# gloria uarium et uolubile quiddam est



## Buonaparte

Forum,

My text book translates the above quote from Seneca as:

'Reknown is a fickle and unstable thing'

My question is why isn't some form of 'Res' used? Possibly:

'gloria uarium et uolubile quiddam rem est'

Is the noun 'thing' implied in 'gloria uarium et uolubile quiddam est' in some way? 

Buonaparte


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## Condessa

Hi!
Yes, it's possible to say that "thing" in some way implied in " quiddam". You'd also translate it as "Reknown is something fickle and unstable". 

In spanish, sometimes we are forced (is "forced" the right word here?) to add the word "cosas", for instance:
"omnia" = "todas las cosas" / "todo"
(because we have no neuter plural). And there's no "res", but we've got to invent it sometimes. 

Hope it helps.


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## Flaminius

I doubt if _rem_ can be inserted in the sentence because it is a feminine noun.  The two adjectives _(varium_ and _volubile_) are in neuter, so _rem_, were it to be inserted, cannot be modified by them.


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## Condessa

Flaminius dixit: "rem" cannot be inserted because is a feminine noun, and "rem" would be an accusative. "Res" cannot be inserted either. But "thing" could be a possibility to translate "quiddam", of course, if you take into account there's no "res" in the latin text.


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## J.F. de TROYES

As Condessa says "quiddam" is a neuter pronoun which is equivalent to "something"; so if you add "res", you say twice the same . "something" could be translated word for word  "quaedam res", but "quiddam" is always preferred when "res" has not a specific meaning ( a case, for instance ) and "quaedam res" is made here quite impossible because of the adjectives "varium et volubile". May I advise you parsing the Latin sentence when comparing it with its translation ?


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## virgilio

Buonaparte,
                Adjectives are often used with their substantives omitted - as being in the opinion of the author obvious - so that a substantiveless masculine adjective  can come to imply such a male person, a substantiveless feminine adjective  such a female person and a substantiveless neuter adjective such a thing.
e.g.
boni - good men or boys (or good people)
bonae - good women or girls
bona  - good things

However, in the case you quote "quiddam" (something) is itself a specific substantive form of "quoddam" and so the two neuter adjectives "varium" and "volubile" describe it ("quiddam")

A bit reminiscent of "varium et mutabile semper femina", though on a different theme, and also of the operatic aria:
"La donna è mobile
Cual piuma al vento
muta d'accento
e di pensiero"

It reminds me of Ovid's masterly description of the goddess Fortuna (Lady Luck, I suppose we would call her), in which he describes her statue as that of a goddess standing on a sphere and thus tending to roll around and not stay in the same place very long, finally adding that she is constant only in her fickleness:

passibus ambiguis Fortuna volubilis errat
et manet in nullo certa tenaxque loco
sed modo laeta venit, vultus modo sumit acerbos
et solum constans in levitate sua est.

A truly great poet.

Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Buonaparte

<<<May I advise you parsing the Latin sentence when comparing it with its translation ?>>>

What is parsing? Sounds like it could be a useful tool, but there is no mention of this term in my textbook. Buonaparte


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## modus.irrealis

Buonaparte said:


> <<<May I advise you parsing the Latin sentence when comparing it with its translation ?>>>
> 
> What is parsing? Sounds like it could be a useful tool, but there is no mention of this term in my textbook.



Parsing is basically analyzing a sentence grammatically and usually involves at least two steps: 1) identifying the grammatical properties of every word (for example, first is it a noun,verb,etc. and then if it's a noun, what case, number, and gender it is, and similarly for the other parts of speech), and 2) linking the words together (for example linking an adjective to a noun it modifies, or linking a genitive to the noun it depends on). You may have heard of the similar concept of "diagramming" but which doesn't really include the first step. For example with your sentence you'd start off with

gloria - nom. or abl. sing. of fem. noun _gloria _"glory"
uarium - neut. nom. sing. or masc./neut. acc. sing. of adjective _varius_ "different, changing"

and so on -- it can get tedious in Latin because the same ending can represent different genders, cases, and so on, but the ideal is to think of every possibility and then rule out the ones that are not possible (technically, for example, _gloria_ can also be vocative). And then in the next step you'd see that _uarium_ and _uolibile_ modify _quiddam_ and so on. When I was learning Latin, I would draw lines so here I would draw a line from _uarium_ to _uolibile_ and then draw a line from that line to _quiddam_ (if that makes sense).

It is a good tool but one you should rely on only when you're at a loss to see how a sentence works (and of course you don't always have to do everything to the last detail) but remember the goal is to learn to read Latin in the order in which the words are presented to you because that's the only way you'll pick up on the subtle emphasis that the author is trying to make using the word order.

EDIT: The above describes how I learned to parse and there are many other ways but the basic idea is explicitly writing out the structure of a sentence.


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## Buonaparte

Thanks for a great response, I'll be sure to refer back to this post as there is lots of tips here. Buonaparte


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