# Ecce tres virgines formosissimas .....



## Enrico Davide Torò

Hi everybody,

Many thanks for checking in on this post. I'm Enrico, a Ph.D. student in philosophy with a passion for classics. I'm only now taking up again my Latin since High School and I'm currently trying to translate short Latin passages from some pagan and Christian authors alike. Could you help me out?



3) The third passage is tricky. It comes from Anselm of Besate's _Rhetorimachia, _ed. K. Manities, Weimar, 1958. It goes as follows:

"Ecce tres virgines formosissimas [...] quarum una era longissima, ut videretur vertice ipsa pulsare sidera, quae, ut post cognovimus, fuit dialectica."

I translated this as follows: "behold three most beautiful virgins […], one of which was very high, as if her head could hit the stars, who, as we apprehended later, was dialectics."

< Other questions have been given their own threads.  Cagey, moderator >


Many thanks to anyone who's willing to check these preliminary translations out. Any help is appreciated.

Best,

Enrico


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## numerator

_very tall_, I suppose


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## fdb

In English people are not "high" (unless they have been consuming illegal substances); the word you want is "tall".


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## fdb

Enrico Davide Torò said:


> "Ecce tres virgines formosissimas [...] quarum una era longissima, ut videretur vertice ipsa pulsare sidera, quae, ut post cognovimus, fuit dialectica."


I was taught that ecce + accusative is restricted to pre-classical authors like Plautus, and that in classical Latin it should be ecce + nominative (as in "ecce homo"). Is that wrong?


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## Scholiast

saluete omnes

Virg. _Aen_. 3.477 has _ecce tibi Ausoniae tellus_, and 6.46 _deus ecce deus._ These may be deliberate archaisms, but (I learn from _OLD_) Seneca (_Con._ 10.6.2) has _ego fur? ecce altera iniuria_. And other instances. It appears that classical latin idiom swithered between nominative and accusative as the appropriate case to follow 'Behold', but with the nom. 'not before Cicero'.

I am insufficiently expert in the historical philology of _ecce_ to be able to help further. It looks _prima facie_ as if it is a reliquary imperative of some kind, but I am at the limit of my expertise.

Σ


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## fdb

Scholiast said:


> Virg. _Aen_. 3.477 has _ecce tibi Ausoniae tellus_, and 6.46 _deus ecce deus._ These may be deliberate archaisms, but (I learn from _OLD_) Seneca (_Con._ 10.6.2) has _ego fur? ecce altera iniuria_. And other instances. It appears that classical latin idiom swithered between nominative and accusative as the appropriate case to follow 'Behold', but with the nom. 'not before Cicero'.


I think these are all with the nominative?


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## Scholiast

Yes, FDB, precisely. Sorry to have confused the issue. _OLD_ shows examples of both nom. and acc. with _ecce_, but there are examples of both, and in Plautus and Terence the acc. seems to preponderate.

Σ


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## Enrico Davide Torò

"Very tall," of course! Pardon me. It was me that was 'high' for writing 'very high' rather than 'very tall.'


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