Livy Book 30
Chapter 12 Notes
After the burning of the Carthaginian and Numidian camps, Scipio defeated the Carthaginians at the Battle of Great Plains (chapter 8), and survived an attack by the Carthaginian fleet (chapters 9-10).
Read these chapters in translation.
We pick up the story in the middle of the cavalry battle begun in chapter 11. Laelius has restored
Masinissa to the throne of the Maesuli, from which Syphax drove him many years previously. Syphax naturally wants to regain his throne, and has gathered forces to attack Laelius' camp. His cavalry is doing well against the Roman cavalry, but light infantry on the Roman side, and finally the appearance of the legions, turn the tide of battle, and Syphax's cavalry begin to flee.
ibi: Here it must refer to time rather than place: 'at this point'.
Syphax dum obequitat hostium turmis: Syphax showed great personal courage. He risked everything by riding towards the enemy, hoping that his troops would be ashamed to leave him in the lurch. He lost his gamble. A
turma was a unit of cavalry in the Roman army, consisting of 30 horsemen. There were ten
turmae in an
ala.
si ... posset: si with the subjunctive: This is more a purpose clause than a conditional; rather like the English 'to see if he could ...'. The syntax is 'to see if he could, by (appealing to their) sense of shame or by his own danger, stop the flight.'
-que et: Roman writers used different words for 'and' (atque, et, -que) to show the structure of their sentence. Here
opprimitur capiturque go closely together, but
pertrahitur, being joined to the others by a different word,
et, is slightly removed. The overpowering and capture of Syphax took place at one time; his appearance before Laelius was some time later.
laetum ... spectaculum: Students meeting Livy for the first time might think that he takes the words of his sentences, throws them into the air, and writes them down in the jumbled order in which they fall to the ground. In fact Livy chooses their order as carefully as an expert flower-arranger. Here we feel we are inside the minds of the Roman cavalrymen who have unseated and captured Syphax.
vivus, laetum - We've got him alive, a happy thing;
ante omnes Masinissae - they'll all be happy, but above all
Masinissa will be delighted;
praebiturus spectaculum - he's going to be a showpiece. And so they drag him all the way (per-) to Laelius. Notice that
pertrahitur is (historic) present, making it more vivid, and 'present' to our imaginations.
caedes: In an ancient battle the casualties tended to be high on the losing side and very low on the winning side, because once a battle line broke and fled, they lost the protection of their comrades fighting side by side, and their backs were normally not protected nearly as well as their chests. 5,000 dead seems a serious number, the equivalent of a whole legion, but in Livy's time, as in the 21st century, it seems that enemy lives were not reckoned by those reporting a war to be as important as one's own troops.
plus ... minus: one would expect plus quam, minus quam.
hominum: This is the normal genitive after
milia, thousands. Literally: 'Not more (than) five thousands of men (were) killed, less (than) a half of that (i.e. that number) of men was captured.
impetu ... se contulerat: Long Latin sentences can be divided into two kinds, 'periodic' and 'loose'. The 'periodic' sentence is organised in such a way that the main verb comes right at the end, probably after several clauses. The 'loose' construction has the main clause with one or more extra clauses added at the end. The present example is a 'loose' construction. The main clause ends
captum est. Although a Roman would probably feel that the sentence was over, Livy adds an ablative absolute (impetu in castra facto), and a relative clause or clause of place (quo multitudo se contulerat) which itself contains an ablative absolute (rege amisso). It feels as if Livy is shrugging his shoulders and saying, "That's how the battle ended, and those were the casualties - and they did go on to attack the enemy camp and take a lot of prisoners, but that was not so important."
Cirta: In chapter 11 Livy wrote:
Meantime Laelius and
Masinissa , after a fifteen days' march, entered Numidia, and the Maesulians, delighted to see their king whose absence they had so long regretted, placed him once more on his ancestral throne. All the garrisons with which Syphax had held the country were expelled and he was confined within the limits of his former dominions.
Now it seems as if the restoration of
Masinissa was not yet as complete as this earlier passage suggested. He still had to be recognised in Cirta, Syphax's capital city. Although he calls the area 'his ancestral dominions recovered after so many years', that is a doubtful claim. While he was still a young man, and king of eastern Numidia, Masinissa had forced his neighbour Syphax, king of western Numidia, who had recently entered into an alliance with Rome, to flee to the extreme west of Africa. So what Masinissa was now claiming was what he had taken by force from Syphax.
ingens hominum ... vis: As previously,
vis means a quantity. A huge quantity of people.
ex fuga ... se contulerat: from their flight ... they had gathered, so "They had escaped and gathered."
Masinissa ... dicere:
dicere is an historic infinitive. What he said extends to
modicis itineribus posse, and is a series of accusative and infinitive clauses. This extended reported speech is known as Oratio Obliqua. The speaker (here Masinissa) is represented by the pronoun
se.
The indirect statements are:
nihil esse ... pulchrius: that nothing was lovelier
spatium non dari: that space was not given
se oppressurum: that he would fall upon or surprise
Laelium ... posse: that Laelius could.
pulchrius: Masinissa tries to represent his frantic grab for power and territory as a pleasant nostalgic tourist trip to see his ancestral realms.
tam ... quam: These words often mean little more than 'both ... and', or 'just as ... so'.
secundis ... adversis rebus: The image is of a boat with a following wind or current, or the wind or current against it.
si se Laelius ... sinat: If Laelius were to let him. In Oratio Obliqua all verbs in subordinate clauses are subjunctive. The present subjunctive is used when the conditional refers to the future.
vincto: From
vincio, bind. Apparently some texts have
victo from
vinco, defeat.
trepida omnia metu: It is strange that Livy should use the neuter, everything, rather than the masculine, everyone. Perhaps the vague translation 'amidst the general confusion and alarm' gets the sense well.
modicis itineribus:
iter is used for a day's march.
maximis itineribus would mean 'by forced marches'.
modicis suggests an easier pace.
iubet: Another historic present.
promendo: By producing.
promo is a poetic word, used by Horace and Vergil. Livy is striving for something out of the ordinary in his style here.
nec ... promendo nec minis nec suadendo: Livy varies his grammar, with two of the 'nec's followed by a gerund, and the central one by a noun.
ante valuit quam: Although we learn
antequam and
postquam as single words, they are very often found divided as here. Although there is no way to represent this divided word in English, it is very easy to see why Latin writers used it like this.
foedum: Something that is
foedus is what one shrinks away from. The sight of their king in chains may not have been 'foul', but was shocking to his people.
comploratio orta: Once again Livy omits the verb 'to be' from the perfect passive. We can take the
sunt of
moenia sunt deserta with
patefactae also. Livy varies the order of subject and perfect passive verb, using the normal order twice:
comploratio orta, moenia sunt deserta, and finishing the sentence with the reverse order,
patefactae portae.
partim ... partim: It would have been more natural for Livy to have put the two motives, partly fear and partly crawling to the conqueror, first, and the two results, abandoning the walls and opening the gates, afterwards. Perhaps Livy was just trying to be unexpected.
repentino consensu ... quaerentium: Literally 'by a sudden agreement of those seeking.'
praesidio ... dimisso: Ablative absolute. A garrison having been sent to different places (di-).
opportuna moenium: Literally, 'suitable things of the walls; a compressed way of saying 'suitable places on the walls'.
ne cui: Remember:
After si, ne, nisi, num,
'quis' for 'aliquis' must come.
Literally, 'lest a way out of flight might be open to anyone'.
ad regiam occupandam: One of the regular ways of expressing purpose is by
ad with a gerundive phrase (or a gerund). 'To seize the palace'.
citato vadit equo:
citato equo is the normal phrase (as used by Caesar for example) for 'at full gallop'. The verb
vadit is normally used only by poets. Masinissa goes (vadit) surrounded by his speeding horse (citato equo) - a rider bending low over his galloping horse does seem to have the horse all around.
Notice how Livy has told faithfully of the ruthless measures taken by Masinissa to overawe and crush the people of Cirta, and yet has invested Masinissa with a certain romantic aura. As he gallops at full speed towards the palace, who knows what romantic encounter may take place there?
intranti: Dative depending on
occurrit.
in ipso limine: Livy invites us to view this romantic scene with bated breath, by picturing Masinissa's exact position when he first set eyes on Sophonisba.
Sophoniba: Carthaginian names have come down to us in various forms in Latin texts. Experts have been able to reconstruct the authentic forms of some names from inscriptions, but Livy is more interested in telling a good story than in scholarly details. For some reason this Queen is generally known in English as Sophonisba.
Livy tells us exactly who she was at this first mention. She was the daughter of the Carthaginian Hasdrubal, who had married a local tribal king, Syphax, probably to ensure that Syphax, who had once been an ally of the Romans, was a loyal ally of Carthage.
occurrit: It was Sophonisba who went to meet Masinissa, not the other way round. Does Livy's account of the meeting suggest that the meeting was completely spontaneous, or that Sophonisba had carefully reviewed her options and was playing a calculated game?
in medio agmine: The queen was confronted by a crowd of her enemies, and had to identify the leader quickly in order to make her requests to him. Think how a modern historian might tell this story, if indeed he or she thought it worth telling at all. It is unlikely that all this detail would be included; it is unlikely that the detail was in Livy's source. It seems quite possible that Livy knew the bare bones of the story, that Masinissa quickly married Sophonisba, perhaps thinking that by marrying the queen of the man he had defeated he would be more likely to gain the loyalty of Syphax's subjects, and he took the opportunity of writing a section, as it were, of an historical novel, inventing scenes and dialogue.
genibus advoluta eius: A tradition in the ancient world was that when you approached a powerful person as a suppliant you put one arm around his knees and grasped his hand - or beard! - with the other hand. By adopting the role of suppliant you put yourself entirely at the mercy of the powerful person, but also put him under an obligation to treat you mercifully. That, at any rate, was the theory. The word
advoluta, literally 'rolling down to', is poetic (used by Vergil) and vivid.
omnia quidem ... : Sophonisba acknowledges Masinissa's power gained by conquest, and adds some flattery. His success is attributed to three sources:
-
di: the gods, whose help legitimises his success;
-
virtus ... tua: his own courage - this is straightforward flattery;
-
felicitas tua: his luck; this is not to say "It was just luck that you won." The Romans quite openly spoke of some of their generals being 'lucky', as if it was a quality of their own which they would keep for life. Sophonisba is acknowledging that Masinissa possess this quality of luck; another bit of flattery.
si captivae ... licet: if it allowed to a prisoner, if a prisoner may ... Sophonisba immediately defines herself as a captive; there is no bluster here, no attempt to play the great queen. She reinforces Masinissa's dominance by calling him master of her life and death, and positions herself carefully as a suppliant, with all the moral rights that this position is supposed to bring. The first right she claims is to state her requests as a suppliant,
vocem supplicem mittere.
si genua ...: The verb of these conditional clauses is still
licet. Here come the traditional acts of a suppliant, clasping knees and hand. The hand is
victricem, victorious. Scenes from Greek tragedy may have been in Livy's mind as he wrote this. In Euripides' play Hecabe, for instance, Hecabe the widow of the King of Troy is a prisoner of the Greeks. Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the Greek army comes to visit her. She says (in Philip Vellacott's translation):
Agamemnon, I am your suppliant, beseeching you
By knees and beard, and your victorious right hand -
Note the use of anaphora: si ... si ... si ... followed immediately by per ... per ... per ... Orators loved, and still love, to use such anaphora in groups of three phrases, the tricolon. Livy makes Sophonisba address Masinissa as if he were a crowd at a public meeting. Livy's first readers or hearers would have been products of the Roman education system, whose ultimate aim was to produce men skilled in oratory, and they would have appreciated the rhetoric.
precor quaesoque: Two words where one would have done. An example of Livy's
lactea ubertas. The phrase 'I pray and beseech you' is in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England which was written in the formal rhetorical style of the 17th century.
per maiestatis ... per gentis ... per huiusce ...: She asks him to remember three things, which may lead him to treat her kindly:
-
She was a queen. Masinissa should treat her as he would wish to be treated if he had lost.
-
Her husband Syphax and Masinissa were both Numidians. Their common race should make them friends. Sophonisba could not claim shared race herself; she was Carthaginian.
-
Masinissa was now in a new place, and should respect the gods of the place.
qui te ... accipiant: Latin can turn a relative clause (qui ...) into a wish simply by using a present subjunctive verb (accipiant).
hanc veniam supplici des: At last the main clause arrives, and it is a wish, expressed in the present subjunctive; she could have used an imperative (da!), but the subjunctive fits better with her yielding approach. She once again calls herself a suppliant,
supplici.
ut ipse ... statuas: A clever request. She does not ask for her liberty, or even her life, but only that Masinissa make whatever decision he likes; and she contrasts his
animus, heart, with the cruel tyranny of any Roman. Masinissa, she implies, will surely treat her in a civilised way, and not like those terrible Romans. She is manipulating his feelings cunningly.
neque: It looks as if this is
ne-, the negative form of
, with -que, and, rather than the usual neque meaning 'nor'. Her two requests are the positive one, that (ut) Masinissa should make decisions himself, and the negative one (ne) that she should not be handed over to the Romans.
si nihil aliud ...: She presses home her argument. She is the daughter of a Carthaginian general, and as such would be treated by the Romans with particular cruelty. All the more reason to ask Masinissa to keep her from them.
si...fuissem ... mallem: She mixes the tenses in the conditional sentence. If she had been merely Syphax's wife (an 'impossible' condition in the pluperfect subjunctive) she would now prefer (imperfect subjunctive) - instead of 'she would have preferred'.
fidem experiri: To try out the faithfulness, experience the trustworthiness, of an African rather than of a foreigner. She could not be sure that either would treat her well, but she would rather test out the African. He would be more likely to be sympathetic. The word fides has no single English equivalent. One dictionary suggests 27 different translations in different contexts. Here are some of them which may cover the present case:
trustworthiness, honesty, good faith, assurance, protection, guardian care.
The Romans, incidentally, thought that the Carthaginians lacked fides, and spoke of 'Punica fides' to mean untrusworthiness. Sophonisba thinks that the boot is on the other foot.
quid filiae ... timendum sit vides: Syntax: quid ... sit is indirect question after vides. filiae is dative, regularly found with the gerund, meaning 'to be feared by a daughter...'.
morte me ut vindices: Death was preferable to the Romans. During the Cold War there was a saying "Rather dead than red." Here is the first hint of what will happen at the end of the story.
oro obtestorque: Another pair of verbs at the end of her speech, to match the pair near the start.
forma erat insignis: Livy has given us the polished oratory; now he paints the romantic picture. At the beginning of their episode Sophonisba was the prisoner looking anxiously for the enemy commander so that she could throw herself on his mercy. Now she is the very beautiful young woman holding the king's hand and speaking in a winning way. The hand which she at first just ventured to touch (attingere dextram) she is now clasping (amplectens).
prolapsus est ... praeceps ... captus: Livy's choice of words represents Masinissa's love in a poor light. He slipped down or collapsed into pity; like all Numidians he fell headlong into love; the result was that he became a captive. There is a tradition in Classical literature of presenting 'falling in love' as a sickness, rather than a fine thing. In Euripides' Medea the chorus of women sing (in Vellacott's translation):
Visitations of love that come
raging and violent on a man
bring him neither good repute nor goodness.
in venerem: venus is first of all a common noun, and only the name of the goddess Venus later. It seems to me possible, however, that the original meaning, 'loveliness', may have changed to 'sexual love' by association with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, with whom Venus was identified.
amore captivae victor captus: This is not an original thought by Livy, but he puts it neatly in these four words.
data dextra: Sophonisba began by touching his hand, then clasping it, and now it is natural that he should give his answer by clasping hands, rather than by a spoken promise.
obligandae fidei: lit. 'for binding his promise'; fides has here the sense of 'promise'. So the whole sentence, literally, is: Having given his right hand on that which she was seeking, for sealing his promise, he retired into the palace.
quemadmodum promissi fidem praestaret: Indirect question. quemadmodum is just like quomodo. If Livy had not added promissi we would have translated fidem as 'promise'. Perhaps 'how to fulfil the truth of his promise'; but it is more natural to take promissi fidem as a phrase meaning simply 'promise'.
ab amore temerarium atque impudens: This sudden love led him to behave in a rash and shameless way. The words amore and temerarium are not grammatically connected, but by juxtaposing them Livy points to the close link between love and rashness.
mutuatur: literally, he borrows (historic present) a plan from love.
nuptias: The nub of the plan is presented as the very first word in the sentence
ne quid ...: In order that he might not leave for Laelius or Scipio himself anything .... (I am still trying to work out the literal meaning of the rest.)
supervenit Laelius: Laelius had been following Masinissa and the cavalry by 'modicis itineribus' and now had arrived.
arbitrium: 'That he would refer the decision ... to Scipio'. Livy has reserved this word in this chapter for decisions by Romans. Sophonisba begged not to be subjected to the arbitrium of Romans.
utrius ... esset: lit. 'to the good fortune of which of the two kings Sophonisba was to be an addition.'
What follows is the final long sentence (or 'period'), analysed into its main clause ([Laelius] ceteras urbes Numidiae recipit) and its various subordinate clauses.
(Laelius)
victus deinde precibus Masinissae (participle phrase)
orantis (participle phrase)
ut arbitrium (indirect command)
(utrius regum duorum fortunae accessio Sophoniba esset)ind.quest.
ad Scipionem reiceret,
(misso Syphace et captivis) (ablative absolute)
ceteras urbes Numidiae
(quae praesidiis regiis tenebantur) (relative clause)
(adiuvante Masinissa) (ablative absolute)
recipit.
