# we would not have dared



## William Stein

Salvete,

This about a sentence in Chapter 34 of Wheelock: 
"If those four soliders had followed us, we would not have dared to put the weapons on our ship."

I found a usually reliable answer key that translates it as follows:
Si illi quattuor milites nos secuti essent, arma in nave ponere non ausi sumus.

I have several questions I was hoping you could help me with:

1) Shouldn't it be "non ausi essemus? I can see that the "apodosis" might not be considered "contrary to fact" if they really did put the arms on the ship, but still the indicative seems strange.
2) Should it be "in nave" (abl.) or "in navem" (acc.)? I'm asking because German and Russian verbs of movement with "to" usually take the accusative where as the dative or "locative" (=ablative of location) is reserved for doing something "in" a certain place. "Put the weapons on(to) the ship" seems like the first type.
3) Does anybody know what these English-to-Latin translations are called in English? In French, they're called "theme" and Latin-to-English translations are called "version" (which are usually much easier, of course, unless you happen to be a native Latin speaker


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## dubitans

William Stein said:


> I found a usually reliable answer key


If it were reliable, its author would know that the plural of _miles_ is _milites_.

ad 1) 
It must of course be _non ausi essemus_.

ad 2)_
arma in nave ponere_ does not mean _to put the weapons on our ship.
_
_arma ponere _means _to lay down one's arms, to put one's weapons down (to discontinue combat readiness) _unless combined with accusative of movement and direction. 
Hence, the correct translation of _we would not have dared to put the weapons on our ship_ is _arma in navem *nostram* ponere non ausi essemus_. _on_ is bad English, _onto_ is good English, by the way.

_our_ should indeed be represented _(in navem nostram) _unless it's redundant owing to context.

ad 3) 
I think the French call a translation _into_ _any _foreign language _theme, _and _from any_ foreign language _version_. This usage is not limited to Latin. I don't think English makes this distinction.


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## William Stein

Thanks, dubitans.

"Miletes" was my typo but the rest is an exact transcription, for better or for worse. The answer key really is usually reliable but I can't say the same for my Latin spelling or typing, unfortunately.

2) I was just guessing about verbs of motion + accusative based on my knowledge of other languages, but Wheelock never gives that rule anywhere (at least not up to Chapter 35,  which is far as I have got so far in his classical boot camp). In all fairness to Wheelock, I just found the rule in Chapter 37.

3) Yes, that's true about "theme" and "version" applying to any language in French. I was just using Latin as the example closest to your classical hearts. There must be an equivalent in English, though.


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## dubitans

William Stein said:


> There must be an equivalent in English, though.



Propono ut quaeras in foro Anglico.


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## William Stein

dubitans said:


> Propono ut quaeras in foro Anglico.



Maybe it was a trick question because I just spent ten minutes Googling and couldn't find any equivalent in English.


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## relativamente

I have found in a dictionary examples of classical Latin authours using the verb pono with the  preposition "in" both with accusative and also with ablative.The verb pono cannot be considered as a verb of motion, and in Latin motion verbs are not so different from other verbs.
Can be used in passive form also.


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## dubitans

That's what I meant to say. With ablative it means _we wouldn't have dared to put down our weapons on the ship/_(depending on context)_ once we were on the ship_ *(in nave)*.

At no point did I say _ponere_ was a verb of motion. What I did say was that besides ablative of location as shown above, it may be combined with accusative of direction, e.g. for "putting something onto a ship" *​(in navem).*


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## William Stein

relativamente said:


> I have found in a dictionary examples of classical Latin authours using the verb pono with the  preposition "in" both with accusative and also with ablative.The verb pono cannot be considered as a verb of motion, and in Latin motion verbs are not so different from other verbs.
> Can be used in passive form also.



I don't think the question is whether a particular Latin verb is in the categories of verbs of motion but whether the idea of directional motion (toward something) is expressed in a given context (which usually corresponds to a verb + "to/into/onto" English). For example, the first lines of _Metamorphoses_:

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora

My spirit compels me to tell of forms changed into new bodies

"Change"  certainly cannot be considered a verb of motion but "change into" takes the accusative (in nova corpora) rather than the ablative of location.


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## Ben Jamin

William Stein said:


> Salvete,
> 
> I'm asking because German and Russian verbs of movement with "to" usually take the accusative where as the dative or "locative" (=ablative of location) is reserved for doing something "in" a certain place. "Put the weapons on(to) the ship" seems like the first type.


Can you give any examples of Russian expressions with "doing something in a certain place" with a noun in dative?


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## William Stein

It's "locative" in Russian, dative in German. I don't have Cyrillic characters and this isn't a Russian forum (although I admit it's my fault for bringing it up), but "I was born in America" (Ja rodilsja v Amerike) or "I am walking in the forest" (Ja gulaju po lesu), , for example.
Same examples of dative (of location) in German: Ich bin* in den *Vereinigten Staaten geboren" or "Ich gehe *im *Wald spazieren"


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## relativamente

William Stein said:


> It's "locative" in Russian, dative in German. I don't have Cyrillic characters and this isn't a Russian forum (although I admit it's my fault for bringing it up), but "I was born in America" (Ja rodilsja v Amerike) or "I am walking in the forest" (Ja gulaju po lesu), , for example.
> Same examples of dative (of location) in German: Ich bin* in den *Vereinigten Staaten geboren" or "Ich gehe *im *Wald spazieren"


I think this distinction with the proposition "in"at least, exist also in Latin
example Ego in Hispania natus sum, versus ego in Hispaniam eo, ego ad civitatem eo
But it is not  used the case of nouns to distinguish the dinamic situation (I put the book on the table) versus static ones (the book is on the table), at least not to the extend that this happens in other languages with noun declensions


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## Scholiast

Salvete!

To clarify in response to Ben Jamin (# 9): Russian, along with several other Balto-Slavonic tongues, has a locative case. These PIE locatives came to be subsumed in Greek and Latin by the genitive/dative/ablative, but traces remain, e.g. Lat. _domi_, Gk. οἴκοι.

Σ


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## William Stein

Scholiast said:


> Salvete!
> 
> To clarify in response to Ben Jamin (# 9): Russian, along with several other Balto-Slavonic tongues, has a locative case. These PIE locatives came to be subsumed in Greek and Latin by the genitive/dative/ablative, but traces remain, e.g. Lat. _domi_, Gk. οἴκοι.
> 
> Σ



It's funny you should mention that because I just read that 10 minutes ago in Chapter 37 of Wheelock:
For place _where _with these particular words (domus, humus and rus and with the actual names of cities, towns and small islands), a special case was used in Latin, the "'locative". The locative is identical to the genitive for the singular of first and second declension nouns; elsewhere, the locative is usually identical to the ablative."

By the way, what does he mean by the "actual" name of cities?

I think I figured it out. He means that "nicknames" of cities don't take the locative.  By the way, I searched "city of seven hills" + "civitas" to find out the Latin equivalent, and everybody says "Civitas septicollis", except for some pompous evangelist who says:

“Of that wicked and pestilent see and chair of Rome, which is indeed the very whore of Babylon that St John describeth in the Revelation of Jesus Christ, sitting upon a seven-headed beast, which St John himself interpreteth to be seven hills, and the children in the grammar-school do know that Rome is called* civitas septem montium*, the city of seven hills.

That would the city of seven  mountains, wouldn't it?


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