Manilius nesciebat quid scribebat

Question

When the formidable classicist A. E. Housman published his critical edition of Manilius' Astronomicon, he stated in his infamous preface, "When Scaliger says at v 39 Manilius nesciebat quid scribebat his judgment is sounder than his grammar."

My question is, what's wrong with Scaliger's grammar?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '20 at 00:48

11

This is an example of an indirect question, e.g.

I asked where he was.
I know what he did.
I told you what I would do.

Or, as in this case:

"He didn't know what he was writing."

This construction takes the subjunctive with the usual sequence of tenses.

In this case, since the main verb (nesciebat) is imperfect indicative, and therefore secondary sequence, the dependent verb should be imperfect subjunctive, since it denotes an "incomplete action" (i.e. one that is "present or future with reference to the main verb"; see Allen & Greenough §484).

In this case, that would be scriberet.

Scaliger should therefore have written:

Manilius nesciebat quid scriberet.

Cicero embeds a similar construction in a longer sentence: I've bolded the relevant parts.

Nam cum propter dilationem comitiorum ter praetor primus centuriis cunctis renuntiatus sum, facile intellexi, Quirites, et quid de me iudicaretis et quid aliis praescriberetis.

answered Apr 09 '20 at 00:48

brianpck

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Would it be possible to interpret it as a relative clause instead of an indirect question? "He did not know the thing that he was writing about." That would justify the indicative. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 09 '20 at 09:38
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@JoonasIlmavirta think you would need quod instead of quid in that case. See, for instance, Pontius Pilate's response: "Quod scripsi, scripsi." – brianpck Apr 09 '20 at 12:11
I thought so. Do you want to incorporate that into the answer? It's true that the sentence is wrong, but there are two ways it can be fixed and it's not obvious which one was originally meant. Or if you prefer, I can write up that side of things as a separate answer. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 09 '20 at 12:19
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Something still seems off to me about using quod with nescio: there's a funny interchange in Plautus that goes between the two, but I can't quite capture why the quid seems appropriate first and then the quod: "Phaed. Perii hércle, huic quid primúm dicam nesció. Pal. Em istuc, quod míhi dixti [=dixisti]." – brianpck Apr 09 '20 at 12:26
Perhaps it's the difference between "not knowing the answer to the question, 'What are you writing?'" (quid + subjunctive) and "not knowing [how to explain] the content of what one wrote" (quod + indicative). It's a subtle distinction. I did find a few examples in Plautus and Terence of "nescio id quod + indicative" – brianpck Apr 09 '20 at 12:31
I too was thinking of those (very few) examples of the indicative with an indirect question, which made me wonder whether that indeed was Housman's objection. The fact that I couldn't find anything else "unsound" in the sentence made me doubt my own judgment. Thanks for the confirmation! – Figulus Apr 09 '20 at 15:50
@JoonasIlmavirta, please go ahead and answer again! I think Brianpck is right, but I'd be very interested to read your thoughts on the matter. My own instinct was that Scaliger should have written Manilius, de quo scripserit, nesciebat, but then I wondered whether I wasn't just calquing the English distiction between writting something and writing about something. After studying scribo in Lewis and Short, I'm not sure that distinction holds for Latin. – Figulus Apr 09 '20 at 15:56
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@Figulus I added an answer about the other reading. It'd actually be nice to have a question about the difference between scribere aliquid and scribere de aliquo if the latter even exists. Many languages make the distinction. Go ahead and ask if you're interested! – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 09 '20 at 16:39
@brianpck That exchange from Plautus with quid and quod would be good to explore in a new question rather than just comments here. Even if you've found an answer, you could post an answer as well; at least I'd be happy to understand it. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 09 '20 at 20:23
I wonder if the natural reading of "Manilius nesciebat quid scriberet" would not be "Manilius didn't know what to write / what he was to write" (original Quid scribam?). It seems ambiguous. – TKR Apr 10 '20 at 00:01
"I asked where he was" is indirect speech.
"I told you what I would do" is indirect speech. "I know what he did" is not. Or am I missing something?
– fdb Apr 10 '20 at 13:06
@TKR I agree that the meaning is ambiguous. Woodcock makes exactly the same point in his Sequence of Tenses Table in #180. ( I should have consulted that table before I made my comment above!) – Figulus Apr 11 '20 at 19:13
@fdb That's a great question! I think maybe the answer is that yes, you are missing something, but I don't know enough to say what. Would you mind posting it as a question? I would love to read some answers to it. – Figulus Apr 11 '20 at 19:21
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@fdb "I know what he did" can represent two Latin constructions: indirect question (where "what he did" is the embedded version of "What did he do?") and relative clause (where "what he did" = "that which he did"). Hence the two alternatives in Joonas's answer. "Indirect question" is a misleading term because there isn't necessarily a speech act involved. – TKR Apr 11 '20 at 21:32

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 09 '20 at 16:41

I would say that the original expression Manilius nesciebat quid scribebat can be read in two ways:

There is an indirect question: He did not know what he was writing about.
There is a relative clause: He did not know the thing about which he was writing.

The answer by brianpck covers the first case, and indeed then one would expect scriberet.

In the second case the indicative mood is perfectly fine. (Relative clauses can have conjunctive, but it is certainly not required for a simple statement about facts. While not required, I would accept it for emphasis on Manilius' relation to his writings.) However, the interrogative pronoun must be replaced with a relative pronoun, so one would expect quod instead of quid.

Of the four combinations of these two words only one is invalid, and that is the one that Scaliger picked:

~~Manilius nesciebat quid scribebat.~~
Manilius nesciebat quod scribebat.
Manilius nesciebat quid scriberet.
Manilius nesciebat quod scriberet.

It is not easy to tell whether the original intention was an indirect question or a relative clause. Both make sense, and one could argue that semantically the difference is not all that great. Either way, there is a grammatical mistake.

Manilius nesciebat quid scribebat

2 Answers2