I’ve always found the ‘Ethical Dative’ to be a very silly classification, and it turns out A&G agree.
“It is really a faded variety of the Dative of Reference.” -AG 380.
How it Works
The Ethical Dative shows a “certain interest” felt by the subject of the dative. I gather that it’s more or less a Dative of Reference restricted to particular idiomatic moments in the Latin language.
- He serves his own father: suō sibi servit patrī.
- What do you want: quid tibī vīs?
- What is Celsus doing: quid mihi Celsus agit?
Note how, in the last example, the Dative is more or less beneath the threshold of translation. It has a certain sense where reading it in Latin, but it’s not a critical measure of the sentence’s meaning.
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I feel I’ve always struggled to gather this Dative together, because I’ve attempted to associate it with ‘ethics’ in the ‘what is the Good?’ sense, when it’s really meant to express ‘ethics’ in the ‘ἐθικός‘ (habitual) sense. Any thoughts on this?
The Essential AG: 380
Latin for Addicts 