Indirect Statement and Reflexives in a Caesar Comprehension
In the comprehension section you meet: Caesar dixit se non prius milites dimissurum esse quam hostes vicisset. The question asks for a translation and for the reference of se. You have 5 minutes and 6 marks. You know dixit is perfect, dimissurum esse is a future active infinitive, and prius ... quam can take a subjunctive. A classmate translates: Caesar said that he had not dismissed the soldiers before he conquered the enemy. You must decide whether se refers to Caesar or to someone else, whether dimissurum esse is past or future, and how to render non prius ... quam idiomatically. The mark scheme gives 2 marks for the indirect statement, 2 for the temporal clause and 2 for fluency, so a translation that is grammatically identifiable but unidiomatic will not receive full credit.
1. Parse `se ... dimissurum esse` and explain its reference. Then give a correct translation of the whole sentence.
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Se is the accusative reflexive pronoun and is the subject of the indirect statement depending on dixit. Because it is reflexive, it refers to the subject of the reporting verb, i.e. Caesar himself, not to the soldiers or to the enemy. Dimissurum esse is the future active infinitive of dimitto: esse plus the future active participle dimissurum, agreeing with se. In indirect statement after a past reporting verb, the future infinitive expresses time later than the saying: Caesar said that he would dismiss, not that he had dismissed. Non prius ... quam hostes vicisset is a temporal comparison with the pluperfect subjunctive in a subordinate clause after a past main verb; it means not before he had conquered the enemy, idiomatically not ... until he had conquered. A correct translation is: Caesar said that he would not dismiss the soldiers before he had conquered the enemy or ... would not dismiss the soldiers until he had conquered the enemy. The second is more natural English with the negative main clause.
2. Explain why the classmate's translation `had not dismissed` is wrong, and identify the two grammatical clues that expose the error.
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Had not dismissed is a past perfect, but the Latin has dimissurum esse, a future active infinitive. The future participle -urum plus esse cannot mean had dismissed; the perfect infinitive would be dimisisse. The first clue is therefore the shape of the infinitive itself. The second is the time relation in indirect statement: after dixit, the future infinitive means would dismiss relative to the saying, not had dismissed before it. The classmate has also probably been influenced by the English past tense of said and has carried it into the reported clause. The correct sense is prospective: Caesar said that he would not release the soldiers until he had conquered the enemy. The error is not a small stylistic slip; it changes the sequence of events and would lose marks under the indirect-statement heading as well as the fluency heading.
3. Rewrite the sentence using `until` instead of `before`. Explain what changes in emphasis.
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Caesar said that he would not dismiss the soldiers until he had conquered the enemy. The change from before to until is small but real. Before presents the conquest simply as an earlier event in time; until presents it as the condition that must be reached before the dismissal can occur, and it works naturally with the negative main clause would not dismiss. The Latin non prius ... quam has the comparative structure not earlier than, which is close to not until; the subjunctive vicisset presents the conquest as anticipated within Caesar's reported plan rather than as a neutral past fact. The translation should therefore keep the past perfect had conquered after until, because English requires it to show prior completion. A candidate who writes until he conquered is understandable but slightly less precise about the sequence; a candidate who writes until he would conquer is over-translating the future.