SENECA'S DE IRA (c.41 AD - mid-First century) 4 translation questions

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halibot
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SENECA'S DE IRA (c.41 AD - mid-First century) 4 translation questions

Post by halibot »

Some writers have proposed that Seneca, in his essay "On Anger"/"De Ira", alluded to Jesus when he spoke of a foreign crucified leader.

Volume I of De Ira in Latin is here: https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/sen.ira1.shtml
Volume II of De Ira in Latin is here: https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/sen.ira2.shtml

In his first chapter, Seneca introduces general philosophical criticisms of anger, also noting how angry people act like they are crazy. Then in chapter 2 in De Ira, in order to further criticize anger, give examples, and show the reader how it is harmful and cruel, Seneca lists manifestations of anger and then six cases of leaders who were the unfortunate victims of anger:
2. Next, if you choose to view its results and the mischief that it does, no plague has cost the human race more dear: you will see slaughterings and poisonings, accusations and counter-accusations, sacking of cities, ruin of whole peoples, the persons of princes sold into slavery by auction, torches applied to roofs, and fires not merely confined within city-walls but making whole tracts of country glow with hostile flame. See the foundations of the most celebrated cities hardly now to be discerned; they were ruined by anger. See deserts extending for many miles without an inhabitant: they have been desolated by anger.

See all the chiefs whom tradition mentions as instances of ill fate; anger stabbed one of them in his bed, struck down another, though he was protected by the sacred rights of hospitality, tore another to pieces in the very home of the laws and in sight of the crowded forum, bade one shed his own blood by the parricide hand of his son, another to have his royal throat cut by the hand of a slave, another to stretch out his limbs on the cross: and hitherto I am speaking merely of individual cases.
The phrase in question says in Latin, "alium in cruce membra diffindere".

(Question 1) Does the Latin phrase above ("alium in cruce membra diffindere") necessarily refer to crucifixion?

(Question 2) in the passage below, what does it mean that the three men were "set up to die in the same place"? Is Seneca saying that the three men were set up in the air at that location as in a crucifixion like one sets up a cross?

Seneca writes in Volume I:
I remember Gnaeus Piso, a man who was free from many vices, yet of a perverse disposition, and one who mistook harshness for consistency. In his anger he ordered a soldier to be led off to execution because he had returned from furlough without his comrade, as though he must have murdered him if he could not show him. When the man asked for time for search, he would not grant it: the condemned man was brought outside the rampart, and was just offering his neck to the axe, when suddenly there appeared his comrade who was thought to be slain. Hereupon the centurion in charge of the execution bade the guardsman sheathe his sword, and led the condemned man back to Piso, to restore to him the innocence which Fortune had restored to the soldier. They were led into his presence by their fellow soldiers amid the great joy of the whole camp, embracing one another and accompanied by a vast crowd. Piso mounted the tribunal in a fury and ordered them both to be executed, both him who had not murdered and him who had not been slain. What could be more unworthy than this? Because one was proved to be innocent, two perished. Piso even added a third: for he actually ordered the centurion, who had brought back the condemned man, to be put to death. Three men were set up to die in the same place because one was innocent.
The last two sentences above say in Latin:
Piso adiecit et tertium; nam ipsum centurionem qui damnatum reduxerat duci iussit. Constituti sunt in eodem illo loco perituri tres ob unius innocentiam.
(Question 3) What is the etymology and literal meaning of "Ioue"/Jove? Is it the ablative singular of "Iuppiter"/Jupiter, or is it a shorthand way of referring to Jupiter or to "Deus"/God? "Ioue" and "Iuppiter" look different enough to me that I am doubtful that Ioue is simply the ablative case for Iuppiter.

In Volume I, Section XX of De Ira, Seneca writes about Gaius Caesar challenging Jove:
8. Ceterum sermone, conatu et omni extra paratu facient magnitudinis fidem; eloquentur aliquid quod tu magni <animi> putes, sicut C. Caesar, qui iratus caelo quod obstreperetur pantomimis, quos imitabatur studiosius quam spectabat, quodque comessatio sua fulminibus terreretur (prorsus parum certis), ad pugnam uocauit Iouem et quidem sine missione, Homericum illum exclamans uersum:
e m anaeir ego se.

9. Quanta dementia fuit! Putauit aut sibi noceri ne ab Ioue quidem posse aut se nocere etiam Ioui posse.
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True, they will say something which you may think shows a great spirit, like Gaius Caesar, who when angry with heaven because it interfered with his ballet-dancers, whom he imitated more carefully than he attended to them when they acted, and because it frightened his revels by its thunders, surely ill-directed,[9] challenged Jove to fight, and that to the death, shouting the Homeric verse :—

"Carry me off, or I will carry thee!

How great was his madness! He must have believed either that he could not be hurt even by Jupiter himself, or that he could hurt even Jupiter itself.
The first time that the word "Ioue" appears above, the English translation puts it as Jove, but the second and third times that the word appears, the English translation puts it as "Jupiter".

Wikipedia has this discussion on the meaning of "Jove":
"Jove (from the archaic Latin for father god) usually refers to the god Jupiter (mythology)."
Sure "Jove" as a word indicated "father god" but I highly doubt it etymologically meant "father god", isn't it from Iu-/Ju- meaning sky? The personification of the sky as made the high god? ~4.255.51.153 (talk) 22:07, 16 February 2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jove_(disambiguation)
Wiktionary gives this discussion:
From Latin Iove (ablative singular case of Iuppiter), from Proto-Italic *djowe-, ablative case of *djous, from Proto-Indo-European *dyḗws.
Pronunciation
(Roman mythology) Jupiter, god of the sky.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jove#Etymology
One possible distinction between using Jove in the sense of (A) Jupiter or (B) Deus/God is that in Roman mythology, (A) Jupiter was a deity born from other beings, whereas in Philo's somewhat Hellenistic theology, and maybe in Plato's theology, (B) God Himself, the Self-Existent One, does not have a creator. That is, the highest god, Jupiter, has a parent god, Saturn. But Deus is simply God. He exists. He is the highest and only definitive god, and all lesser gods come from him.

(Question 4) In BOOK 2, Chapter 16, does "deumque" mean exactly the same thing as God when Seneca writes:
Quid, quod ne illud quidem verum est, optima animalia esse iracundissima? Feras putem, quibus ex raptu alimenta sunt, meliores quo iratiores ; patientiam laudaverim boum et equorum frenos sequentium. Quid est autem cur hominem ad tam infelicia exempla revoces, cum habeas mundum deumque, quem ex omnibus animalibus, ut solus imitetur, solus intellegit ? " Simplicissimi," inquit, " omnium habentur iracundi."
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What if I declare that it is not even true that the best animals are the most prone to anger? I may suppose that wild beasts, who gain their food by rapine, are better the angrier they are; but I should praise oxen and horses who obey the rein for their patience. What reason, however, have you for referring mankind to such wretched models, when you have the universe and God, whom he alone of animals imitates because he alone comprehends Him ?"

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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: SENECA'S DE IRA (c.41 AD - mid-First century) 4 translation questions

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Iuppiter m. Also Iūpiter, Iouis. [< *d(i)i̯eu̯-; Sanskrit dyaúh, Greek Ζεύς, cf. Latin dies, deus; nominative probably originally a vocative phrase, *Di̯eu + pater, cf. Greek Ζεῦ πάτερ] ORTHOGRAPHY: spelling Iupiter rare, but printed in e.g. VAR. L. FORMS: nominative sg. Iouis ENN. Ann. 63, ACC. trag. 332, PETR. 47.4, etc., HYG. Fab. 63.1, etc., AMP. 2.6, and elsewhere; archaic forms Diouis, Diouem, etc. CIL 1.20, 1.558, VAR. L. 5.66, GEL. 5.12.2 (also Diiou- LIV. 31.21.12, Deiou- cited in QUINT. Inst. 1.4.17), genitive Diouos CIL 1.360; see also Diespiter

Glare, P. G. W. (Ed.). (2012). Oxford Latin Dictionary (Second Edition, Vol. I & II). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=juppiter

also Juppiter, c. 1200, "supreme deity of the ancient Romans," from Latin Iupeter, Iupiter, Iuppiter, "Jove, god of the sky and chief of the gods," from PIE *dyeu-peter- "god-father" (originally vocative, "the name naturally occurring most frequently in invocations" [Tucker]), from *deiw-os "god" (from root *dyeu- "to shine," in derivatives "sky, heaven, god") + peter "father" in the sense of "male head of a household" (see father (n.)).

https://www.etymonline.com/word/jove

Jove
Roman god of the bright sky, also a poetical name of the planet Jupiter, late 14c., from Latin Iovis, from PIE root *dyeu- "to shine," in derivatives "sky, heaven, god" (compare Zeus). In classical Latin, the compound Iuppiter replaced Old Latin Iovis as the god's name (see Jupiter). Old English had it as Iob.

The Latin forms Diespiter, Dispiter ... together with the word dies 'day' point to the generalization of a stem *dije-, whereas Iupiter, Iovis reflect [Proto-Italic] *djow~. These can be derived from a single PIE paradigm for '(god of the) sky, day-light', which phonetically split in two in [Proto-Italic] and yielded two new stems with semantic specialization. [de Vaan]
Compare Greek Zeu pater, vocative of Zeus pater "Father Zeus;" Sanskrit Dyaus pitar "heavenly father." As the name of the brightest of the superior planets from late 13c. in English, from Latin (Iovis stella). The Latin word also meant "heaven, sky, air," hence sub Iove "in the open air." As god of the sky he was considered to be the originator of weather, hence Jupiter Pluvius "Jupiter as dispenser of rain" 1704), used jocularly from mid-19c.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Cuncta mortalia incerta...

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halibot
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Re: SENECA'S DE IRA (c.41 AD - mid-First century) 4 translation questions

Post by halibot »

Thanks for your thoughtful replies.

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halibot
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Re: SENECA'S DE IRA (c.41 AD - mid-First century) 4 translation questions

Post by halibot »

For Question 4, this Latin-German Dictionary gives the answer that deumque is a combination of "God" and the conjunction "and":
deus (Substantiv)
dei, m.
Gott
Akkusativ Singular, Maskulinum
dea, di

que (Konjunktion)
wird an ein Wort angehängt [in English it means: "is appended to a word"]
und
kein Form
ac, atque, et
https://www.latein.me/latein/deumque

Ronolio
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Re: SENECA'S DE IRA (c.41 AD - mid-First century) 4 translation questions

Post by Ronolio »

Regarding question 3, I think you may be reading a bit much into 'in eundem illo loco' if you are bringing crucifixion into the equation. I would take it to mean that the 3 were taken back to the very same place where the 1st was initially going to be executed. Additionally, given that the initial execution was to be via decapitation, which was one of the forms of execution used for Roman citizens, and that all 3 were likely Roman citizens, particularly the centurion, crucifixion, since it was not used for Roman citizens, nor was it a typical military execution for recalcitrant soldiers, is unlikely.

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