Talk:Tullia Minor

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Elder or Younger
Hey Thuvan. I have amended the article Tullia (daughter of Servius Tullius) to refer to her being the elder daughter, not the younger, of Servius Tullius. I note you had changed this previously. The reference to the younger sister being killed by the elder is in the last sentence of Livy 1.46. I have checked the latin version too. Can you refer me to other sources, or paragraphs of Livy, which say that it was the elder sister who was the less fierce, and who was killed?--Urg writer (talk) 00:56, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

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Hi - In my revision of the article on Tullia I did cite my source - Aubrey de Selincourt's translation of Books I-V of Ab Urbe Condita -- it's the Penguin edition, published as Livy: The Early History of Rome (2002), ISBN 0-140-44809-8. I also mentioned this version in my notes on the edit, didn't I? I see that somebody has actually deleted the reference I added -- would that be you? That deletion is described as "fixed references," which seems odd -- wouldn't you want to provide more sources rather than fewer?

As I added, and somebody else deleted, this was the citation:

The Early History of Rome: Books I-V of The History of Rome from Its Foundations. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt, with an introduction by R.M. Ogilvie and a preface and additional material by S.P. Oakley. Penguin Books, 2002.

Here are excerpts from de Selincourt's translation of I.46 (pages 86-87):

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The two brothers, as I mentioned before, had married Servius's daughters, both of them named Tullia but in character diametrically opposed to each other. By what I cannot but feel was the luck of Rome, it so happened that the two fiercely ambitious ones, Tarquin and the younger Tullia, did not, in the first instance, become man and wife; for Rome was thereby granted a period of reprieve; Servius's reign lasted a few years longer, and Roman civilization was able to advance.

The younger Tullia was bitterly humiliated by the weakness of her husband Arruns, and fiercely resented his lack of ambition and fire. It was to Tarquin that the whole passion of her nature turned: Tarquin was her hero, Tarquin her ideal of a true man and a true prince. Her sister she despised for failing to support with a woman's courage the husband she did not deserve. There is a magnetic power in evil; like draws towards like, and so it was with Tarquin and the younger Tullia.

It was the woman who took the first step along the road of crime. Whispers passed between her and her sister's husband; their secret meetings grew more frequent, their talk less guarded. Soon she was pouring into his ears the frankest abuse of her sister and Arruns, while Tarquin, though one was his brother and the other his brother's wife, let her talk on. 'You and I,' she said, 'would have been better single than bound in a marriage so incongruous and absurd, where each of us is forced by a cowardly partner to fritter our lives away in hopeless inactivity. Ah! If God had given me the husband I deserve, I should soon see in my own house that royalty which I now see in my father's.

The bold words struck an answering fire. Two deaths soon followed, one close upon the other, and Tarquin found himself a widower, Tullia a widow. The guilty pair were then married - the king not preventing, but hardly approving, the match.

As you can see, this translator thinks that the younger sister was fiercer, and that she was originally married to Arruns.

Here is the Latin original of the same, from http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/livy/liv.1.shtml (which is not necessarily the same version of the text on which the Penguin version is based):

His duobus, ut ante dictum est, duae Tulliae regis filiae nupserant, et ipsae longe dispares moribus. Forte ita inciderat ne duo violenta ingenia matrimonio iungerentur fortuna, credo, populi Romani, quo diuturnius Serui regnum esset constituique civitatis mores possent. Angebatur ferox Tullia nihil materiae in viro neque ad cupiditatem neque ad audaciam esse; tota in alterum aversa Tarquinium eum mirari, eum virum dicere ac regio sanguine ortum: spernere sororem, quod virum nacta muliebri cessaret audacia. Contrahit celeriter similitudo eos, ut fere fit: malum malo aptissimum; sed initium turbandi omnia a femina ortum est. Ea secretis viri alieni adsuefacta sermonibus nullis verborum contumeliis parcere de viro ad fratrem, de sorore ad virum; et se rectius viduam et illum caelibem futurum fuisse contendere, quam cum impari iungi ut elanguescendum aliena ignauia esset; si sibi eum quo digna esset di dedissent virum, domi se propediem visuram regnum fuisse quod apud patrem videat. Celeriter adulescentem suae temeritatis implet; Arruns Tarquinius et Tullia minor prope continuatis funeribus cum domos vacuas novo matrimonio fecissent, iunguntur nuptiis, magis non prohibente Seruio quam adprobante.

I agree that the Penguin rendition is far from literal, and that de Selincourt has supplied extra words to create a more readable English version. I also notice that the Latin passage specifies which Tullia was older and which was younger only once ("Arruns Tarquinius et Tullia minor prope continuatis funeribus cum domos vacuas novo matrimonio fecissent, iunguntur nuptiis . . . ") The Penguin version is quite far from the Latin in this case. I don't claim to be a Latin scholar, and right now I don't have time to find any textual commentary that might help me understand the ins and outs of the syntax of this passage, but here is what I'm thinking: the Latin seems to say that Arruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia were joined in marriage (A. Tarquinius et Tullia minor . . . iunguntur nuptiis), and it places this marriage right after some funeral rites.

Since that chronology would be impossible, I'm thinking that the Penguin translation simply assumes that "Arruns" is a scribal error, or similar, and that this passage is a reference to the marriage of Tarquin and Tullia Minor, not to the marriage of Arruns and Tullia Minor.

Anyhow -- disregard my own take on the passage, it's not part of the article anyway, it's just my attempt to explain how I understand this difficult passage. But in making my changes to the Wikipedia article, I was just following de Selincourt's reading, and I did provide my source. I think it does make sense that the older brother would marry the older sister, and the younger brother the younger sister; further, given the apparent ambiguity of the Latin text, that seems to be how de Selincourt understood the situation. I believe I made my edits in good faith, and I gave adequate references for what I did. I think it's fine for you to edit the article as you see fit, but I do feel that, at minimum, you should restore the reference to de Selincourt.

If not, I will -- but not this minute -- I got other stuff to do. . . . Thuvan Dihn (talk) 18:54, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

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Hey thanks for spending the time and effort to explain all that to me. I can now understand how the conflict between the two versions came about.

FYI I am working from this translation of Livy. As you will see, the only reference to which sister was the elder/younger is in the final line of 1.46, which talks about Aruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia being dead. On that translation, therefore, the elder sister survived to marry Lucius.

I have read through the original Latin version of 1.46. It is consistent with the translation I just referred to. Selincourt seems to stray a long way from the text. There is no reference in the earlier parts of 1.46 to which sister is the elder - Selincourt has apparently simply inserted references to one sister being 'the elder' as she pleases. A bit odd, huh!

For the moment, I will leave the Tullia article as it is, as it seems to correctly reflect the original latin text.

The reason I took out the reference to Selincourt is that I try to refer simply to Livy's text, not the interpretation of any one translator. That way, people can use whichever version of Livy which comes to hand. --Urg writer (talk) 20:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

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I do feel strongly that the Penguin reference belongs in the article. The translation you linked in your response is seriously out of date -- it's copyrighted 1853. It's also not a very good translation, full stop. The rendering that it supplies for the line about "Arruns Tarquinius et Tullia minor . . . " seems quite incoherent to me -- "Aruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia, when they had, by immediate successive deaths, made their houses vacant for new nuptials, are united in marriage, Servius rather not prohibiting than approving the measure." Apart from the odd sequence of tenses, why would you want to refer to Arruns and Tullia as being united in marriage, when they are actually united in death?

I think it's fine to link to that 1853 translation by Spillan, but everybody should understand that it's not the last word on rendering AUC into English. I'd sooner trust the Penguin version, since (1) it's much newer, (2) it was endorsed by contemporary scholars as recently as 2002, and (3) at the moment you and I lack any independent learned commentary to explain Livy's original one way or the other, except for that still-viable Penguin translation.

Nevertheless, I was thinking about AUC I.46 all day (yes, I'm a total geek) -- and if my favorite Latin teacher were to put me on the spot and make me translate that line about Arruns & Tullia Minor, I'd do it this way: "When Arruns Tarquinius and the younger Tullia, with their funerals in almost immediate succession, had made their homes vacant for the sake of the new wedding, they [i.e., Tarquin and the elder Tullia] were joined in marriage, with Servius not prohibiting rather than actively approving."

I took the translation of prope + continuatis directly from Cassell's Latin Dictionary, which cites Livy I.46 to illustrate this particular sense of the verb continuare; I understand "continuatis funeribus" as an ablative absolute; I note that there are 2 and only 2 finite verbs in the sentence (fecissent, iuguntur), both with 3rd pl. endings, and I interpret the first as referring to Arruns and Tullia Minor (this seems unavoidable), and the second as referring to Tarquin and Tullia Major (since the alternative makes no sense); and I understand "iuguntur" as an historical present, which is customarily translated in the past tense in English (tho maybe that rule hadn't been invented in 1853).

Anyhow, you can see that I actually agree with you and old Spillan that, in this sentence, we are being told by implication that Arruns originally married the older sister, and Tarquin originally married the younger sister, and that the death of Arruns and Tullia Minor enabled Tarquin and Tullia Major to wed.

However, I can also see that the entire tale is ambiguous as to the sisters' relative ages, and I notice similar ambiguities throughout Book I of AUC, especially when you have 2 closely related individuals with similar or identical names (father and son, brothers, sisters). Further, I see that Livy is not very concerned about the sisters' relative ages, since he does not specify their ages on first mention, and he only makes a rather offhand and cryptic remark about which was which in the passage we're examining now -- a passage that is clearly open to more than one interpretation.

Therefore -- given Livy's ambiguity, and given the conflicting translations (Spillan vs. de Selincourt) -- this seems to me to be the safest prespective: the sisters' relative ages are not the most important part of this story, and which was older and which was younger remains a moot point. So I disagree with the statement that's now in the article: "According to Livy, the elder of the two daughters had the fiercer disposition." As we've seen, Livy never actually says this -- he just says that one was fiercer than the other.Thuvan Dihn (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding this point: "Selincourt has apparently simply inserted references to one sister being 'the elder' as she pleases. A bit odd, huh!" Well, I think it's evidence that Livy is ambiguous, and that de Selincourt assumed that the older sister would marry the older brother, and thus strove to provide clarity where Livy was obscure. Evidently that wasn't the best course. But this doesn't make his translation inferior to Spillan's, not by a long shot.

BTW I love Latin literature, and this exchange has reminded me how much I enjoy wrestling with Latin syntax! I'm a geek indeed! I hope you are experiencing similar joy! And the article on Tullia has grown richer over time! Yay Wikipedia! Thuvan Dihn (talk) 03:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree. Its great to work together on the article!--Urg writer (talk) 10:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey I just read the Latin translation work you did above. Great work. And I completely agree! The problem with the version to which I referred is that it puts a full stop before the relevant part, whereas there is no full stop in the original. Hence "they [i.e., Tarquin and the elder Tullia] were joined in marriage" refers back to an earlier part of the whole sentence, as you say!--Urg writer (talk) 09:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I have copied this exchange here. The problem here is that this exchange is pure OR, and is inconsistent with what reliable sources say.    You don't get to decide on the basis of your personal readings that translators have had it wrong all this while. See WP:OR and WP:RS. If you can find reliable sources that discuss a dispute about the interprtation of the passage then that is what you include - the debate. You do not change an accepted interpretation without even identifying in the article the fact that you are rewriting accepted history. It's true that the passage in which the "younger" is mentioned is odd, and that some older translations do seem to have rendered it as though the younger daughter was killed, though as Thuvan Dihn points out, this creates a very weird passage. I can only find these readings in 19th century translations, not in more modern ones. Perhaps there is scholarly discussion of textual problems somewhere. If so, it could have its own section - but one has to find it first. Also, Livy is not the only source for the story. There is also Dionysus, whose account is not ambiguous . It is clear that Tullia Minor is the "villainous" one. Paul B (talk) 09:20, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

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