Ergo, ut divideret pugnam eorum, capit fugam, ita ratus Albanos secuturos ut quemque vulnere affectum corpus sineret.
There’s something I’m not getting. The part from …ita ratus - in this way he thought the Albani following…’ and then ut quemque vulnere affectum… so that he? / it? (the tactic) would allow each body to be affected with a wound…’
I’m having trouble with the subject of sineret.
It’s hard to see what’s going on without more context, but it looks like: “. . . he took to his heels, thinking that the Albans would follow in the manner [ita] that his wounded body [literally, ‘the body affected by a wound’] would allow each man [to follow],” i.e., " . . . thinking that the Albans would follow however each man’s wounded body would allow him to".
The subject of sineret is vulnere affectum corpus.
Here’s the context…
Two of the Horatii are dead and the remaining triplet has to fight other thee alone so he needs a strategy to separate them…
Forte unus Horatius integer fuit — ut universis solus nequaquam par, sic adversus singulos ferox. Ergo, ut divideret pugnam eorum, capit fugam, ita ratus Albanos secuturos ut quemque vulnere affectum corpus sineret. Iam aliquantum spatii ex eo loco ubi pugnatum est aufugerat, cum respiciens videt Curiatios magnis intervallis sequentes, unum haud procul ab sese abesse.
I initially thought that it was a question of the remaining Horatii being able to wound them each in turn…but that didn’t explain ‘affectum’ in passive. Your explanation seems to work.
“thinking that the Albans would follow as each man’s body, affected by his wound, would allow him to.”
In English we need a possessive to go with “body”. Latin doesn’t need the possessive. And Latin word-order allows the direct object quemque to be placed ahead of the subject and verb, vulnere affectum corpus sineret, so that the possessor of the wounded body is identified at the beginning.
To translate this clause into English, you have to introduce the required possessive, “each man’s” first to modify the subject, and then use a pronoun for the direct object, which in English must be placed after the verb.
It seems that it’s corpus that is vulnere affectum rather than quemque, right?
Grammatically, it could be either, but here corpus seems to make better sense. Affectum here might be translated “impaired.”
Thanks.