The Ambiguous Ablative in a Sight Passage
A student is working through a sight passage from a prose author (a narrative about a general's arrival at a besieged town). She encounters the phrase magna cum laude oppidum ingressus est and must translate the ablative phrase. She has three candidate readings: (a) ablative of manner, 'with great praise'; (b) ablative of attendant circumstance, 'to great acclaim'; (c) ablative of means, 'by means of great praise.' The surrounding sentence describes a crowd of townspeople streaming out to meet the general, shouting and throwing garlands. There is no verb of praising anywhere in the paragraph, and the subject is the general, not the crowd. The passage is 18 lines total; this phrase sits in line 7.
1. Which reading should the student choose, and what two pieces of textual evidence drive the decision?
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The best reading is (b) attendant circumstance (or, defensibly, manner), not means. Reasoning:
- No agent doing the praising. Ablative of means requires the ablative to be the instrument by which the subject accomplishes the verb. Here the general is entering the town; 'praise' is not the instrument of his entering. The crowd's shouting and garlands are the circumstances surrounding the entry, which is exactly what attendant circumstance encodes.
- The preposition cum. The presence of cum rules out bare ablative of means (which normally appears without a preposition). Cum + abstract noun most naturally signals manner or circumstance.
Distinguishing manner from circumstance is genuinely fuzzy; the exam rewards a defensible choice with a stated reason, not a single 'right' label. The student should note the crowd context and write something like 'to great acclaim' rather than 'by means of great praise.'
2. The student later sees *oppidum ingressus est*. She is unsure whether *ingressus* is a participle or part of a deponent verb. How should she decide, and what does her choice do to the translation?
Read the worked answer
Ingressus est is a perfect deponent form: ingredior, ingredi, ingressus sum is deponent, so ingressus est = 'he entered.'
How to decide: check whether the verb is listed as deponent (passive form, active meaning). If ingressus were a true perfect participle, the sentence would need a finite verb elsewhere and would read 'having entered the town, he...' - but there is no other main verb, so the finite reading is required.
Translation effect: 'he entered the town' (main clause) versus 'having entered the town...' (subordinate). Choosing wrong leaves the sentence without a main verb, which is a structural red flag the student can use as a self-check.