Thankyou for joining in bellum! Is it just me or has your latin become a lot better since you arrived at oxford? I can tell you are studying eagerly.
You would no doubt have been accepted into Yale!
Thanks! I never did proses before coming here - so that has helped a good bit. If I hadn't improved at least marginally, I would probably have suffered a crisis of confidence- with the amount of time I've been putting in Latin recently.
1. "Ante Caesar Roma profectus est quam" antequam... is fine here, the quam at the end sounds canine. If you want to separate it I would put it either before Roma or profectus.
You're probably right about the poor use of
tmesis here. I think I mainly threw it in because I had a lot of trouble with the construction when I first encountered it in M&F. Once known, it has haunted my usage (in revenge, I think, for the early confusioon).
2. You don't really need the whole "cum...pressi essent" because one use of participles is cause, thus you can have a participle (verbal adjective) agreeing with Helvetii, meaning "because they had been hard pressed..."
Yes, good point. I hope that, had I revised the passage (I was in a bit of a hurry) I would have trimmed it down with participles and such. Still, who can resist a tasty
cum even when superfluous? It's rather like
as in English, I think: "as you are a dolt, I despise you" - which can express, simultaneously, both temporal (=when) and causal (=since) contempt. Of course, it can't quite get the concessive sense, alas!
3. "Caesare certiore hoc de consilio facto, statim properabat ab urbe, exercitu quam maximo collecto..." This is quite important - this sentence does not require the absolute because it is not gramatically free (absolutus) from the main clause (statim properabat...), because you have in the abl. abs. Caesar who is also the subject of "properabat". (I assume you're using the imperfect meaning 'he began to hasten...') What you currently have written means that Caesar was informed of this plan and some other person hastened from the city. So something like "Caesar de hoc certior factus statim properavit..."
Yikes! I hang my head in shame. Quite serious indeed.
Good awareness of prohibere +inf, I on the other hand just love quominus and "juicy" imperfect subjunctives (as my 3rd year oxonian classcist friend so eloquently put it).
I noticed your
quominus
after I posted my translation and wondered. Of course, Latin usage is pretty flexible, at least much more flexible than textbooks suggest, and I applaud your slight license.
4. licet mihi iter facere OR licet iter faciam
in other words, dative and then infinitive, or subjunctive WITHOUT "ut"
I've never been very comfortable with
inconiunctis subjunctivis but I really ought to try
volebam id tecum facerem and other such judicious expressions of style.
Hope this helps, more people should have a go as you have, keep studying, you should PM Thucydidididices he is there too, doing idem ac tute no doubt!
Great help and especial thanks for the reminder about ablative absolutes.
de quibus vero certior factus eos per aevum memoria diligentissima tenebo. Thucydides has probably already left - without a response to my PM, I ought to note - but we must have been in a lecture or two together. It's a bit odd to think of.
David
