# aromatizans tus et myrrham



## Casquilho

In the NV's text for the Song of Songs, I found this passage which is baffling me:

_Quid hoc, quod ascendit per desertum
sicut virgula fumi,
aromatizans tus et myrrham
et universum pulverem pigmentarii?_

I think the first two lines shall be render'd as

"What is this, which arises/comes from/through the desert,
like a column of smoke..." [_quid_ and _quod_ being neuter relative pronouns, in nominative]

But, the accusatives _tus et myrrham, et universum pulverem_, and the genitive _pigmentarii_, are a riddle for me.


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## Scholiast

salve!

_Song of Solomon_ 3.6. Have you tried looking at a Portuguese translation?

This is not, however, the original text of the _Vulgate_ of Jerome, which reads:

_quae est ista quae ascendit per desertum sicut virgula fumi *ex aromatibus murrae et turis et universi pulveris* pigmentarii....

"...from aromas of myrrh and incense, and all the powder[s]..."_

Grammatically, the version you are grappling with is pretty bad Latin. _aromatizare_ is not in the first place a Latin word: it is Latinised Greek, and it looks to me as if whoever re-cast Jerome's words did not know what he was doing.

_pigmentarii_ looks like a genitive noun ("of the perfume-dealer/cosmetician" - _pigmentarius_  is rare, but at least (late-) classical), but in a text so casually put  together, I would not bet on its not being used as an adjective here.

Incidentally, _quid_...? is not a _relative_, but an _interrogative_ pronoun.


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## Casquilho

Indeed, quid is interrogative, my bad. That's what I did mean.

The version I quoted is from the Nova Vulgata, which, as long as I can understand, was corrected with reference to the Hebrew. I don't know any Hebrew, but I'm reading a commentary about this book, by a certain Longman III, which translates to English directly from Hebrew, and he says the interrogative here is rather "what" than "who", for the answer to the question isn't Solomon himself or the Shulammite neither, but Solomon's litter, that is, it's a thing and not a person.

So, in the Clementine Vulgate, the phrase _ex aromatibus_... designs the quality of the smoke, right?


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## CapnPrep

Scholiast said:


> Grammatically, the version you are grappling with is pretty bad Latin. _aromatizare_ is not in the first place a Latin word: it is Latinised Greek, and it looks to me as if whoever re-cast Jerome's words did not know what he was doing.


It looks pretty OK to me… Anyway, Jerome himself uses _aromatizare_ elsewhere, in the book of Sirach (24:20). But here it seems to be used transitively (cf. _redolere_), which explains the accusatives.


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## Casquilho

CapnPrep said:


> It looks pretty OK to me… Anyway, Jerome himself uses _aromatizare_ elsewhere, in the book of Sirach (24:20). But here it seems to be used transitively (cf. _redolere_), which explains the accusatives.



I don't think it explains that well...

In Portuguese, we don't have the verb "redoler", though we have the fem. noun "redolência" (the quality or condition of what is "redolente") and the adj. 2g. "redolente" (of pleasant smell, odorous, odoriferous; which emits a scent), from the Latin present participle _redolens, -tis._

But we have the verb "aromatizar":

As reflexive: "Os frutos aromatizam-se ao amadurecerem" - Fruits become odorous when they grow ripe.

As transitive, it may have two senses:

"A pimenta aromatiza a comida" - The pepper seasons/flavors/spices the food.
"As ervas aromatizam o ar" - Herbs make the air odoriferous.

Methinks that the frankincense and the myrrh should be the agents, the subjects of the action, and not the objects! You don't make the perfume smell, it's the pefume that makes you smelling. It's not the smoke that make the frankincense and the myrrh smell; it's the frankincense and the myrrh, being burned, that exhale a smelling smoke. So, to make sense, the phrase should be, _tus et myrrha aromatizant_. Do you understand me?


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## CapnPrep

Casquilho said:


> So, to make sense, the phrase should be, _tus et myrrha aromatizant_. Do you understand me?


I understand you, but the point is to try to make sense of the text as it is, not as you think it should be. The fact that you do not use _aromatizar _transitively in this way in Portuguese is not a valid argument against such an analysis in Latin.

Do you have any other explanation for the accusatives, other than saying that the text is simply wrong?


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## Casquilho

CapnPrep said:


> Do you have any other explanation for the accusatives, other than saying that the text is simply wrong?



Actually, I don't. Besides the Vulgata, I have no other examples of the verb _aromatizare_; I can't figure out a way of interpreting this text as it is, unless the participle _aromatizans_ be not active, in the sense "making [something or someone] aromatic", but rather "smelling like, redolent of". For, in Pt, we may have "recendendo a incenso e a mirra" ("redolent of frankincense and of myrrh"). Could it be the case in the Latin, so that the accusative _tus et myrrham_ translates the prepositioned clause "a incenso e a mirra"?


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## XiaoRoel

A construção "a incenso e a mirra" pertence ao português, não ao texto latino no que *aromatizare* é transitivo, e por isso leva un OD en acusativo. No nosso verbo *(ar)recender* a construção latina não se val porque é intransitivo. O sintagma preposicional do português pode entenderse como um CC ou como um CR, poderia ser debatível.


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