Enclitic -que and the Scope of a Conjunction
A student translating an unseen verse passage encounters the line: arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris. The student translates: "I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy." The teacher asks about the placement of -que. The student says it simply means "and" and joins arma and virum. A later line reads: multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem. The student is unsure whether quoque modifies multa or the whole clause, and whether et is a separate conjunction or paired with quoque. In a third line, litora multum ille et terris iactatus et alto, the student is uncertain how many items et...et coordinates and whether multum is adverbial. The student asks for a systematic method for handling coordinating particles in verse, where word order is flexible and particles can be displaced for metrical reasons.
1. Explain the function of *-que* in *arma virumque cano* and how a translator should handle enclitic particles in verse generally.
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In arma virumque cano, the enclitic -que is attached to virum but coordinates arma and virum as a pair: "arms and the man." The enclitic attaches to the second of the coordinated items (or to the first word of the second item), which is why it appears on virum, not on arma. A translator should treat the enclitic as a conjunction whose scope is determined by the two items it most plausibly joins, not by its physical position alone. In verse, metrical constraints can displace particles, so the translator must identify the coordinated pair semantically. Here arma (war) and virum (the man) are the two themes of the epic, so the pairing is clear. The general method: (1) locate the particle; (2) identify the two most likely coordinated items by sense and case; (3) render with the appropriate English conjunction; (4) check that the resulting clause is coherent. The student's translation is essentially correct, but should be completed: "I sing of arms and the man who first from the shores of Troy..."
2. For the line *multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem*, explain how *quoque* and *et* function together and what *multa* modifies.
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Quoque ("also, too") is an adverb modifying the whole statement, not a conjunction coordinating two nouns. Et here is a separate connective, likely coordinating bello with an implied or preceding item, or intensifying: "having suffered many things also both in war..." Multa is a neuter plural accusative, the direct object of passus ("having suffered many things"). The phrase multa...passus is a participial phrase describing the man. A defensible rendering: "having also suffered many things in war, until he should found the city." The judgement call is that quoque and et are not a fixed pair like et...et; they operate at different levels - quoque is adverbial, et is connective. The translator must not force them into a correlative pattern.