Ablative confusion

Textbooks Latin For Beginners by D'Ooge
1

Page 46, Exercise 107, end of chapter XV.
The sencence :The Germans, with (their) sons and daughters, are hastening with horses and wagons. is translated as :Germani cum filiis filiabusque cum equis et carris properant/maturant. in the answer key.

:question: Why is the cum used? I interpreted the English sentence as: The Germans along with their sons and daughters are fleeing by means of horses and wagons. So doesn’t that make the equis et carris ablatives of means, which according to D’Ooge should not have a cum preceding them. So shouldn’t the second cum be absent in the snetence?

:bulb: One explanation I could think of is that the horses and wagons are also ablatives of accompaniment, but why not means? :confused: Could someone please help me out here.


Shanth

2

I suppose it could be either, but yours makes more sense and doesn’t have the somewhat awkward repetition of cum.

3

Thanks. By the way when would it be best to start reading a proper(?) Latin text, after finishing D’Ooge completely or after a sufficient number of lessons. If so, which text should I start with?

Shanth

4

Of course, once again, the novice shows the complete uselessness of the word “cum” for ablatives. I sometimes forget why it’s even there?

Oh yeah, there might be this rare occasion when you can’t figure out whether or not they’re saying with or by. Wait a minute…

Start off with Eutropius.

5

This may be the case when different classes of objects are set apart syntactically. Good style, I suppose. A result of the opposite was given once by a recently retired Canadian born TV personality: “their heads filled with shrapnel and memories of war…”