FABULAE SYRAE: moeniīs

Latin Learning Latin
1

Dear all, I am in trouble with the following sentence from the Tarpeia’s story in Fabulae Syrae:

[…] quae procul ex Rōmae moeniīs […] cōnspexerat

In my understanding, it should be something like “that (she) saw far away out of Rome’s walls”

but from the vocabulary the word moenia is a pluralia tantum of the third declension and therefore the ablative should be moenibus.

Is that a different word?

Thanks,

Maza

2

Your translation is right, except for ‘saw’, which should be ‘had seen’, since her seeing of the ornamenta precedes her wanting them for herself (cupiebat). I just checked and see that Lewis & Short does record the form MOENIIS as an ablative plural found in an inscription, but you’re right that it really should be moenibus here.

3

so that means that there is a mistake in the book? wow!

Thanks for the remark on the verb, too!

Maza

4

:wink: As I recall, these are done pretty well in terms of the grammar, but there are a few errors (which may have since been corrected, I don’t know). Here’s one that has stuck in my memory:

http://discourse.textkit.com/t/confused-by-use-of-nominative/14966/1