Prose literature: Group 2 set text

Constructed illustrative passage in the manner of Roman historiography (not a quotation), treated here as though it were from a Group 2 prescription: nec dubium erat quīn omnēs perīculum vidērent; sed nēmō prīmus dīcere audēbat. tandem senior quīdam, cui nihil iam petendum erat, surrēxit et 'quid' inquit 'timēmus? mortem? eam nēmō vītāre potest.' Show how this passage would be used in a Section B answer and how it would be used differently in a Section C essay.

1. 01What the passage contains

   nec dubium erat quīn ... vidērent: quīn with the subjunctive after a negatived expression of doubt. nēmō prīmus dīcere audēbat: audeō semi-deponent, imperfect, with prīmus predicative - nobody dared to be the first to speak. senior quīdam, cui nihil iam petendum erat: a gerundive of obligation with a dative of the person, negatived - a man who had nothing left to seek, that is, no further office to be sought and therefore nothing to lose. surrēxit et inquit: two perfects. Then direct speech, three short sentences, one of them a single word: quid timēmus? mortem? eam nēmō vītāre potest.

2. 02The Section B use: a local analysis

   In Section B the passage is printed and the question is about this passage. An answer would argue that the writer builds a silence and then breaks it, and would evidence that from four things: the double negative nec dubium erat quīn, which establishes that everyone can see the danger and so makes the silence culpable rather than innocent; nēmō prīmus, which locates the failure precisely - not that nobody would speak, but that nobody would speak first; the gerundive phrase cui nihil iam petendum erat, which explains the one man's freedom in a subordinate clause and thereby implies that the others are constrained by ambition; and the shift into direct speech, with the one-word question mortem? standing where a sentence would be expected. Local, textual, and about this passage.

3. 03The Section C use: the same passage as evidence in an argument

   Suppose the essay question is whether the writer is more interested in judging his characters than in explaining them. This passage is now one piece of evidence among six or seven, and the point made about it must serve the argument. The point to make is the gerundive clause: cui nihil iam petendum erat is an explanation, not a judgement - the writer tells us why this man could speak, in terms of his position rather than his virtue, and by implication explains the others' silence the same way. That is evidence on the explaining side of the question, and it is a different point from the Section B one even though it rests on the same five words.

4. 04Why the point has to change

   Two reasons, one strategic and one intellectual. Strategically, an examiner reading both answers will see the repetition, and the essay's marks are for argument, not for a second delivery of a passage analysis. Intellectually, the two questions are different: Section B asked what this passage does, and Section C asks what the writer characteristically does. A passage can be evidence for a general claim only if the general claim is what you extract from it, and extracting it means saying something the local analysis did not need to say.

5. 05Where the translated reading would come in

   The essay must also use the linked material read in English translation - what that material is depends on your prescription. The move is comparative: if the translated material narrates the same kind of scene, ask whether it explains or judges, and say what the difference shows. If it is a different genre - a speech, a letter, a later account - ask what it assumes about the characters' motives. In either case the sentence to write is one that puts the two side by side and draws a conclusion, not one that summarises the translated material and then returns to the Latin.

6. 06The balance of the essay

   Across a Section C essay of five or six paragraphs, expect three or four to be built around Latin evidence quoted from the set text, one or two to bring the translated material into comparison, and the conclusion to answer the question. The Latin is the centre; the translated reading is the perspective. An essay in which the proportions are reversed reads as though the candidate found the Latin too hard, which is exactly the impression the paper is designed to test for.

Result: Section B: a local analysis arguing that the passage constructs a culpable silence and breaks it, evidenced from quīn with the subjunctive, nēmō prīmus, the negatived gerundive of obligation and the shift into direct speech. Section C: the same five words, cui nihil iam petendum erat, used to support a general claim about whether the writer explains or judges - a different point from the same evidence, which is what a text-based essay requires.

Suppose your Latin set text narrates a political crisis in which a magistrate is accused of exceeding his authority, and suppose the material you have read in translation includes a fuller account of the same events by another writer. Show how that translated account would be used as context, as comparison, as continuation and as counter-evidence, and write the sentence each use produces.

1. 01As context

   The Latin text may assume that the reader knows the constitutional position of the office in question, the previous career of the man holding it, or the political alignment of the men attacking him. The translated account supplies it. The sentence this produces is a subordinate one: 'Since, as the fuller account read in translation makes clear, the magistrate had already held the office once before, the accusation of exceeding his authority carries a weight the Latin text does not spell out.' Note that the point is still about the Latin text; the translated material is in a subordinate clause, doing its job and getting out of the way.

2. 02As comparison

   The translated account narrates the same events, and what it includes and omits reveals what the Latin author chose. 'Where the account read in translation devotes several pages to the legal argument, the Latin text disposes of it in a single ablative absolute and moves immediately to the reaction of the crowd - a choice which suggests that its author is interested in the political effect of the accusation rather than in its merits.' The comparison is the evidence and the claim about the Latin author is the point.

3. 03As continuation

   The translated account may carry the story past the point where the Latin text stops, and knowing the outcome changes how the Latin reads. 'The Latin text ends with the magistrate's departure from the city; the translated account records what followed, and read in that light the departure scene, with its careful notice of who accompanied him and who did not, looks less like an ending than like a list of the alliances that would matter next.' This is one of the strongest uses, because it turns knowledge into interpretation.

4. 04As counter-evidence

   The translated account may contradict the Latin text, or make its implications look tendentious. 'The Latin text presents the accusation as unanimous; the account read in translation names two senators who opposed it, which suggests that the unanimity is a rhetorical construction rather than a report.' In an essay that asks how far you agree with a proposition, this is the most valuable move available, because it lets you argue rather than illustrate.

5. 05What all four have in common

   In every case the sentence is about the Latin text, and the translated material occupies a subordinate position - a since-clause, a where-clause, a semicolon. That is the correct proportion. In every case the reference is to something particular in the translated account, not to its general character. And in every case something is concluded: the sentence does not stop when the comparison has been made. A paragraph that makes the comparison and leaves the reader to draw the inference has done three-quarters of the work and earned rather less than three-quarters of the mark.

6. 06What none of them does

   None of the four says anything about the language of the translated account. No word order, no sound, no grammatical construction, no metre. If the essay wants to make a point of that kind it must make it from the Latin, where the words are the author's. This is not a technicality: it is the distinction between the two bodies of evidence, and observing it is part of what the essay is testing.

Result: Four uses - context, comparison, continuation and counter-evidence - each producing a sentence in which the Latin text is the subject and the translated material occupies a subordinate clause, each referring to something particular rather than general, and each ending in a conclusion rather than in the comparison itself. And in none of them is anything claimed about the language of the translated text.

Take a Section C question of the kind the paper sets, constructed here for illustration: 'The writer is more interested in judging his characters than in explaining them.' How far do you agree, with reference to the Group 2 prose text you have studied and to the material you have read in translation? Produce the plan.

1. 01Unpack the question

   Two verbs, judging and explaining, set against each other, and a how-far framing which invites a qualified answer. Note that the question does not ask whether the writer judges - clearly he does - but whether judging interests him more than explaining. So the essay must weigh, and the strongest answers will find that the opposition is not as clean as the proposition assumes. Note also the instruction: both bodies of evidence are required, and an essay that omits one has failed part of the question.

2. 02The thesis

   'The writer explains far more often than he judges - his narrative is full of motives, circumstances and constraints - but the explanations are placed and phrased so that they function as verdicts, so that the opposition the question sets up dissolves under examination: explaining is how this writer judges.' Arguable, specific, and it dictates the shape: first establish the explaining, then show the placing, then deal with the passages that look like straightforward judgement.

3. 03Select the evidence

   Four pieces from the Latin, spread across the prescription, and one from the translated reading. One: an early passage where a character's action is given a motive in a subordinate clause - evidence for explaining. Two: a passage where the motive offered is given in a quod-clause with the subjunctive, so that the writer reports it without endorsing it - evidence that explanation can be a form of judgement. Three: a passage of direct judgement, if the text has one, taken seriously as counter-evidence. Four: a passage where a gerundive of obligation or an impersonal construction makes a judgement without a judge - the subtlest evidence and the one to place last. Five: the translated account, used comparatively.

4. 04Order the paragraphs

   Paragraph one: thesis and grounds. Paragraph two: the writer explains - evidence one, establishing the sheer quantity of motive-supplying subordination. Paragraph three: but the explanations are angled - evidence two, the subjunctive of alleged reason. Paragraph four: the counter-case - evidence three, the passages of open judgement, acknowledged and weighed. Paragraph five: the comparison - the translated account, which explains less and judges more, or more openly, and thereby shows what the Latin author has chosen. Paragraph six: evidence four and the conclusion - the impersonal judgement, which is where explaining and judging become the same act, and then the answer to the question.

5. 05Check the plan against the question

   Does it answer how far? Yes - the thesis is a qualified position and paragraph four takes the other side seriously. Does it use both bodies of evidence? Yes - four Latin passages and one comparison. Is it ordered by argument rather than by the text? Yes - the evidence paragraphs are ordered by what they prove, and the passages come from wherever they come from. Is the author the subject of the claims? Yes - the writer explains, the writer angles, the writer chooses. Four checks, thirty seconds, and they catch the four commonest structural failures.

6. 06What the plan does not contain

   It does not contain any writing. No opening sentence has been drafted, no quotation has been written out, no transitions have been composed. Those are execution and they are quick once the plan exists. The plan took four minutes and it fixes the thesis, the evidence, the order and the balance - which are the four things that a weak essay gets wrong and that cannot be repaired by good prose.

Result: A four-minute plan: an arguable thesis in one sentence, five pieces of evidence spread across the prescription with one from the translated reading, six paragraphs ordered by argument with the counter-case given its own paragraph, and four checks confirming that the plan answers the question actually asked.

Using the constructed illustrative passage from earlier in this topic (not a quotation from any author) - nec dubium erat quīn omnēs perīculum vidērent; sed nēmō prīmus dīcere audēbat. tandem senior quīdam, cui nihil iam petendum erat, surrēxit et 'quid' inquit 'timēmus? mortem? eam nēmō vītāre potest.' - write four analytical sentences of the four-part kind.

1. 01Sentence one

   'nec dubium erat quīn - there was no doubt that - opens the passage with a negatived expression of doubting followed by quīn and the subjunctive, and the construction matters: the writer does not say that the danger was visible, he says that nobody could doubt it, which makes the silence that follows a failure of nerve rather than of perception.' Latin, translation, construction named, effect stated.

2. 02Sentence two

   'nēmō prīmus dīcere audēbat - nobody dared to speak first - places prīmus predicatively beside nēmō, so that what is denied is not speech but priority; the writer thereby locates the failure with precision, since a group in which nobody will be first is a group in which everybody would follow.' The grammatical observation - a predicative adjective rather than an attributive one - is doing the analytical work.

3. 03Sentence three

   'cui nihil iam petendum erat - who now had nothing left to seek - is a gerundive of obligation with a dative of the person and a negative subject, so that the old man's independence is expressed as the absence of anything he is obliged to pursue; the writer explains his courage by his position rather than by his character, and does so in a subordinate clause, which is where this narrator characteristically puts his explanations.' The last clause connects the local point to a general claim, which is what an essay needs.

4. 04Sentence four

   'quid timēmus? mortem? - what are we afraid of? death? - gives the speech two questions and then a single accusative standing alone as a third, and the ellipse of the verb in mortem? compresses the exchange into one word; the writer lets the old man supply the objection and dismiss it in the same breath, which characterises him as a man who has already had this argument with himself.' Note that the grammatical observation here is an ellipse, which is as legitimate a piece of evidence as a named construction.

5. 05What makes them work

   Each sentence is short. Each quotes between three and five words. Each translates. Each names something grammatical - a construction, a predicative adjective, a gerundive with a dative, an ellipse. And each ends with an effect that could not have been asserted without the grammar. That last property is the test: if the effect could have been claimed from a translation alone, the grammatical observation was decoration. Here it is not, in any of the four cases.

6. 06What to do when the wording is uncertain

   Suppose you remember that the old man is described as having nothing left to seek but cannot recall whether the Latin was petendum or quaerendum. Then do not quote: write 'the old man is described in a gerundive phrase as having nothing further to seek, so that his freedom to speak is presented as a consequence of his position'. The analytical point survives entirely; only the demonstration of verbatim knowledge is lost, and that is a much smaller loss than a wrong form would have been.

Result: Four analytical sentences, each three to five words of Latin, each translated, each resting on a named grammatical feature - quīn with the subjunctive, a predicative adjective, a gerundive of obligation with a dative, an ellipse - and each ending in an effect that the grammar alone establishes. Plus the fallback: where the wording is uncertain, refer in English and keep the analysis.

Using the constructed illustrative question from earlier - 'The writer is more interested in judging his characters than in explaining them.' How far do you agree, with reference to the Group 2 prose text you have studied and to the material you have read in translation? - write the opening paragraph, one evidence paragraph and the conclusion.

1. 01The opening paragraph

   'The writer explains his characters far more often than he judges them: motives, constraints and circumstances are supplied constantly, and almost always in subordinate constructions rather than in the narrator's own voice. But the explanations are placed and phrased so that they do the work of verdicts, and the opposition the question sets up therefore dissolves under pressure: for this writer, explaining is how judging is done. The one class of passage that resists this reading is the open authorial comment, and it will need to be weighed.' Three sentences: thesis, mechanism, complication. No background, no definitions, no announcement of intentions.

2. 02The evidence paragraph: the claim

   'The most characteristic move in the narrative is to supply a motive in a subordinate clause and leave it unendorsed.' One sentence, one claim, and it is a step in the argument rather than an observation about a passage.

3. 03The evidence paragraph: the evidence and the analysis

   'When the old senator rises to speak, his freedom to do so is explained in four words - cui nihil iam petendum erat, who now had nothing left to seek - a gerundive of obligation with a dative of the person, negatived. The construction expresses his courage as the absence of an obligation rather than as the presence of a virtue, and it does so in a relative clause, subordinate to the main verb surrēxit. The narrator has explained the man completely and has said nothing about him.' Latin, translation, construction, effect - and the effect is expressed as a paradox, which is the kind of formulation that makes an examiner attend.

4. 04The evidence paragraph: the connection

   'That is the pattern the whole narrative follows: the judgement is available to the reader, and the reader is left to make it, which is why the writer can appear severe while almost never saying anything severe.' One sentence, returning to the thesis, and generalising from the single instance to the claim about the text. Without it the paragraph would have been a good comment on four words.

5. 05The counter-case, in outline

   The paragraph that must follow, at some point, is the one that takes the open authorial comments seriously: 'Against this, the narrative does contain passages of direct judgement, and they cannot be explained away.' State them at their strongest, then show that they are few, or that they cluster at structurally significant points and therefore function as summary rather than as the narrative's normal mode. Either resolution is defensible; refusing to face the objection is not.

6. 06The conclusion

   'The proposition is therefore half right and misleadingly framed. The writer is not more interested in judging than in explaining - he explains far more, and in far more detail. But his explanations are constructed so that they carry judgement without stating it, and the handful of passages in which he judges openly stand out precisely because they are exceptions to a method that ordinarily leaves the verdict to the reader. To that extent, and only to that extent, the proposition holds.' It answers in the question's own words - more interested, how far - it does not summarise, it introduces no new evidence, and it ends on the Latin text.

Result: An opening of three sentences containing thesis, mechanism and complication; an evidence paragraph of four moves - claim, Latin quoted and translated, grammatical analysis, connection back to the thesis; a counter-case paragraph stated at its strongest and then answered; and a conclusion that uses the question's own terms and ends on the Latin. The whole essay would be five or six such paragraphs and would fit the time block allocated to it, provided that block was fixed before the paper began.