Talk:mille passus

Declension

@LlywelynII, I'm so meta even this acronym I do not believe this declension is correct. In both cases, mīlle passūs and mīlle passuum, it should be the normal declension of mīlle plus the singular and plural partitive genitives (passūs and passuum). I see this source, but I do not believe it too accurate, given that mīlle must take a plural compliment. —JohnC5 18:12, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5, I'm not related to the authors so I'm not going to stand on their honour but I don't see why mīlle "must" take a plural compliment. It's perfectly standard in Greek (e.g.) to create units by creating singular neuter forms: 10-foot [measure], etc. If it helps you grok how this could possibly be, realize that actual Latin was written scriptiocontinua and that this "phrase" could be just as easily taken as the word kilopace. So pending your discovery of a more reliable source backing up your hunch, I'd say you should realize that's all it is. Perfectly willing to be corrected, though: we're all just here to help out. — LlywelynII 11:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5, LlywelynII: The quotations with text under “mille” (sense 3) on page 1,109/3 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st ed., 1968–82) read:

1. inde est ferme ⁓e passuum Cato hist.26
2. locus…accliuis circiter passus ⁓e Caes.Gal.3.19.1
3. cum ab hibernis Ciceronis ⁓ia passuum ab Roma abesset LX Caes.Gal.5.53.1
4. ne quis ultra ⁓e passuum ab Roma abesset Liv.43.11.5
5. quattuor ⁓ia passus progressi ab oppido Vitr.1.4.12
6. Corsica…longa passuum C̅L̅ Plin.Nat.3.80
7. ⁓e passuum commoratu’s cantharum Pl.Men.177

Just FYI. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 12:25, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@LlywelynII I, by no means, meant to offend, and I apologize if it came off that way. Also, it has been quite a while since I've seen the word grok used; so that was exciting. ISMETA's third quotation is a pretty good example of a nominative plural mīlia taking a genitive plural passuum (literally “. . .(he) is away thousands_{NOM PL} of paces_{GEN PL}”). The Latin cardinal numbers (excluding ūnus) could take compliments in one of three ways:

1. Partitive genitive: a number + a genitive singular/plural

   This tends to be used when the thing being counted does not represent total number or when it represents the characteristic example of the thing in question (e.g. mīlia passūs, “thousands of (a characteristic) pace”)

2. With dē or ex: a number + dē/ex + ablative plural

   This only represents when the thing being counted does not represent the total number (e.g. mīlle ex puellārum “a thousand of the (larger total of) girls”)

3. Plural case agreement: number + plural (with case agrrement):

   This only represents when the number is the total (e.g. mīlle virī “one thousand men (total)”)

None of these options allow for a mīlle + singular nominative, however. It is quite confusing because mīlle itself is a singular noun (one thousand) but it will only agree in case with plural nouns. More on this topic may be read in this excerpt from Allen and Greenough. I hope this helps, and I do not mean to lecture you. —JohnC5 21:08, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5, LlywelynII: I've looked into the anisomorphic singular forms given in the entry (viz. mille passui, mille passum, and mille passu). Searching google books:"mille passui" yields 8 hits, 6 of which are scannos for mille passus; of the other two, one is unpreviewable, and the other I've added to Citations:mille passui. Searching google books:"mille passu" yields 217–338 hits, the vast majority of which are scannos for mille passus, mille passuum, mīlle passu(o)m, mille pass., mille β passuum, mille passūs, millĕ passŭŭm, mille, passus, mille passum, mīlle passu(u)m, or the Italian mille passi; a handful of hits are for what seems to be a varia lectio in an edition of a work by Livy (mille passū in the sentence “Reliqui a vulgato non differunt, nisi quod mille passū sit…” [italics sic]) and there are two legitimate hits, one each, in § 40 of page 215 hereof and on page 135 hereof. Searching google books:"mille passum" yields 363–1,310 hits, which, I must confess, I lack the patience to trawl through; all I shall note is that, of the first ten hits, two are of the phrase's use in an English context and four are of the phrase occurring in the passage from Plautus which I quoted above (№ 7, viz. “[mill]e passuum commoratu’s cantharum”), which would suggest that those six are typos and, even if they weren't, would mean that they would be invalid for our purposes because they are citations in different languages (English and Old Latin, respectively). Contrast these findings with the 12,700–12,900 hits yielded by searching google books:"mille passuum". It may be worth tracking down, however, the other citations given by the OLD s.v. “mille” (sense 3), viz. Suet.Jul.57, Apul.Met.10.35, Vitr.1.6.9, and Pl.Truc.334. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 12:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@LlywelynII, I'm so meta even this acronym The unpreviewable example above turns out to be a scanno of mille passus in Handbuch der römischen alterthümer, Volume 1. Given this information, I am prepared to stick by my initial claim and declare the rest of the forms scribal or Latin errors or later reïnterpretations. Does anyone object? —JohnC5 20:51, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5: They're a lot rarer, that's for sure. I'm inclined to agree with your treatment, unless Suetonius' Julius 57, Apuleius' Metamorphoses 10.35, or Vitruvius' De architectura 1.6.9 turns up such a use (Plautus' Truculentus 334 is, of course, an Old Latin citation, and therefore not strictly relevant). — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:15, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym Here are all of the quotes in question with the cases glossed:

• Suetonius:

  ...centena_{ACC PL} passuum_{GEN PL} milia_{ACC PL}...

• Apuleius:

  ...passuum_{GEN PL} milibus_{ABL PL}...

• Vitruvius:

  ...passuum_{GEN PL} CCCXV milia_{NOM PL}...

• Plautus:

  ...mille_{ACC SG} passum_{(Old Latin) GEN PL}...

This seems to further corroborate the point. —JohnC5 08:42, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Thanks for tracking those down. That settles it for me. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 11:04, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

And I'm just happy to have been the catalyst to get y'all's wheels in motion, creating an accurate entry and correcting misinformation that's obviously percollating through the interwebs. I'll try not to use my new-found powers for evil. — LlywelynII 12:36, 8 April 2015 (UTC)