Disputatio:Scelus bellicum
Iacobe, "scelus belli" illud Statii non plane videtur esse "factum contra leges vel mores belli". Statius re vera de belli effectu loquitur, quem sceleri comparat. Qua de causa J.H.Mozley "horrible fate of war", et translator anonymus Francogallice "jeu cruel de la guerre" convertit. Neander (disputatio) 16:38, 10 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
- That's plausible, but don't tell me: tell the shade of D. R. Shackleton Bailey, who for the Loeb Library at Harvard in 2003 translated mirandum visu belli scelus as 'A crime of war wonderful to behold' (hic). Maybe 'a mishap of war' might be better there. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:41, 10 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
- Gulp!! Disagreement (if it is disagreement) with prof. Shackleton Bailey gives an uneasy feeling of presumptuousness. Yet, my take on scelus alicuius is that it signifies 'a crime committed by somebody' (i.e., genetivus subiectivus). Now, given scelus alicuius rei, the null hypothesis is that alicuius rei is still gen.subiectivus. And indeed, this is evidenced by the Statian locus, where the war is pictured as the cause of all those inconveniences listed. Another reading of scelus belli might be 'a crime committed (by somebody) in war', as in Flori epitome 2.13.10 cum Ptolemaeus ... summum civilis belli scelus peregisset, 'since Ptolemaeus ... had perpetrated the crowning atrocity of the civil war' (E.S.Forster). After all, I'm wondering whether crime of war be necessarily the same as war crime. Neander (disputatio) 12:09, 11 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
- Well, in English, those structures are often equivalent (a cat hair is a hair of a cat), but these objective genitives, as with war in war crime, can invoke subtleties: birdsong is the song of birds, not the song of a single bird, which would want to be bird's song. (Isn't the latter a subjective genitive?) In English war crime, we're likely to be referencing a crime common to (all) wars, but if we hear belli scelus as a subjective genitive, a better English translation of it would be 'crime of the war' (it's this very war's fault!), and then it'd certainly not have the implications of war crime as discussed in the article. ¶ Maybe Shackleton Bailey was already under the influence of Alzheimer's disease when he was finishing his Statius. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:19, 11 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
- I only just saw this. I don't think that last suggestion would be fair to Shackleton Bailey: I agree rather with what you said just above. He is trying to translate very closely, which is the prescribed task of a Loeb editor, and "crime of war" is as close as you can get. The French, cited at the beginning of this discussion, makes the meaning clearer at the expense of literalness. But Shackleton Bailey said "crime of war", not "war crime", obviously conscious that "war crime" has developed a fixed meaning and implication which would have made it useless in his translation here. "Crime of war" remained free for him to use. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:28, 18 Novembris 2014 (UTC)
- Well, in English, those structures are often equivalent (a cat hair is a hair of a cat), but these objective genitives, as with war in war crime, can invoke subtleties: birdsong is the song of birds, not the song of a single bird, which would want to be bird's song. (Isn't the latter a subjective genitive?) In English war crime, we're likely to be referencing a crime common to (all) wars, but if we hear belli scelus as a subjective genitive, a better English translation of it would be 'crime of the war' (it's this very war's fault!), and then it'd certainly not have the implications of war crime as discussed in the article. ¶ Maybe Shackleton Bailey was already under the influence of Alzheimer's disease when he was finishing his Statius. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:19, 11 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
- Gulp!! Disagreement (if it is disagreement) with prof. Shackleton Bailey gives an uneasy feeling of presumptuousness. Yet, my take on scelus alicuius is that it signifies 'a crime committed by somebody' (i.e., genetivus subiectivus). Now, given scelus alicuius rei, the null hypothesis is that alicuius rei is still gen.subiectivus. And indeed, this is evidenced by the Statian locus, where the war is pictured as the cause of all those inconveniences listed. Another reading of scelus belli might be 'a crime committed (by somebody) in war', as in Flori epitome 2.13.10 cum Ptolemaeus ... summum civilis belli scelus peregisset, 'since Ptolemaeus ... had perpetrated the crowning atrocity of the civil war' (E.S.Forster). After all, I'm wondering whether crime of war be necessarily the same as war crime. Neander (disputatio) 12:09, 11 Octobris 2014 (UTC)