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| Author | Message | | | Posted on Thu Apr 02, 2009 03:14:29 | |
| | | In line 9 the 'i' in tenuis scans as long which makes me thing it is an older form of the 3rd declension accusative plural that must agree with artus. But every translation I've found takes it with flamma. Why is this? The imitated Sapphic poem (Sappho 31) has "lepton pur" in the Greek which translates something like a "thin fire." But just because Catullus is imitating Sappho doesn't mean that he has to do it exactly like her all the way to where we find his "new" stanza does it? Is there a prosody rule that I'm missing here? Everyone seems to agree with scanning gemina as ablative going with nocte rather than lumina in the lines before this based on the meter... why are we changing the rules here? or are we? help!!! | |
| | | Posted at Sun Apr 05, 2009 00:41:06 | Quote |
| | | Hmm, you are making the Classic mistake of confusing a syllable with a foot, the "is" of "tenuis" is only long because it is followed by another s in sub making it a long foot. | |
| | | Posted at Sat May 16, 2009 05:39:23 | Quote |
| | | You are quite right. The "tenuis" does modify "artus." By the way, it doesn't matter whether the "is" is long by nature or position, it still has to modify "artus." Besides, who has heard of a gentle flame? Common sense it seems to me. | |
| | | Posted at Sun Jan 10, 2010 20:48:24 | Quote |
| | | Quote: | | | | | You are quite right. The "tenuis" does modify "artus." By the way, it doesn't matter whether the "is" is long by nature or position, it still has to modify "artus." Besides, who has heard of a gentle flame? Common sense it seems to me. |
Ignorance is bliss, it seems. 'tenuis' is genuinely ambiguous and the scansion is no clue here - '-is' is long, of course. If you have a poetic bone in your body, then you will see that it has to agree with 'flamma'; the Sappho original just confirms it.
'gemina' is ablative and agrees with 'nocte'; 'gemina ... lumina' would be a bit obvious and poetically redundant. However, as 'gemina' refers to 'lumina', it is an instance of hypallage. | |
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