How can we say "a forgotten war" in Latin?

Question

You know what I'm really getting at: I'm asking "How to make a deponent passive in meaning?" but with a specific and puzzling example. Oblīvīscor, "I forget", is a deponent verb, so oblītus can only mean "so-and-so having forgotten [something]".

Didn't the Romans ever feel the need for a past participle to express the idea of having been forgotten, generally, without specifying who forgot? Did no Roman grammarian ever curse this gap in the language?

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 20 '21 at 01:34

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The poets seem to have noticed this gap, and repurposed oblītus to fill it. So saith Vergil himself (Eclogues IX.53-4):

nunc oblita mihi tot carmina, vox quoque Moerim / jam fugit ipsa
Now all my songs have been forgotten, and even my voice itself now abandons me.

answered Aug 20 '21 at 01:34

Draconis

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Hmm, doesn't this mean "Now I have forgotten all my songs?" But oblita does modify carmina! "Now, so many songs forgotten to me, the voice too flees Moeris." Hey, Moeris is talking about himself in the first person and the third person in the same sentence! I see that L&S marks this with "!*?" This is indeed good evidence that the Romans felt my pain. – Ben Kovitz Aug 20 '21 at 02:15
@BenKovitz I took the !*? to be marking the Plautus attestation, since the Plautus manuscripts are known for having many idiosyncrasies. But indeed; I'm not sure why Moeris uses his name there, but I suspect the meter had something to do with it. – Draconis Aug 20 '21 at 02:48
@Ben Kovitz You're right. This is an adjectival/resultative passive with a so-called (miscalled!) "dative of agent". Verbal/eventive passives are different. The translation you've given is correct (NB: the resultative construction is more literally rendered as: 'I have all my songs forgotten'). Verbal passives typically express agents with a by-phrase: 'all songs have been/were forgotten by me'. Is this possible in Classical Latin? I don't think so. – Mitomino Aug 20 '21 at 03:56
@Ben Kovitz: In Q: https://latin.stackexchange.com/q/12836/1982, I had this problem, dealt with by TKR: passive, "will be forgotten", became "will fall out of memory" = "memoria excidet". – tony Aug 20 '21 at 08:26
@Draconis Oops, indeed they marked Plautus. I guess I was stunned by L&S's punctuational extravagance. – Ben Kovitz Aug 20 '21 at 23:31
@Mitomino Quaestionem novam proponi aliquando oblituram…mm, oblitteraturam?…obliviscendam? Sententiam tuam de passivum resultativum audiendi studiosus sum. – Ben Kovitz Aug 20 '21 at 23:47
@tony That might be a winning answer! – Ben Kovitz Aug 20 '21 at 23:59
@tony Wait, I just found a problem with excidere. I'll post it as answer myself right now. – Ben Kovitz Aug 21 '21 at 00:00
@Mitomino "Datives of agent" aren't uncommon with finite verb forms in poetry, either: Aeneid I.440 cernitur ulli "is perceived by anyone". – Draconis Aug 21 '21 at 01:20
The example cernitur ulli is the typical one found in Latin grammars but is not as common as one could think (please see Section 5 of this paper: http://www.unioviedo.es/pmsuarez/Articulos_files/Le%20datif%20agent.pdf ). In any case, what is important here is to realize that the example in your answer is better understood as an adjectival/resultative passive rather than as a verbal passive (cf. nunc). Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly above: a clear(er) example of verbal passive with obliviscor would be one having a by-phrase. As noted, I don't think this exists in Classical Latin. – Mitomino Aug 21 '21 at 12:19
@Mitomino Sententia tua de passivo resultativo dativoque auctoris nunc intellecta mihi fieri incipit. Proponas responsum in quaestione nova? Tum eam pertractam omnibus scribere potueris. – Ben Kovitz Aug 21 '21 at 15:27

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 20 '21 at 20:53

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Hic renovabo illud, quod ad interrogatum pristinum respondi, propositum persimplex:

bellum oblitteratum

Vocabulum «oblittero» infrequentissime dicitur litterate, immo solum fere tropice utitur praesertim Livius historicus, quam ob rem arbitror id idoneum esse, quod ad verbum «bellum» adiciatur.

answered Aug 20 '21 at 20:53

Sebastian Koppehel

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plerumque vero non oblitteratum est bellum, sed oblitterator. :) – d_e Aug 20 '21 at 21:17
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@d_e Si quando agens neutrius est generis, oblitteratrum appellari potest. (Hic tractata sunt nomina agentium omnium generum.) – Joonas Ilmavirta Jan 04 '22 at 14:08

Ben Kovitz · Answer 3 · 2021-08-21T14:35:08.797

Tony referred to this answer by TKR, which has this phrase:

memoriā excidet

It will fall out of memory.

I like the metaphor. Lewis & Short document a sense of simply "to slip from memory" for excidere. But there's a problem: excidere has no passive participle, indeed no passive forms at all. How was anyone able to communicate in this language??

(P.S. I had never before noticed that "fallen" is an active past participle in English.)

How can we say "a forgotten war" in Latin?

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