# quae, cui plus opus es, dulcior esca venis



## bedefan

Hi,

I'm working on a translation (for fun, not school) of poems by the Late Latin poet Venantius Fortunatus (d. ca. 600). I'm having trouble with a line of his poetry and am wondering if I'm simply dealing with a typo. It's in elegiac couplets, so I'll give you both lines (punctuation is the editor's, who was a German speaker):

pascunt membra dapes, animam dilectio nutrit:
   quae, cui plus opus es, dulcior esca venis.


My question: should the "opus es" in the second line be an "opus est"? That is, is my suspicion correct that the sentence only makes sense if you substitute "est" or "es"? but perhaps I'm jumping to the conclusion that it's a typo because "opus est" would be so natural...

Context: This is poem XI.VIII. The poem as a whole is addressed to an abbess, thanking her for inviting the author to a banquet at her convent; a contrast is made between the material food offered to the sisters (membra) of the convent, and the spiritual "food" (i.e. the gift of generosity and spiritual instruction) that the author receives as a result of the invitation.

Thanks for the help!


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## Cagey

In Harrington's _Medieval Latin_, 2nd ed. (rev. Pucci) there are several poems by Fortunatus.  Unfortunately, it doesn't have one you are working on,  but for another, he glosses _opus _ "In EL it has the meaning of 'miracle'."  Thus, possibly, "for whom/ what you are more a miracle".  (I am not sure about _cui_; my understanding of EL use of case is doubtful.)
You might find the book useful.


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## bedefan

(In case anyone's interested, the whole poem (it's only 12 lines) is available online... I just can't post the URL because I haven't had enough total posts in these forums yet. You can just paste one of the lines I wrote out into Google and it'll come up.)


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## virgilio

bedefan, 
        In view of "venis" (2nd person singular present indicative active)"opus es" would be my guess, though "opus est" would be equally possible - though I must add that I have no prior knowledge of the poet's material.
Two things however worry me about this couplet:
(1) with which feminine noun does the "quae" correlate?(anima (unlikely) dilectio or the abbess herself)
(2) would it not be a little irreverent to address an abbess as "dulcior esca"?

In view of the improbability of such irreverence, I would guess that in the second line the poet has personified "dilectio" and addresses her/it.

Perhaps:
"and to him that hath the more need of thee comest thou the sweeter a morsel"
 Hope this helps.
Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Cagey

Is not _quae_ the subject of _venis_?

"thou _who_ comest sweeter than a morsel...."

A search of Google books finds _cui plus opus es_ is in several editions of the poem; _est_, in none.  However, this search does not include the most recent editions of the poem, which would be in a library.


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## virgilio

Cagey,
         Re: "Is not _quae_ the subject of _venis_?"  Yes, indeed it is.

Re  " "thou _who_ comest sweeter than a morsel...."

In this translation you seem to have taken "esca" as ablative (of comparison). The final "a" of "esca" must, however, be short on account of the metre and so "esca" must be nominative.

Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Cagey

virgilio said:


> Cagey,
> Re: "Is not _quae_ the subject of _venis_?"  Yes, indeed it is.
> 
> Re  " "thou _who_ comest sweeter than a morsel...."
> 
> In this translation you seem to have taken "esca" as ablative (of comparison). The final "a" of "esca" must, however, be short on account of the metre and so "esca" must be nominative.
> 
> Best wishes
> Virgilio



Right you are.  Thanks.

Did you just say "esca" was in the _nominative_ case?  And I had so carefully avoided using that case, in deference to your previous objections to that usage in an earlier thread.  (I mean to be joking, but it's also likely that I didn't really understand your positition.)

Best,
Cagey


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## virgilio

Cagey,
         Thanks for your reply. I enjoyed the joke. As you will see, I did not commit the unpardonable error of referring to nominatives as "cases"!

All the best,
Virgilio


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## bedefan

Many thanks for all replies. I've done a little more research and this is what I've come up with.

The latest edition of the poems of Fortunatus, as far as I can tell, is in the collected "Poèmes" of Fortunatus, translated (into French) with commentary by Marc Reydellet. Much to my surprise, this one also gives "opus es," and no reference in the apparatus criticus to an alternate reading of "est." You'd think some monk would have made that change at some point.

However, even more to my surprise, M. Reydellet translates the line as (pardon my French) "plus le besoin se fait sentir, mieux vous arrivez, douce provende."  Which reads as if it were "opus est" rather than "opus es." And then even more to my surprise, an English prose translation of the poem by Judith George ("Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems," 1995) reads: "where the need is greater, there you come all the more sweetly as nourishment." Again, as if it were "opus est."

How bizarre. I guess I'll just follow suit and act like it's "est."

As for other comments, "esca" is indeed nominative, and no, it would not I think be considered irreverent to call an abbess a "dulcior esca," at least not in this poetic context. Fortunatus, after talking about the food that the abbess provides for her nuns, describes the abbess herself as a kind of food on a metaphorical/spiritual level (think Jesus: "eat my body"). Things were certainly different in the early middle ages!

Again, many thanks!


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## Mezzofanti

I have to agree that it should be "opus est" unless the impersonal classical construction had evolved so as to permit a personal use, conjugated with other persons.  In either case the meaning can surely only be what you think it is.


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