The Ablative Absolute That Could Be Concessive
Mock translation paper, Section A, ten short sentences, 30 minutes. Sentence 7 reads: 'Oppido a militibus incenso, incolae tamen in ruinis manebant.' The preceding sentence says the enemy had set fire to the town at dawn; the following sentence says the inhabitants refused to leave because their ancestral shrines were there. A candidate writes: 'Because the town had been burned by the soldiers, the inhabitants nevertheless remained in the ruins.' The teacher marks the translation down, not for vocabulary but for clause logic. The candidate protests that 'incenso' is a perfect passive participle and that 'because' is a standard way to render an ablative absolute. The teacher asks the candidate to look at 'tamen' and at the next sentence before deciding. The candidate must produce a revised translation and explain why the first version was internally inconsistent, without simply replacing one English connective with another.
1. Identify the construction 'Oppido a militibus incenso' and explain what syntactic information it does and does not supply. Then state which English clause type best fits the context and why.
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The phrase is an ablative absolute: noun 'oppido' plus perfect passive participle 'incenso' in the ablative, with agent 'a militibus'. It supplies a circumstance and its agent, but it does not encode the logical relation by itself. Latin does not mark 'because' or 'although' in the participle. The first version fails because 'because' plus 'nevertheless' produces a contradiction: if the burning were the cause of remaining, remaining would be the expected consequence, not a surprising one. The next sentence gives the real motive, the shrines. 'Although the town had been set on fire by the soldiers' is therefore the best fit: it presents the burning as an obstacle overcome by the inhabitants' decision. 'After' is possible but weaker with 'tamen'.
2. Give a revised translation of the whole sentence that preserves the force of tamen. Then explain how you would decide between temporal and concessive renderings if tamen were absent.
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'Although the town had been set on fire by the soldiers, the inhabitants nevertheless remained in the ruins.' Without 'tamen', start with the least coloured rendering, usually temporal ('when/after the town had been burned'), unless the main clause is clearly contrary to expectation or a particle such as 'tamen', 'quidem', or 'sed' signals contrast. Check the wider passage for motive: if the main clause gives a reason for the circumstance, causal is possible; if it resists the circumstance, concessive. Do not import a connective not supported by context. In an exam, a neutral temporal rendering is safer than an invented causal one.
3. A classmate suggests 'with the town having been burned' as a literal rendering. Assess this option: where is it accurate, and why might it still lose marks in an exam translation?
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It is morphologically accurate: it keeps the noun and participle in an English absolute-like phrase and avoids committing to cause or concession. But it is unidiomatic and vague; the examiner is testing whether the candidate can make the Latin clause function in English. In a translation paper, marks are usually awarded for sense and natural English, not for preserving every ablative. The phrase can work if the next clause makes the contrast explicit, but 'with the town having been burned, the inhabitants nevertheless remained' is cumbersome. A finite clause is clearer. It would be acceptable in a literal gloss, not as the final polished version.