The translation is:Languebam: sed tu comitatus protinus ad me
venisti centum, Symmache, discipulis.
"I was sick: but you, Symmachus, came to me immediately, accompanied by one hundred students."
I cannot think of any logical reason why ", Symmache, " was placed between centum and discipulis. It completely threw me off and made me think that "centum" cannot be connected to "discipulis".
Why is the comma and name placed there? Is it to emphasize that the 100 were students?? It seems like a totally irrational place to put a comma, it almost seems like it was placed there deliberately to throw off the reader.
This is not the first time I have noted that commas are placed in strange places that seem to break up the sentence in places that should not be broken up at all. Did the comma have a completely different meaning in Latin than it does today in Modern European languages?
Are there any rules that govern where commas should be placed in Latin sentences?