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Hello

Just begining to study latin using D'Ooge.

The sentence in exercise 99 II.2 is

'' My son Sextus is carrying his booty to th Roman camp.''

The answer in the answer key is

'' Filius meus Sextus praedam suam in castra Romana portat. ''

Now, if 'castra Romana' is acc. plural, when prepostion 'in' is used incorrectly, 'cause in goes with ablative (see 53).

In my opinion the translation should go like this:

'' Filius meus Sextus praedam suam ad castra Romana portat. "


Am I right, or have I missed something?


Vale,
Gustix

A number of Latin prepositions can take either accusative or ablative with a slight difference in meaning. "in" is one of them. In general, ablative is used to refer to "place where", accusative to indicate "motion toward".

So, in + ablative means "in, on", while in + accusative means "into, to". The latter is roughly equivalent to the ad + accusative which you had. There would be nothing wrong with using "ad" here, but "in" is probably a bit better. "ad castra" only implies that he carried the booty towards the camp; "in castra" suggests that he not only carried it as far as the camp, but all the way into it.

Thanks for explanation. This forum is great for getting into details as such.

Vale,
Gustix