5.6 The Shortest Fables — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read four complete stories in Latin verse. Follow a narrative through time, which is what the tenses are for. Tell the imperfect from the perfect, and say what each is doing in a story. Recognise an ablative absolute and an accusative-and-infinitive when you meet them. Prerequisites : lesson 5.5 — the Vulgate, and with it the habit of reading continuous prose. Four fables, twenty-five lines, about a hundred and fifty words. They are the four shortest in the first book of Phaedrus, and they were chosen for that and for nothing else — but shortness in a fable is not the same as simplicity, and the third of them contains the hardest construction you have met. This is the first narrative in the course. A narrative needs tenses, and the Latin tense system is the subject of the middle section: two past tenses that are not had and did , and a division of labour between them that English has no equivalent for. The text is in a separate document beside this one. Read all four straight through before coming back. About this text Who Phaedrus was. A freedman of Augustus, writing in the first half of the first century AD, who took the Greek fables attributed to Aesop and put them into Latin verse. He is the reason the Aesopic fables reached medieval and modern Europe at all: almost every later version, including La Fontaine's, goes through him. What a fable is, formally. A story with a moral attached, and the attachment is part of the form. A moral placed before the story is called a promythium and one placed after it an epimythium . Two of these four put it first and two put it last, which is a useful thing to notice before you start reading: if the first line is a general statement in the present tense, the story has not begun yet. The verse. Iambic senarii — six iambic feet to a line, the metre of Roman comedy and the closest thing Latin has to ordinary speech in verse. It is far easier to read aloud than hexameter and it does not need to be scanned to be understood. The last section says what to do with it. The animals. A fox, dogs, a sheep, a stag and a wolf, and each is a fixed character rather than an animal: the fox is clever, the wolf takes what it wants and is never punished, the sheep is the one with something to lose. Phaedrus says in his prologue that animals are used so that the fables can say things about people that could not safely be said directly — he was a freedman writing under Tiberius, and he meant it. Word by word All twenty-five lines with a note on each. The notes name the construction and, where it has come up before, the lesson it came from. # Latin What is happening VII. Vulpes ad Personam Tragicam 1 Personam tragicam forte vulpes viderat; A pluperfect: had seen . The adverb meaning by chance is doing the work of English happened to . 2 quam postquam huc illuc semel atque iterum verterat, The first word is a relative pronoun, accusative feminine, agreeing with the mask in the line above — a relative can open a sentence in Latin and often does. 3 'O quanta species' inquit 'cerebrum non habet!' Direct speech split around the verb of saying, which is the ordinary Latin arrangement. The verb is defective: it has almost no forms besides this one. 4 Hoc illis dictum est quibus honorem et gloriam A perfect passive, then a relative clause in the dative — to whom — with two objects waiting for their verb in the next line. 5 Fortuna tribuit, sensum communem abstulit. Two perfects sharing one subject, and the subject is in the line above. The whole moral is one sentence across two lines. XX. Canes Famelici 6 Stultum consilium non modo effectu caret, The moral, stated before the story. The subject is an adjective and a noun, and the verb takes the ablative. 7 sed ad perniciem quoque mortalis devocat. The object is a plural adjective used as a noun: mortal creatures . 8 Corium depressum in fluvio viderunt canes. Object, participle, prepositional phrase, verb, subject. The subject last is unusual and gives the line its punch. 9 Id ut comesse extractum possent facilius, A purpose clause with the subjunctive, and inside it a perfect participle agreeing with the hide. 10 aquam coepere ebibere: sed rupti prius Two verbs: an archaic perfect ending in -ēre instead of -ērunt , then the infinitive it governs. 11 periere quam quod petierant contingerent. The clause that answers before takes the subjunctive, and a pluperfect sits inside a relative clause inside it. IV. Canis per Fluvium Carnem Ferens 12 Amittit merito proprium qui alienum adpetit. The moral, again first. A relative clause is the subject of the main verb, and the neuter adjectives stand as nouns. 13 Canis, per fluvium carnem cum ferret, natans Subject, then a clause with the conjunction meaning when and an imperfect subjunctive, then a participle left hanging until the next line. 14 lympharum in speculo vidit simulacrum suum, The verb at last, with the reflexive possessive agreeing with the image rather than with the dog. 15 aliamque praedam ab altero ferri putans An accusative and infinitive after a participle of thinking — the construction that carries reported speech in Latin, and the hardest thing in the fable. 16 eripere voluit; verum decepta aviditas A perfect, then a new subject with a perfect participle: greed, having been cheated . 17 et quem tenebat ore dimisit cibum, A relative clause inside the object phrase, with an imperfect: which he was holding . Compare the perfect at the end of the line. 18 nec quem petebat adeo potuit tangere. The same shape once more, and the same tense contrast. Three imperfects and four perfects in six lines. XVI. Ovis Cervus et Lupus 19 Fraudator homines cum advocat sponsum improbos, The moral. The conjunction meaning when here takes the indicative, because it is stating a general truth rather than a particular occasion. 20 non rem expedire, sed malum ordiri expetit. Two infinitives depending on the main verb, the second with an object in front of it. 21 Ovem ro