Sorry to ask so many questions, but I’m skeptical of this online answer key:
“Ūnus homō cīvitātem fortūnātam nōbīs cūnctātiōne cōnservāvit.
A
Proposed online translation: “One single person has kept the city fortunate for us by delaying."
I find the proposed translation rather unconvincing. Is “kept the city fortunate for us” really correct? Grammatically I have no reason to doubt it but it sounds very odd. What about this? “Our city, blessed by fortune, was saved for us by one man, thanks to his delaying tactics”. Or is this one of those adjective-to-adverb conversions?: Luckily, our city was saved for us by one man…" Or simply: “One man saved our lucky city for us…”.
The problem with your translation is that nōbīs is dative and so cannot qualify the accusative cīvitātem fortūnātam. There is no “our city”. nōbīs is the indirect object of cōnservāvit and cīvitātem fortūnātam is the direct object. I dont like blessed by fortune. If you dont like “fortunate” how about “prosperous, lucky, happy,”.
The translation you have found is simply trying to keep the English as close to the meaning of the Latin as possible.
I just added the “our” to “city” for clarification, not as a translation of “nobis”. My translation of “nobis” was “[saved our city] for us”.
I also think it’s unlikely that the speaker just threw in the information that the city was “happy” when it narrowly .escaped destruction by Hannibal. It seems more likely to me that “fortunatus” means “favored by Fortune” in the sense that the city was lucky to be protected by an extraordinary commander like Fabius. That said, from the strict gramatical standpoint it looks like the alternatives you proposed.
If you know the contexts of the sentences you are quoting it would save time if you would mention it although I suppose if I had been thinking, Cunctator should have come to mind (or if I had read your thread heading…something I often fail to do.)
OLD offers “Attended by good fortune, fortunate, lucky, successful”. The first three would seem ok here.
Sorry for not giving the context first but I was just going through the online flashcards, which only identify the “capvt”, so I didn’t have the details at first. From now on I’ll look up the source of the “sententia antiquae” in Wheelock/Perseus and cite the source in any questions.
It’s mostly my fault for not reading the title of the thread. Fabian tactics is a give away. Don’t go to too much trouble identifying things if you don’t have time.
Understanding the grammar is I think much more important than which words one uses in translation. Ideally one doesnt bother with translation at all.
