letter u for many centuries represented both u and w as well the introduced v.

To say that the Coronation was scripted would be an understatement. The Coronation of Elizabeth II included vaivat rejaina - not identical, but note the diphthong.The choice of waiwat over vivat emphasizes the traditional, royalist, Latinate, theocratic, catholic (but not Catholic) nature of the British monarchy.

War and Peace: Hypermetric Verse and Its Contrasting Uses in Aeneid Book One

Hypermetric verse is a phenomenon where the last syllable of the dactylic hexameter is potentially extrametrical because the dactylic hexameter must end in a dactyl and spondee; this error is resolved by elision of the extrametrical syllable by the initial vowel of the first syllable of the next line. Hypermetric verse, therefore, places a restriction on the following line, much as a mistake in game can limit the conditions by which one corrects their strategy. Hypermetric verse implies enjambment, but enjambment is not dependent on hypermetric verse, avoiding it altogether. Two examples of hypermetric verse are Aeneid 1.332-3 and 1.448-9; the intended effect of the hypermetric verse, however, is antithetical.

The first example (1.332-3) occurs in a speech in which Aeneas petitions his mother Venus, thinly disguised as an impossibly beautiful huntress.

 

iactemur, doceas. Ignari hominumque locorumque
erramus, vento huc vastis et fluctibus acti:

 

The -que is self-consciously hypermetric, as indicated by erramus, the first word of the second line. The use of hypermetric verse also augments the theme of lack of control and involuntary mobility, which is shown in the bracketing of the hypermetric verse by ‘ignari’ and ‘vento … acti’.

 

The second example (1.448-9) occurs in the context of Aeneas’ jealousy of the state of Dido’s Carthage, which is not complete but well-built enough to have a finished temple whereas Aeneas has yet to reach his destination.

 

aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina, nexaeque
aere trabes, foribus cardo stridebat aenis.

 

 

This completed temple is heavily composed of bronze, a metal associated with war. This metal is mentioned three times (aerea, aere, and aenis), creating an impression of unity. This unity is reinforced by reference to architectural features which connect and support (gradibus, trabes, cardo, limina, foribus). The word which hypermetricizes the verse, ‘nexaeque’, is a verb of joining. This example, in contrast to the preceding, uses hypermetric verse to emphasize control and stability. Both lines have identical metrics for the dactylic hexameter except for the hypermetric elision!  

 

One might be tempted to consider this unity and conformity a wholly good thing, but there are elements which suggest otherwise. The use of bronze, a martial metal, is a reminder of past and future conflicts. The metrical identity of the two lines could suggest an army on the march or a crippling lack of flexibility, on the part of peoples and kings. This temple gate, which creaks (stridebant) like the Trojan fleet under assault, is reminiscent of the Gate of the Temple of Janus, which was open during war and closed in peacetime. The man who is still wandering and the woman who has settled bodes ill for any romance (of which there must be one, since Venus is involved).

Doubling Down: The Reduplication that Europeans Do Not See

Reduplication is a linguistic phenomenon so basic that it is found throughout the world, except in Europe. When, therefore, the Europeans spread across the world in conquest, encountering new languages which possessed this feature and triggering the creation of new languages which used this basic tool of communication, they scorned it; but this disdain required willful blindness on the part of the more educated Europeans to the existence of partial reduplication in one language that they elevated above all others: Greek. In some instances, where the ravages of time and the desperation of analogical repair had worn away the surface pattern, this blindness could be forgiven; in many cases, however, the reduplication was a clear and present feature. The history of the Indo-European languages in Europe was, in part, a process of systematically removing this reduplication, but in Greek, and to a lesser extent Latin, it still remained, and those were tongues which the elites of Europe held in reverence. In Latin reduplication remained only in the perfect tense as an increasingly archaic and non-productive feature; in Greek, however, reduplication was the principal method by which the perfect was created, while reduplication in the present was non-productive. Since the fact of reduplication indicates a primary segment from which the reduplicated segment is taken, the reduplicated segment is almost always simplified, although the details of that simplification varies according to the language. If the simplification of European languages had been a laudable quality, the European point of view might have been consistent, but it was the complexity of Latin and Greek that was admired. Thus, logically, the complexity of foreign tongues should have been admired instead of suffering disdain.

The more change-oriented among my readers may see a lesson in this; I merely offer it as an observation.

The Syntakkes Hole, or The Hollow Word

This is the last post on German for a while - the Hawaii adventure awaits. I am bringing my Hawaiian dictionary with me, so there will be linguistic content! But for now, more German. German is notorious among Anglophones for being a case language, the nearest modern one, and many fear it for that reason. If you look at the case system, however, it has a hollow core. In Indo-European languages, and perhaps other families, the core arguments have less case marking than the peripheral ones. A case system decays like a tree (in the case of Latin, like a eucalyptus on fire, once all five cases in feminine singular became -a), from the core outward. The plurals have already become arbitrary, with only a few rules of thumb and that strange little -n in the dative plural, and the only difference between the nominative and accusative is in the masculine (der vs den); all other nominatives and accusatives are the same for their genders and numbers (The pronouns have a similar problem, but that's another post, post-Maui). It's no wonder that the German have developed an obsession with word order! Yet even in languages that are far more meticulous about genders and noun classes and still preserve the nominative-accusative distinction, two participants of the same gender and number can still cause confusion. I was practicing my German composition by describing the plot of Mirror, Mirror (review coming soon), and ran into just such a problem describing the evil queen and Snow White (Schneewittchen, not Schneeweisschen - thanks to Bill Willingham, I know the difference).

The dative forms of German do not always aid in disambiguation. True to Indo-European form, the neuter article  dem shares the dative form of masculine, while the feminine dative singular definite article der shares a form with its masculine nominative counterpart. The plural dative definite article shares its form (den) with masculine singular accusative - perhaps this is why the dative -n hangs on. At least it's not a Russian genitive-accusative!

For now, German retains its cases, but the minute it loses its final -n's it's going to turn into Eastern Dutch!

'Comites' Before 'Clodia'

Catullus' poem 11 continues his post-Lesbian life. If poem 8 is Catullus enduring the psychological travails of the breakup, poem 11 is his drunkenly exaggerated thanks to his friends, followed by a relapse into bitter anger.

Furius and Aurelius seem to have assured Catullus that they have his back, in a "bros before hoes" manner, and suggested a road trip. Although the actual suggestion is more likely to have been a trip to Baiae rather than Bithynia, Catullus exaggerates this offer to cover the entire world. It is unclear whether this is happily drunken fraternity or a test born from Catullus' lingering insecurity. The epic language and scale of the proposed world tour (11.2-12) could suggest either possibility. A world tour, however, is not what Catullus wants his friends to do; what he really wants is the delivery of an abusive message (11.15-24) to his former lover.

This message begins somewhat elegantly (11.15-11.17), as though it were a neoteric poem within another neoteric poem. The last word of 11.17, "moechis", marks the descent into abusive language. First, Catullus refuses to believe that Lesbia's sexual liaisons could have any element of true love (11.18-20), and then witholds the love he alone possesses (11.21). The last image of the poem, a flower in a field which has been fatally damaged by a plow (11.22-24), indicates not only sexual congress and the generation of a precious and beautiful thing, but also an affection that is dying, rather than dead, in Catullus' heart.

Shining Suns

Catullus, in the eighth poem of his collection, has encapsulated the complicated feelings of a messy breakup. The poem opens with a wonderful expression (8.2), which may or may not be a proverb:

quod vides perisse perditum ducas
"what you know has died you should consider lost"

This is excellent advice, but cold comfort to one who had lost something precious.
Such sentiments, rather than sufficing - it is only the second line, after all -, spurs Catullus to dwell on what is lost. The perfect tense of "fulsere" establishes the connection of the past and present, while the following imperfects provide a sense of both pastness and frequency; it is notable that Catullus is the passive partner in these activities.

In line 8.9, Lesbia has rejected Catullus; Catullus retains his feeling of impotence, and even his attempts to get her back (8.10-13) are impotent and his self-pity pathetic. He must announce his renunciation of her to make it stick. The embarrassing antics of jilted lovers trying to revive the sparks ("soles") of a dead relationship is mixed with wavering self-confidence.

In lines 8.14-18, Catullus turns from strengthening his own resolve to degrading that of his former lover. Although the descent into rhetorical abuse is a stylistic demand of this poetic genre, it is also a realistic psychological depiction, the dark side of the irritating presumption of a unique relationship that lovers often display. It is testimony to the passion of the relationship that Catullus ends the poem not with a final sting to Lesbia, but one last reminder to himself (8.19).

Ad rem Aegyptiae intelligendam

One of the forms of the Egyptian verb, and one which we recently studied, is called the "pseudo-verbal" form. This consists of a limited number of prepositions followed by the Egyptian "infinitive". The citation forms for the most common pseudo-verbals are transliterated conventionally as "Hr sDm", "m sDm", and "r sDm". Although it is difficult to describe concisely an English structural parallel, students of the Romulan tongue might find a better comparison between the Egyptian pseudo-verbal form and the Latin gerundive.

In this case, the Egyptian forms "Hr sDm", "m sDm", and "r sDm" correspond (with due allowance for prepositional semantics) to the Latin forms "de aliquo audiendo", "in aliquo audiendo", and "ad aliquid audiendum". The Latin trio, however, is crippled in its syntactical ability compared to that of the Egyptian, which can support a complex noun phrase.

Since the meanings of the constructions differ, I am presenting this as a mnemonic rather than a detailed grammatical analysis.

Strangers Passer-ing In The Night

Ash Wednesday, and instead of penitence my thoughts turn to the passer poems (2 and 3) of Catullus. Since I was assigned poem 16 for St Valentine's day, I must wonder if the class is not meant as some sort of cosmic counterpoint. Maybe it's just part of the Chairman's plan (Philip K. Dick is always a good source of metaphors for the action of the Powers that be).

What can we make of poems 2 and 3? The first is a mock hymn, the second mock dirge, both of which follow upon the heels of poem 1. If poem 1 is a dedicatory epigram which provides the name of the dedicatee, the genre, and a devout desire for the work to last, then poem 2 is an invocation to the mortal goddess of the work. If poem 2 announces Catullus' infatuation with Lesbia, poem 3 describes its irrevocable end. These poems are as programmatic as poem 1 by providing the plot, such as it is, of a work characterized by variatio.

The passer, whose msgical companions pull the chariot of Aphrodite, appears only in these two poems because he has encompassed the entire book by being the book itself. The passer also represents the amores in the sense of physical poetry. That which Lesbia holds in her lap, to which she offers a finger, that which is a beloved comfort to her is the material on which Catullus' poetry is written. If we subscribe to this interpretation, the non-passerine lines 11-13 are not an aberration of overzealous annexation, but rather an appropriate comparison between the passer of Lesbia and the golden apple of Atalanta, both of which were instruments of unbinding girdles. The passer in poem 3 encompasses both the death of the poet as passer and the death of the poetry itself as evidence of a still-living affair. The terms with which the poet eulogizes the passer are actions characteristic of the lover (although the comment about being closer than family acquires ambivalence if Lesbia and Clodia are the same). The imprecation against Hades can be both metapohorical and literal: both the death of a pet bird and a love affair are things which cannot be undone.

Best of the Bath-Thieves

I am greatly enjoying re-reading Catullus, although his subject matter often restrains me from public translation (at least aloud) into English. The two poems of which I speak here are poems 15 and 33, which share the hendecasyllabic meter and themes of breach of trust and travelling (forced or otherwise).

Poem 15 is about breach of trust. Catullus has entrusted his lover (I apologize for the euphemisms, but I know a few minors have found my blog before) to Aurelius while Catullus goes travelling. If I were inclined to attribute absolute historicity to individual poems of the Catullan corpus, I would say that Catullus displays extremely poor judgement in his choice of close friends - but then who knows how many of these violations Catullus himself committed? Lines 6-8 display an chummy elitism that suddenly descends into obscenity
in lines 8-9. This eloquent vulgarity continues to the end of the poem, where the ubiquitous labial plosives and nasals (p, b, m, ph) accumulate in the final insult of the poem (lines 17-18):
"quem attractis pedibus patente porta,
percurrent raphanique mugilesque"

In poem 33, Catullus wishes the titular bath-thieves, whose pricipal predilection to cutpursery is an inherent breach of trust, and whose other predilections are not fit for American minors to discuss, would leave Rome. The alliteration here is focused on p and q/c - the p's in particular are used to good effect(along with n) in the final lines (7-8):
"notae sunt populo, et natis pilosas,
fili, non potes asse uenditare?"

Losing Cases, Retaining Cases

I have finished the exercises in the Modern Greek book which had sat on my shelf for many years. I realize that written exercises are no substitute for actual conversations, but in the contemporary world it is useful to know a substantial amount of grammar before joining an online language group. It is extraordinarily embarassing to abort a conversation that has barely begun.




Modern Greek (by which I mean here Δημοτική, Καθαραίβουσα, and the actual language of the street) has several features immediately familiar to the student of Homer and Herodotus: one of these is the case system.



The case system (less the dative) has survived which pleases me, but surely appalls others. The survival of the case system in Modern Greek and its loss in the Romance tongues might be the result of the stress-and-pitch patterns of Greek and Latin. Greek started with a pitch accent, which eventually shifted to a stress accent; a process which was accelerated by the increase in non-native speaker during the period of the dialects of Κοινή. Latin appears to have always possessed a stress accent, but it shifted from a universal first-syllable stress (presumably the effect of the Etruscans, who had an even stronger version of initial stress) to the penultimate/antepenultimate system of Classical times. After pitch accent and many cases of vowel length had been sacrificed on the altar of expediency, the striking differencebetween the Greek and Latin stress systems was the absence of any accents on the ultimate syllable in Latin. The movement from a primarily case system to an analytic system occurred in both languages, but the evanescence of the Greek case system was retarded by the existence of nouns stressed on the final syllable. Stressed syllables are more resilient in the face of impending doom that unstressed ones, and can provide a paradigm for replacing or repairing ending of words accented on the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables. Latin, lacking this reinforcement mechanism, could not halt the accelerating pace of grammatical reanalysis.

How Stupid Is "You"?

One of the infuriating aspects of translation exercises in which one of the languages is English is the ambivalence of "you". Although the standard varieties of English are content with this ambiguity, an informal style which arose from an excess of formality, the common language is not, as the proliferation of forms such as  "yous", "y'all", and "yinz" attests. If the exercise in question involves English only, the ambiguity remains a minor annoyance. If another language which does not treat familiar forms so cavalierly enters the situation, the :"you" problem becomes critical. Many European languages use the second person plural as a polite singular, and others retain the simple singular/plural distinction. Often I use "thou" in my language notes, thereby transforming the familiar term to a technical one, and eschewing the hideous parenthesis (pl). This method, however, is analogous to the abbreviations we all have used in note taking - it suitable for private use, but would confuse and annoy those from whom we recieve grades. In Latin and Greek learning texts, the distinction is clearly marked, and expected to be noted, but in more casual texts of the modern languages, the poor Anglophone does not know which to use. At least in European countries politeness is the criterion rather than ethnicity!

He Buys Kona Coffee, He Makes Kana Coffee

I have decided to talk about only one lesson in this post because the distinction which it introduces is one to which I have referred several times before, namely the o-a distinction. Hawaiian is far removed from the vowel-based grammatical content of the Semitic languages (since the consonants bear the semantic load) and even the ablaut grades of Classical Greek, but in this instance, the contrast between prepositions and pronouns with o or a is the key to a semantic distinction not made in English. Its expressed absence in English, of course, does not mean that English speakers cannot perceive the distinction. The contrast can be expressed most effectively by the Christmas wreath (ka lei kalikimaka)  I bought from the youth group at church Sunday morning. The important fact here is that I bought the wreath, therefore it would be ko'u lei kalikimaka (my Christmas wreath, the one which I bought). If I had made the wreath myself rather than supporting the youth group mission trip, the wreath would be ka'u lei kalikimaka (my Christmas wreath, the one which I made). Thus the forms with a are more intimate than those with o; the detailed classification is more complicated than this simple description, but presumably no more baffling to native speakers of Hawaiian than the "cities and small islands" rule of the Latin locative.

On other matters, I have decided that Monday will be the regular posting dating for this most unlikely of columns, which still lacks a catchy overall name. Any suggestions in this matter are welcome.


Lesson 11
1. Ke ike nei oukou i ka wai maemae. You will see the clean water.
2. Ke kali nei lakou ma ka hale kahiko. They waited by the old house.
3. E pii kakou i ka hale loihi. We shall climb to the tall house.
4. Ua ai makou i ka uala kahiki a me ka i'a maloo. We have eaten the Irish potato with the dried fish.
5. Ke waiho nei oia i ka eke ko paa ma ka papahele. She puts her secure bag (purse?) on the floor. (Note that ko indicates she did not make the bag.)
6. Ke ike nei au i kona papale maemae  ma ka pakaukau. I see his clean hat (which he bought) on the table.
7. He kanaka naauao a kaulana loa ke kanaka mai Kahiki mai. The man from Kahiki is a very educated man.
8. He wahi maemae loa keia, aka, he wahi paumaele loa kela wahi. This place is very clean, but that place is very dirty.

Test Cases

Since I have read Judd's Lessons 9 & 10, I'll concede that Hawaiian does indeed have cases to a greater extent than English, although not to a much greater extent. You may protest that English does not have cases, and you would be wrong. English has cases, but is not a case language. A case language has a systematic declensional system used for virtually all nouns (even Latin has some defective declensions, such as nihil), but a language which possesses cases need only possess them in a few words. The refuge of moribund cases is often the conservative arena of pronouns, relative and pronominal, and thus it stands with English. Although there have been rumors of the death of whom, the English cases (nominative, genitive, and accusative) still reside most strongly in the personal pronouns (I, my/mine, me; you, your/yours, you; he, his, him; she, her/hers, her; we, our/ours, us; they, their/theirs, them; who, whose, whom). It is not surprising, therefore, that the best evidence of cases in Hawaiian comes from that language's personal pronouns. The legitimate cases for Hawaiian appear to be: nominative, genitive, possessive, dative, and accusative. The genitive-possessive case distinction, incidently, does not seem to be the same as the o-a distinction. Judd claims that there is also an ablative case, but I am not convinced. Even if he had called it a prepositional case, such as exists vestigially in Russian, there is too much variation in the markers (ma, mai, me, e) for it to constitute a legitimate case. Judd not only undermines his own system of presentation, but even descends into grammatical gibberish in Lesson 10 when he says that the first two forms of the ablative (ma, mai) take the genitive case, whereas the latter two (me, e) take the nominative case. What Judd is describing is various prepositions plus the appropriate case for the object of the preposition, rather than a separate case.

Prepositions taking the nominative case seem a little strange, so let us examine more closely why me and e would take the nominative case. The preposition me means "with", which indeed would take the ablative in Latin; the concepts of "with" and "and", however, are closely connected, and sometimes the latter is derived from the former. If the underlying concept of me is conjunction ("and") rather than accompaniment ("with"), the use of the nominative would be appropriate. The other preposition which takes the nominative, e, indicates the agent of a "passive" verb (although, per usual, Judd neglects to provide an example). Since the object of the preposition performs the action, this use of the nominative makes sense as a contextual practice, even though the recipient of the action (the contextual direct object) is the grammatical subject, and therefore is in the nominative case.

So Hawaiian has five cases in the personal pronouns, whereas  English has either three or four, depending on whether my and mine are separate English case forms.

Lesson 9
1. Ke waiho nei au i ka o ma ka pakaukau. I place the fork on the table.
2. Ke hiamoe nei ia ma kahi moe. He sleeps in the sleeping place.
3. Ke kolo nei oia ma ka papahele. He crawls on the floor.
4. Ke pii nei lakou. They climb.
5. Ke kali nei oia no makou. They wait for us.
6. Ua hana lakou i ke kukui. They have made the torch.
7. E hakaka lakou. They will fight.
8. Ua holo lakou mai ka hale pohaku aku. They have run away from the stone house (bonitos can't run).
9. Ke ku nei laua ma ka puka aniani. They two stand at the window.
10. Ua ike makou i ka wahie. We have seen the firewood.

Lesson 10
1. Ke waiho nei oia i ka barena ma ka pahu. I place the bread in the box.
2. Ke inu nei ia i ka waiu. He drinks milk.
3. Ua ai oia i ka eke laiki. He has eaten the rice bag.
4. Ua ai lakou i ka uhapuaa. They have eaten the ham.
5. Ke komo nei oia i ka hale laau. He enters the frame house.
6. Ua ike makou i ka alani, ka ipu pu a me ka ipu haole. We have seen the present for the chief (or god), a squash, and a watermelon.
7. Ua waiho lakou i ka pahu huamoa ma ka papa aina. They have placed the box of hen's eggs on the ground
8. Ke hele nei makou i ka lanai.We walk to the porch.
9. Ua nalo na lanahu o ke ahi. The coals of the fire have vanished.
10. Ua nana makou i ka pakaukau. We have gazed at the table.

Aloha is Just A Secondhand (Accusative of) Motion

Judd's chapters 5 and  6 introduce the the perfect (I have done) and pluperfect (I had done), although it does seem rather odd the Chapter 6 exercises do not include any sentence which contain the pluperfect. The pluperfect tense, in languages which possess it, is much less common then the perfect or past tenses, and possibly even unnecessary, but onwould think even a rare tense would appear in the exercise of the relevant chapter.

The matter which appears more prominently in the Chapter 6 exercise, despite its introduction in a footnote, is the indication of the object of the verb by the preposition i, or "to". The use of a directional marker to indicate the direct object is not unique to Hawaiian - in fact it is fairly common among the languages of the world as an as an easily grasped metaphor for an occasionally abstract concept. In Latin, for example, the accusative is used both as the case for the direct object and the case for motion towards a city (or small island). Although obscure hamlets and large islands require a preposition before the noun in the accusative case, the accusative case alone suffices for cites and small islands. This distinction provides a  middle ground between the use of accusative as a prepositional phrase and the accusative as the direct object; in other words, herein lies the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs.

Chapter5
1. Ua hahai lakou. They have followed.
2. Ua paani makou. We have played.
3. Ke hoole nei oukou. You refuse.
4. Ke nana nei au. I observe.
5. Ua kamailio makou. We have conversed.
6. Ke minoaka nei oia. He smiles.
7. Ua aloha olua. You two have loved.
8. Ke holoi nei laua. They two wash.
9. Ke wehe nei oe. You open.
10. Ua maa oia. He is accustomed ("is accustomed" is a single verb).

Chapter 6
1. Ke ike nei makou i ka hale pohaku. We see the stone house.
2. Ke wehe nei oia i ka puka. I open the door.
3. Ke nana nei kakou i ke keena moe. We observe the bed-room.
4. Ua ike lakou i ka puka aniani. They have seen the window.
5. Ke hoopaa nei oia i ka hale maluna. It holds fast the roof.
6. Ua nalo ka hale pili. The grass house is out of sight.
7. Ua hana lakou i ka hale laau. They made the frame house. (A fait accompli!)
8. Ke pani nei laua i ka puka. They two shut the door.
9. Ke holoi nei oia i ka lanai. He washes the porch.
10. Ke imi nei oia i ka hale kuka. He searches for the kitchen.

You and Me, Baby (or Maybe Not)

I love languages with duals! For those unfortunate enough to lack grammatical education, the distinction between dual and plural in relevant contexts is that the dual indicates exactly two items (with the possibility of innate pairedness, such as eyes) whereas the plural indicates more than two. One the memorable uses of the dual in Homeric Greek is the reference in the Iliad to "the two sons of Atreus" (Agamemnon and Menelaos).

I realize that the book I am using (The Hawaiian Language, by Judd, which I bought many years ago as a visiting keiki on Kaua'i) is somewhat deficient in the okina and macron department, but I'm planning a paper using Kaua'i legends and figure I'd better get used to those very deficiencies characteristic of some older source material. Besides, this grammar fits neatly in my pack.

So far, there are only four other grammar points. the first is the distinction in the first person, both dual and plural numbers, between inclusive and exclusive forms. The easiest way for you, dear reader, to understand this distinction is reminiscing on some occasion when a misunderstanding of "we" led to the awkward clarification that the addressee was not accompanying the speaker on his task. If you and your friend spoke a language (such as Hawaiian!) which distinguished between inclusive and exclusive uses, you would not have encountered this problem. If you had used an inclusive we, your friend would have basked in the assurance of your affections because he was coming with you; if you had used an exclusive we, your friend would have understand how callous and self-centered you were in departing without him.

The next two points are the forms for the verb. The verb comes first in Hawaiian (and Welsh and Klingon) and the surrounding words determine the tense, although I lack sufficient linguistic prowess to determine whether this analysis is too dependent on Western grammatical paradigms.  The indicative present in Hawaiian consists of ke verb nei subject-pronoun and i verb subject-pronoun Thus ke holo nei au means I run, ke holo nei lakou means they all run; i holo oe means you ran and i holo olua means you two ran. I suspect that the nei in the ke holo nei construction is actually the adverb nei, meaning the present time or place used adverbally, limiting the particle ke, which appears to have many particular uses, all of them verbal.

The placement of the subject pronoun (au, lakou, oe, olua) after the verb may seem strange to speakers of most European languages, but it ought not to cause distress. At some date in the distant past, the endings of the familiar Latin conjugations must have been more substantial separate pronouns which followed the verb.Over time, the pronouns eroded to the conjugations I know and love.

Now for the data (otherwise known as the chapter exercise):

Chapter 4

1. Ke ai nei oia. He eats.

2. Ke holo nei lakou. They all run.

3. Ke noho nei oukou. You all sit.

4. I hana oe. You did.

5. I olelo laua. They two spoke.

6. Ke imi nei au. I search.

7. I lohe makou. We all heard.

8. Ke haule nei oia. He falls.

9. I kali olua. You two waited,

10. Ke hoopaa nei au. I hold fast.

Recent Reading: The Lightning Thief

I read The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan partly because I knew a movie of the book was being made and I wanted to check how solid the mythology was. I like Harry Potter, but the distortions of Latin get on my nerves. Rowling clearly knows enough Latin to get it almost right. Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered an exclamation in Homeric Greek in The Lightning Thief! The first book of the Percy Jackson series reminded me a bit of John Christopher's initial offering in the The White Mountains trilogy due to a careful balance of a full story within a projected series.

The Latin and Greek in the book is grammatical and colloquial. The book follows the standard literary convention that only obscenities remain untranslated, although I doubt the intended audience would realize quite how offensive the phrase 'eis korakas' truly is in Ancient Greek. Riordan extends his untranslated expletives beyond the vocative (the lazy man's foreign language) and even includes the plural imperative of a deponent verb. For those of you who lack the ars grammatica, that means he used a verb form which is passive in form, but active in meaning; that's a level of detail which many grade school Latin students would miss.

The reason for the movement of the world of Greek mythology to the United States is well presented, even if it does show the usual bias towards New York. Riordan has solved creatively the problem of a limited (and previously killed) roster of Classical monsters. The monsters themselves are true to the traditional mythology, and dwell in the appropriately iconic cities and regions. The choice of the entrance to the Underworld is a little surprising, although there is a certain logic to it.

The trio of heroes (an apt term for this subcreated world) fill the Harry Potter mode of main character, best friend, and opposite gender friend/potential love interest, but the character interaction placed between the desperate attempts to avoid assassination (this is a children's fantasy, after all) rings true and explores a lesser known dynamic between two gods, or rather their children. The Lightning Thief compromises as little as possible the occasionally sordid interactions between the Olympian gods - this is a relief from the bowdlerization of many other tales.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I can endorse it as a Classics major and occasional fantasy fan.