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In last week’s reveiw of Augustine’s Confessions, we ran across this difficult sentence in section I.9.15. Augustine had just described how he prayed to God that he wouldn’t be beaten in school, and that when he described the nature of his prayers ridebantur a maioribus hominibus usque ab ipsis parentibus. An indignat Augustine summons his complete rhetorical arsenal to vent his childhood frustration:

Estne quisquam, Domine, tam magnus animus, praegrandi affectu tibi cohaerens, estne, inquam, quisquam (facit enim hoc quaedam etiam stoliditas: est ergo), qui tibi pie cohaerendo ita sit affectus granditer, ut eculeos et ungulas atque huiuscemodi varia tormenta (pro quibus effugiendis tibi per universas terras cum timore magno supplicatur) ita parvi aestimet, diligens eos qui haec acerbissime formidant, quemadmodum parentes nostri ridebant tormenta quibus pueri a magistris affligebamur?

This is an extremely difficult sentence for sight translation, but it is essential to follow this path if we want to appreciate the effect.

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Estne quisquam - “Is there anyone?” lays down the basic pattern; this is a rhetorical question, one driven home by the repetition of the same question later and the elaborate structure of the lengthy query.

Understanding from the start that this is a rhetoricqal question IMO makes the rest of the sight translation much easier: tam magnus animus - “such a great soul” is in apposition to quisquam, and this rather simple phrase is followed by a more complicated praegrandi affectu tibi cohaerens - “(one) bound to you with such great affection". Note how Augustine follows the classical “rule of three” as he elaborates his triplicate examples.

Next comes a tricky parenthetical: facit enim hoc quaedam etiam stoliditas - “indeed, a kind of stubborness does this as well". The delayed subject makes this tough, and most students in the class didn’t understand hoc right away. The pronoun refers to what has just been said; it’s used here because a word like quod wouldn’t have a clear and specific antecedent.

The next two words–est ergo–baffled the students (and, sad to say, their teacher). On reflection, this is an idiomatic phrase that has Augustine returning to his original train of thought after his “stubborness” sidebar. Ergo here is something like “and so, as I was saying". I then take est as a reminder of the original question: “is there, as I was saying". The follow-on clause qui tibi pie cohaerendo ita sit affectus granditer essentially rephrases magnus animus and praegrandi affectu tibi cohaerens–again, these are reminder tools design to return reader back to the original train of thought.

With these clarifications the broad outline of the rest of the sentence falls neatly into place: The ut of Ut eculeos et ungulas atque huiuscemodi varia tormenta (pro quibus effugiendis tibi per universas terras cum timore magno supplicatur) ita parvi aestimet clearly mark this as a result clause (remember tam from earlier?). The vocabulary may be unusual (nobody recognized eculeos - “racks” and only one student deduced ungulas–a word commonly translated as “claws"–to mean “hooks"), but the phrase varia tormenta makes it clear we’re talking about torture devices here; the point of sight translation is to rely more on context rather than getting hung up by specific words. Parvi also gave a few students pause, but fortunately Augustine uses the genitive of value quite frequently (the previous paragraph also has an example of this form). The parenthetical phrase has a small difficulty in pro quibus effugiendis–literally “for which to-be-avoided” = “to avoid them"–but the remained is pretty simple Latin once you realize supplicatur - “it is prayed” is impersonal–another favorite Augustine construction.

By this point the nut of the queastion is revealed–"Is there anyone with such a loving heart that he can ignore torture?” Augustine is being quite literal, since his teachers would beat him for poor performance. But now what to do with diligens eos qui haec acerbissime formidant? Rather than describe the lurid details of this humiliating punishment, Augustine is still focused on his imaginary subject: “(one who) loves those who dreads so bitterly these things". Augustine’s question presumes such a person is outlandish–who can possibly love someone and not care that he/she is being tortured?

Finally, Augustine ties this idealized subject with his parents via quemadmodum - “the same way (that)", one of those ’sign’ words that indicate to students plowing thru the text the relationship of the subsequent clause to the rest of the sentence (comparative here). The Latin of this final clause is straight-forward: parentes nostri ridebant tormenta quibus pueri a magistris affligebamur “Our parents laughed at the torments by which boys were humbled by teachers.”

It’s important to realize in this passage that Augustine is not commenting on the use of corporal punishment in schools–in fact, he takes the lion’s share of blame in the next section I.10 (assigned for next class). His parents’ unsympathetic reaction mystified him as a puer, and it requires the perspective of his post-conversion middle-age to understand the apparent disconnect. We’ll save that discussion for the next class.