# macte (in a prayer from Cato)



## Casquilho

Hello again, can you please tell me what’s the meaning of the word _macte _in Cato’s De Agricultura (section 141)?

[...] _macte hisce suovitaurilibus lactentibus immolandis esto; Mars pater, eiusdem rei ergo macte hisce suovitaurilibus lactentibus esto_ [...]

It seems that _macte _can be either an adverb, a vocative masculine form of _mactus_, or an undeclinable adjective, a kind of exclamation, like “good!” or “well done!”. Some translations render _macte _as “blessed”, others as “honoured”, or still as an imperative, “deign” [to accept my offering]. I’m utterly confused, so I ask for your gentle help.


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## Quiviscumque

Difficult question, esteemed Casquilho.

From an amateur's point of view (mine), the best option is to consider "macte esto" as a fixed idiom meaning "be blessed/honoured". However, C. Watkins translates what he thinks is the fourth strophe of Cato's prayer as 

_[...] be magnified by these suckling suovitaurilia to be sacrificed;
Father Mars, to the same end,
be magnified by these suckling suovitaurilia.
_
This little word has given a lot of work to scholars. There are, I think,  two issues about which they disagree:
1) From a grammatical point fo view, what is _macte_? 
2) What is the original meaning of the word?

This is what de Vaan says under _mactus_:
Driessen (p.c.) proposes a connection with PCI. *make/o- 'to raise, nourish' from 'to make long' (see's.v. macer). Latin 'honoured' (e.g. macte esto 'be honoured') could be understood as. 'made long, made bigger'. This seems slightly more attractive than a derivation from *mag- as in magnus 'big', since one might expect Lachmann's lengthening to yield *mag-tos > *mactus. The noun magmentum could also have been derived from a verbal stem *mak(e/o)- 'to honour'. Risch 1979 explains macte esto from a contamination of mactus esto and *macte ferto the denominal verb mactare he understands as *'to pronounce the mac/e-formula'. Szemerenyi 1989: 29f. regards macte as the oldest form in the expression macte uirtute esto which he translates as 'be (provided) with power (and) virility'. Macte would be the abl.sg. of an i-stem *mactis < *magh-tis, while mactus would be the thematic variant *maghto-. This is far-fetched, if only because there is no evidence for the meaning 'power'.

By the way, according to some people your (and mine) _matar_ comes from here.


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## Casquilho

Thank you, Quiviscumque. But I'm even more confused now... do you know if there's some attested example that would allow me to take _macte _as masculine vocative? Is there some prayer to Venus, e. g. with _macta esto_, instead of _macte esto_?


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## Quiviscumque

Casquilho said:


> Thank you, Quiviscumque. But I'm even more confused now... do you know if there's some attested example that would allow me to take _macte _as masculine vocative? Is there some prayer to Venus, e. g. with _macta esto_, instead of _macte esto_?



Some grammarians used to say that "macte" was a case of "vocativus pro nominativo". God knows the truth! Surely neither Romans nor modern scholars do.

I have found no occurence of "macta esto". But that does not mean a lot...


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## wandle

L&S say this:


> mactus , a, um, adj. root μακ, in μάκαρ, blessed; cf. μακρός.
> 
> I. In relig. lang., of the gods, glorified, worshipped, honored, adored (only in the voc. macte, and rarely in the nom.)


They include the following examples from Cato:


> “macte hisce suovitaurilibus lactentibus immolandis esto”
> “macte hac dape esto”


This is a standard sacrificial formula.
I have always understood it as a vocative in place of a nominative: 
'Be glorified by (i.e. 'Accept, we pray') this sacrifice'.


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## Ali Smith

When _macte_ is in the vocative case and therefore has a short _e_, doesn't it mean "Don't lose heart!"?
When it's in adverb, it has a long _e_, of course.


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## Sobakus

Ali Smith said:


> When _macte_ is in the vocative case and therefore has a short _e_, doesn't it mean "Don't lose heart!"?
> When it's in adverb, it has a long _e_, of course.


No adverb _*mactē_ with a long -ē is attested. The attested form isn't used in the sense you mention.

As Quiviscumque's quotation from De Vaan explains, it's not clear whether the word was originally a vocative or an i-stem. Those authors who used the form _mactī_ in the plural clearly perceived it synchronically to be the vocative of the otherwise non-existent adjective_*mactus;_ accordingly one would expect them to have used _*macta & *mactae_ when addressing women, but these forms aren't attested. Other speakers might have perceived it to be simply a fixed, idiomatic form without a paradigm, and might have used it irrespective of the gender or number of the addressee. That said, I don't see any examples where _macte_ is addressed to a woman either.


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