# Sempronia, genere nobili nata, litteris Latinis docta erat



## Buonaparte

Forum

Could you translate:
Sempronia, genere nobili nata, litteris Latinis docta erat​as:
Sempronia, was born from a noble family, [and] was learned in respect of Latin literature​What I'm particularly interested in is if it is grammatcially correct to use erat to serve both clauses:
genere nobili nata; and
litteris Latinis docta ​Buonaparte


----------



## Hamlet2508

Buonaparte said:


> Forum
> 
> Could you translate:Sempronia, genere nobili nata, litteris Latinis docta erat​as:Sempronia, [was born] from a noble family, [and] was learned in respect of Latin literature​What I'm particularly interested in is if it is grammatically correct to use *erat* to serve both clauses:genere nobili nata; and
> litteris Latinis docta ​Buonaparte



So you've finally made it to Sempronia , although , as far as I can tell ,you do not have the original version

As regards your question , if you are prepared to do it by the book , I'm afraid it isn't , 

since *genere nobili nata *serves as an appositive phrase to* Sempronia, *the subject of the sentence, [_*natus 3*_ serves as prop and more often than not doesn't get to be translated at all]

So *erat* would generally be regarded as pertaining to _*docta*_ only

"...was learned in Latin literature"

for examples of appositive phrases have a look there

regards,
Hamlet


----------



## Buonaparte

Thanks Hamlet, very useful. Yes, my textbook adapts the original text so as not to completely baffle the poor student, ie me, with overly complex constructions. 

How do you know that the phrase _genere nobili nata _is in apposition? Is it from the punctuation? So if you removed the commas would/could the meaning change?

Buonaparte


----------



## Flaminius

> How do you know that the phrase _genere nobili nata _is in apposition?


I take you are wondering if _nata_ is in nominative or ablative.  Well, if one sees many phrases like _homo nobili genere natus_, one has to conclude that this is an idiomatic expression with apposition.


----------



## brian

Buonaparte said:


> How do you know that the phrase _genere nobili nata _is in apposition? Is it from the punctuation? So if you removed the commas would/could the meaning change?


I'm always bad at technical grammar terms, but if I understand the idea of "apposition" or "appositives" correctly, I'll try to answer your question.  When I see "nata" here _without_ "est" or "erat," I immediately think nominative/ablative absolute, i.e. "*having been* born" and _not_ "*was* born." You ask whether the "erat" after "docta" can serve for both "clauses," and I would say no since there is no conjunction ("et"). Even in English you had to insert "and" to make it make sense.

So considering that we have some sort of word "nata" as part of an absolute, I would next ask, nominative or ablative? It's pretty clear that "nata" refers to Sempronia here, making it a nominative absolute: "Sempronia, *having been born into/from a noble family*..."

It also has to be nominative because it's feminine. It can't modify "genere," which is neuter, plus that would mean something like "with a noble family having been born." 

Anyway, the punctuation doesn't really matter. I'd say it has to be an apposition/absolute/whatever and not a separate clause. Hope it helps..


----------



## Hamlet2508

Buonaparte said:


> How do you know that the phrase _*genere nobili nata* _is an apposition? Is it from the punctuation? So if you removed the commas would/could the meaning change?
> 
> Buonaparte



No, the meaning wouldn't change one iota[in this sentence)

Thing is that with  "*nobili genere*" [= an ablative of origin] *in connection with *  "*natus,nata natum* " you can be quite certain it's NOT an ablative absolute because *it simply is a set phrase* , which you'll become used to as you go on translating various texts.
I didn't want to burden you with technicalities - but you wanted to know whether you could leave/add another "_*erat*_" to the text and I thought this might be a way of explaining why you couldn't.

So this only thing to keep in mind would be set phrases like
*nobili genere natus* of noble birth (do not translate *natus* if at all possible)
as  in Bellum Catilinae,5
L. Catilina, _*nobili genere natus*_, fuit magna vi & animi, & corporis, sed ingenio malo, pravoque.

hope this has helped a little.
regards,
Hamlet


----------



## relativamente

Natus and nata are of course participle of the verb nascor, but can be considered just as common nouns.Nata, along with a few other femenine words from the first declination forms the Dativ and Ablative plural in -abus instead of -is, to distinguish the feminine word from the corresponding masculine word of the saecond, wich end in -is.These  words are mula, serva, filia, liberta, famula, domina, equa, dea, anima and socia.


----------



## Hamlet2508

relativamente said:


> but can be considered just as common nouns.Nata, along with a few other feminine words from the first declination forms the Dative and Ablative plural in -abus instead of -is, to distinguish the feminine word from the corresponding masculine word of the saecond, wich end in -is.These  words are mula, serva, filia, liberta, famula, domina, equa, dea, anima and socia.




I'm afraid you'll only find "*nata*" used as noun as  in "_*nata,- ae f*_." meaning "_*daughter*_" with Virgil, Martial and Ovid, but never , as far  as I know, in prose  and definitely not in this sentence,because it would a) be grammatically wrong and b) not Sallustian in style.


----------

