“Romani ad silvam oppido proximam castra movebant”.
Got me baffled - isn’t castra plural? And silvam accusative?
I just can’t seem to figure out the declension for this.
Oh, and sorry about the lack of macros - haven’t figured it out yet.
You’re right that castra is plural and silvam is accusative.
The basic structure of the sentence is this: Romani castra ad silvam movebant. Determine what noun the adjective proximam agrees with, then decide what case oppido is in and why. Then add oppido proximam back into the sentence. I suspect at that point it will make sense.
Ok. So castrum plural is camp (a guess).
Oppido is dative (I think) - destination for the camp that they are moving.
Proximam singular accusative can only apply to silvam. So the neighbouring forest in accusative.
Hang on, ad takes accusative. Thinking out loud here, but proximam should refer to oppidum.
So they moved the camp to the forest next to (neighbouring) the town.
Bang! That was my head exploding.
I think I’ll just move on.
Thanks.
Paul, have a look at paragraph 143. That will explain the relationship of proximam with oppido. The subject of that particular lesson is the use of the dative with adjectives.
OK, thanks. It was the accusatives and the plural that threw me. I should know by now that ad takes acc and before jumping in, I should read the dictionary entries a bit more thoroughly. I have fallen foul of this sort of stuff before. Staring at stuff without stepping outside of the box is not much use.
See also how the word order helps here, with oppido being bracketed by silvam and proximam. It shows, or at least it strongly suggests, that oppido has nothing to do with movebant.