Textkit Greek and Latin Forums

Hi
I'm learning by myself with B. L. D'Ooge's Latin for Begginers. It was OK so far, having already done the learnlatin.tk course, the first 50 lessons or so were not an issue. But now I'm having trouble figuring out the following sentence from ex. 240

Copias novas non solum toti Italiae sed etiam provinciis sociorum imperavit

I'm having problems matching the adjectives and nouns. What do you think about this? (I've added the subject from the previous sentence at the end to complete it).

Copias novas
This -in the accusative- would be the object from imperavit.

non solum

toti sociorum
This -in the genitive- would modify the object copias novas.

Italiae
Also genitive, would be in connection with toti sociorum

sed etiam

[toti sociorum] provinciis
As I understand it, toti sociorum modifies Italiae and provinciis.

[Marius] imperavit.

So what i'm thinking is that toti goes with sociorum and not with Italiae. Because, if that would have been the case, if should have been totae Italiae. Right?

I'd appreciate if someone could give me a hand.

By the way, this lesson has been addressed in viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2257 but I created another topic because I think it's a different issue.

Thanks,

Rafael

There are a few adjectives (like solus, unus, uter) that decline like pronouns in having genitive singulars ending in -īus and dative singulars ending in -ī. Totus is one of these, so toti is dative singular and may be of any gender.

My understanding of impero is that, when it means "to order (someone)", that "someone" appears in the dative case. But when we find it taking a direct object in the accusative, it means rather "to demand (something)". When found with a direct accusative object and a dative, it means "to demand (something, acc.) from (someone, dat.)".

I hope that's clear, and is enough to help you understand the sentence.

Thank you very much Craig_Thomas!
Now I understand that I overlooked the 9 irregular adjectives that D'Ooge mentions in lesson XVI.
So in the sentence

Copias novas non solum toti Italiae sed etiam provinciis sociorum imperavit.

copias novas is the accusative object of imperavit -that is what is demanded- and both toti Italiae and provinciis sociorum are noun groups in the dative. So copias novas are demanded from both toti Italiae -both words (adjective and noun) in the dative- and also from provinciis sociorum -provinciis in the dative, sociorum in the genitive plural, that is from the provinces of our allies. Can anyone confirm if I'm right?

Thanks,

Rafael

Aye, that's right.

A minor point, but I suspect Italiae is in fact in the genitive ("from all of Italy"), as that would make for a neater parallelism between toti Italiae and provinciis sociorum. It doesn't alter the meaning of the sentence --- the dative ("from all Italy") makes perfect sense --- but Latin writers loved these balanced structures.

Thanks, I get it. So toti is an adjective treated like a noun and Italiae is its genitive.
It's interesting the ambiguity in the 1st (-a) declension though. I wonder if that could lead to serious confusion...