An epigram of Ablabius

Latin Learning Latin
1

I’m in the beginning level, I know so few Latin, I’m not a student and my native tongue is Arabic. I’ve searched for Latin text some short to learn it and take a quick idea how Latins think or how their texts look like, and to memorize some Latin.

I found this epigram “Saturni aurea saecla quis requirat?
Sunt haec gemmea, sed Neroniana.”
The author is Ablabius.

  • I tried to understand the first statement, but all what I understood is that it mentioned “saturn” in maybe plural form and “aurea” gold, but I didn’t get the meaning or why it’s a question.

  • What I understood of 2nd statement is something like “These are the jewels, but …!”

  • I know some about cases, nominative for subjects, accusative and dative for direct and indirect objects, vocative for addressing.

2

Clearly this is beyond your level of expertise. You need to start from the basics. You should get a good grammar to study and do all the exercises from Latin to English and from English to Latin.
For example, in the Latin Books section of the library we have



Latin For Beginners, Benjamin L. D’Ooge

which comes with a key.

Of course, you are encouraged to write your questions and show your homework here.