II.
Sed quoniam famosae urbis supremum diem tradituri sumus, (quoniam … tradituri sumus: quoniam can be followed by any tense of the indicative.) congruens videtur primordia eius aperire. (congruens videtur primordia eius aperire: the information Tacitus provides is drawn from Greco-Roman sources, to the exclusion of Jewish references such as the historian Flavius Josephus, noted at the end of the previous chapter. It reflects the biased views of the ruling class in Rome that felt nothing but hostility and contempt towards a litigious, unruly race they did not understand and found so difficult to pacify.) Iudaeos Creta insula (Creta insula: abl. of place whence is without preposition in the case of islands.) profugos novissima Libyae (novissima Libyae: ‘the most remote regions of Libya’. Libya is an umbrella term for the coastal areas of North Africa. novissimus is mentioned by the poet Terentius Varro (82 – 35 B.C.) as being a neologism with the sense of ‘ the farthest’.) insedisse memorant, qua tempestate Saturnus vi Iovis pulsus cesserit regnis. (qua tempestate Saturnus vi Iovis pulsus cesserit regnis: ‘at the time in which Saturn, driven away by the might of Jupiter, yielded the throne’. According to myth, the Titan Kronos (Saturnus for the Romans) was dispossessed by his son Zeus or Jupiter and this led to the expulsion from Crete of the Kronos’ worshipers, no longer welcome under the new god. tempestate is an older term for tempore; cesserit is subjunctive in indir. speech after memorant, in place of cessit of direct speech; regnis is abl. with the verb cedo (‘to yield’), which takes abl. of the thing and dat. of the person: e.g. possessionibus alicui cedere.) Argumentum e nomine petitur: (argumentum e nomine petitur: ‘the ground for believing this is drawn from their name’: the clause, as shown by the use of indicative, is incidental, an explanatory note by the author, apart from the indir. discourse governed by memorant, which continues after it.) inclutum in Creta Idam montem, accolas Idaeos aucto in barbarum cognomento Iudaeos vocitari. (accolas Idaeos aucto in barbarum cognomento Iudaeos vocitari: ‘…that the inhabitants [of Mount Ida], the Idaei, were referred to as Judaei, their name being lengthened to a barbarian [form]’. vocitari is the frequentative form of vocari; aucto in barbarum cognomento is abl. abs.) Quidam regnante Iside exundantem per Aegyptum multitudinem ducibus Hierosolymo ac Iuda proximas in terras exoneratam; (quidam regnante Iside exundantem per Aegyptum multitudinem ducibus Hierosolymo ac Iuda proximas in terras exoneratam: the verb of saying is implied in this and two other sentences below: ‘some [say] that during the reign of Isis the excess multitude of people throughout Egypt was offloaded onto neighboring lands, Hierosolymus and Juda being the leaders’. This second myth accounts for the name of both the Jewish nation and of its capitol. exonero is said of bodily discharge, ‘to void’.) plerique Aethiopum prolem, quos rege Cepheo (rege Cepheo: abl. abs., ‘Cepheus being king’, to avoid using regnante a second time. Tacitus shuns repetition, wordiness, and predictable diction as if they were infectious: in this chapter, beside using the nobler-sounding tempestate in lieu of the humdrum tempore, rege to replace regnante, he also omits verbs of saying whenever meaning is not affected. In the next chapter we find id levamen, a two-word sentence: no verb, but sense is unimpaired. That does not mean Tacitus is never obscure; in fact many say he is often cryptic, but that is the price for his never being trite.) metus atque odium mutare sedis perpulerit. Sunt qui tradant Assyrios convenas, indigum agrorum populum, parte Aegypti potitos, mox proprias urbis Hebraeasque terras et propiora Syriae coluisse. (sunt qui tradant Assyrios convenas, indigum agrorum populum, parte Aegypti potitos, mox proprias urbis Hebraeasque terras et propiora Syriae coluisse: ‘some there are who report [they were] Assyrian immigrants, a people in need of land having appropriated part of Egypt, that later had lived in its own cities and cultivated both Hebrew land and the adjacent parts of Syria’. sunt qui tradant is rel. clause of characteristic requiring subjunctive, the sense being consecutive. parte Aegypti potitos: potior governs the abl., like utor, fungor, fruor, vescor .) Clara alii Iudaeorum initia, Solymos, carminibus Homeri celebratam gentem, conditae urbi Hierosolyma nomen e suo fecisse. (Clara alii Iudaeorum initia, Solymos, carminibus Homeri celebratam gentem, conditae urbi Hierosolyma nomen e suo fecisse: ‘others [say] that the origins of the Jews are prestigious, [being descendants of] the Solymy, a people made famous by the poems of Homer, and that they had fashioned for the city they founded the name Hierosolyma from their own name’. carminibus Homeri: Odyssey, V. 282, Iliad, VI. 184. Hierosolyma: in Latin, Jerusalem in Greek.)