Is anyone else here suspicious about this saying attributed to Pliny the Elder?
ex Africa semper aliquid novi
always out of Africa, something new is the common translation but I have difficulty with novi being plural nominative or singular genitive and aliquid being singular nominative or accusative.
Novi is singular genitive and aliquid is nominative.
It’s Pliny the Elder Nat.Hist. 8.18:
unde etiam vulgare graeciae dictum semper aliquid novi africam adferre.
aliquid novi: in this context, aliquid is the accusative direct object of adferre, novi is the singular genitive. Why genitive? It’s the partitive construction, “something of new” = something new. Here africam is the accusative subject of adferre in indirect statement. What you have cited above appears to be some sort of paraphrase.
unde etiam vulgare graeciae dictum semper aliquid novi africam adferre
Okay. - unde etiam - and also whence
Am I on the right track with that?
Not quite. Your English makes it sound like africam is the indirect object, whereas it is actually the subject, “whence also the common saying of Greece that Africa always produces something new.”
Ah haaa! It makes sense to me now.
I think…
It’s an example of Indirect Speech using the accusative and infinitive.
So another way of expressing it might be, Graeci dicunt Africam semper adferre res novas?