3 Pylades et Orestes (Valpy)
This retelling of the friendship of Pylades and Orestes comes from Valpy’s “Latin Delectus,” one of the most widely used Latin textbooks in England during the late 18th and 19th centuries. You can read a brief summary of this myth in the introduction to the previous tale.
| 1 | Orestis et Pyladis amīcitia immortālem apud posterōs fāmam adepta est. |
| 2 | Quid enim celebrātum magis, quam illōrum cōram Rēge Thoante contentiō |
| 3 | uter morerētur: dum alter nīterētur ab alterō dēpellere crīmen |
| 4 | et crīminis poenam atque in sē trānsferre; dum, ignōrante Rēge uter eōrum esset |
| 5 | Orestēs, Pyladēs Orestem sē esse dīceret, ut prō illō necārētur. |
| 6 | Orestēs autem, ita ut erat, Orestem sē esse persevērāret. |
| 1 | adepta es < adipiscor, “to attain to by effort, to get, obtain, acquire, to get possession of” |
| 2 | quid enim celebrātum magis: you need to supply est to the question. [Axioma VII]
magis, quam: note that correlation between the comparative (magis) and the adverb (quam) contentiō: what case must this third-declension noun be? uter: difficult to metaphrase; remember that uter asks “which of the two….” |
| 3 | note the parallel of the two dum’s + subjunctives. |
| 4 | ignōrante Rēge: you have a participle and a noun, in the ablative, at the start of a sentence. What familiar construction is this?
uter eōrum esset: an indirect question: the king didn’t know which of them was…. |
| 5 | ut prō illō necārētur: how can you determine that this is almost certainly a purpose clause? |
