In the following verse:
redire in patriam voluit cursu per mare
What is that “cursu“ doing? “Redire in patriam voluit“ is “He wished to return to his country“; “per mare“ seems to be referring to “redire“, “return by sea“; but “curru“ seems not to relate to anything: it cannot be attached to “mare“, as “per“ governs the accusative, nor seems it to refer to “redire“ or “voluit“. Ørberg’s Sermones have not any notes on this verse.
Presumably it’s meant to mean “in a journey by sea,” but as it stands it’s scarcely Latin. The original has cursu pelagio, and I guess cursu per mare is an inept attempt to simplify that.
That is new to me, Ørberg adapted the texts in Sermones Romani. Thanks.
per mare is an adverbial phrase, but for it to make sense here it has to be understood adjectivally with cursu. That’s easy enough in English (“a journey by sea”), but not in Latin: in Orberg’s text cursu is isolated and scarcely intelligible, as John recognized. pelagio supplies the necessary adjective, and should not have been touched.
Perhaps the verse was altered from pelagio to per mare in order to make it a more regular iambic line. But the poem is in senarii, and there can be no objection to pelagio in a Phaedran senarius; for the 5th-foot resolution cf. e.g. 3 quo paupertatem sustineret facilius (again with word-accent on the short antepenult).
I’d say it’s acceptable: L&S quotes Horace:
Ulixi per mare, Hor. C. 1, 6, 7
To be sure, in a famous Horatian ode Ulysses’ wanderings are referred to as his cursus … per mare (the plural is significant), but I don’t see that that justifies tampering with Phaedrus’ unexceptionable cursu pelagio.
(And what’s “acceptable” in Horatian lyric may be less so in the more pedestrian verse of Phaedrus.)