Seneca

Let’s talk about this one.

I thought velit nolit was a fun phrase. It seems like it needs another word between it like aut to really make sense, but I guess that must be implied. Perseus translated it as “will he nill he,” and while I like that they kept the sort of rhyming aspect of it, it seemed to me like that our book’s translation of “like it or not” was much more fitting. “Will he nill he” doesn’t seem to me to really capture the original sense particularly well.

I noticed that although this version of the text does not, our book and Perseus both have the phrase non passibus aequis in quotation marks. This seemed odd to me since I took it to mean “with not equal steps,” and nothing about that intrinsically seems to need quotation marks for clarity. I was wondering if they were trying to signal some kind of idiom, or if perhaps Seneca is quoting something else here?

For the phrase verbis conceptis I found an entry in Glossa in which verbis is used with he verb concipio – usually meaning “to take or lay hold of” – to mean “to draw up, comprise, express something in words, to compose.” But here it seems that conceptis is acting as an adjective, modifying verbis, so I took the phrase to mean, “with words drawn up”/”with expressed words”. Is this what is intended by Seneca? Where does the author of our translation get the word “measured” with respect to conceptis?

The answer to this may be very simple, but grammatically speaking I am confused how soli is functioning. Based on the fact that it is 2nd declension, it must be either s. gen./dat. or pl. nom./voc. But I do not see how that is functioning in the sentences to come to mean something like, “he will tell you alone.” To say, “to you alone” or “only you” requires some link between the word being used as an adjective and the object “you”. I tried looking in Lewis & Short but did not find much.

Is there an idiom with habeam to create a feeling of wish? I’ve checked Glossa but haven’t been able to find much.  The closest I’ve found is a meaning of “regarding him safe and lucky.” Does it have anything to do with the fact that habeam is in the subjunctive?

Two tricky grammatical situations appear here: se non indicaturum and vidisset. I decided to take the former as an indirect discourse relying on the future active infinitive. Indicaturum looks like a future active participle, but in order for the indirect statement to work with se an infinitive must be included (a missing esse). This clause translates as “He affirmed in measured/received words that he was not going to disclose…”.

I took the latter half of this phrase as the protasis of a past contrary to fact conditional (si + pluperfect subjunctive, pluperfect subjunctive). The vidisset appears as a pluperfect active subjunctive. Thus, the latter half of the phrase translates as  “even if he had seen a man murdered/stricken down in the mid forum (middle of the forum)”.

Ultimately, this passage raises interesting questions about author-audience relations. Earlier, Seneca claims that an author must observe all (like the entrances into heaven). But he follows this statement by suggesting that an author only speaks to one person at a time. This discrepancy raises interesting questions about fiction’s relationship with groups of people, and the moral implications of an author concealing information from his/her audience.

[I initially put this post on the wrong paragraph – it belongs here next to paragraph 4]

I initially struggled with the form isse. Eventually, I realized this is a perfect active infinitive form (created with the third principle part + isse) of eo, ire. The form appears here in an indirect statement with two subjects: the accusatives Augustum and Tiberium Caesarem. The indirect statement is triggered by qua scis. I finally translated this as “He is the guardian of the Appian way, which you know that both the god Augustus and [the god] Tiberius Caesar went [on] towards the gods.

Concerning the illi found in line 11: initially I wondered whether this was a poetic plural/an instance of the “royal we” and assumed it was the masculine plural nominative form of ille, illa, illud, translating awkwardly into “it is necessary that he see all.”  However, on further inspection, it seems as if this pronoun is actually dative singular.  Illi in the dative also makes sense in terms of the necesse est construction, which often takes a dative when referring to a person.  Taking this into mind, I ultimately translated this sentence as “It is necessary for him to see all.”  This is interesting compared to our book’s translation, which reads “he cannot help seeing everything.”  Is one of these translations truer to Seneca’s intention with this line?

I initially struggled with the form isse. Eventually, I realized this is a perfect active infinitive form (created with the third principle part + isse) of eo, ire. The form appears here in an indirect statement with two subjects: the accusatives Augustum and Tiberium Caesarem. The indirect statement is triggered by qua scis. I finally translated this as “He is the guardian of the Appian way, which you know that both the god Augustus and [the god] Tiberius Caesar went [on] towards the gods.