I’ve begun reading Roma Aeterna now and I’m really enjoying it. Today however I encountered a sentence where I do not quite understand how the word arma works:
Hoc audito Aeneas iuvenes audaces, quos pugnandi
cupidos videt, paucis verbis hortatur ut se arment et
strictis gladiis in media hostium arma morituri se praecipitent:
My translation:
After hearing this Aeneas exhorts the brave youths, whom he sees are eager to fight, with few words to arm themselves and with drawn swords throw themselves in the armed midst of the enemies to die:
Is this correct? I see that arma is a plurale tantum, so I guess it can only be nominative or accusative. I see that it is also a neuter word, so my guess is that media is also neuter and connected to arma. “Armed midst” does sound a bit weird though…
Right after that sentence there is also a line from Virgil:
Una salus victis: nullam sperare salutem!
One rescue for the conquered: to hope for no rescue!
Maybe it’s one of those cases where you have to add some more words to make it sound right: For the conquered there is only one rescue: to hope for no rescue! But maybe I misunderstood something?
Hi Antonius, just to add, you seem from your translation “armed midst” to be taking media as a substantive modified by arma, but actually it’s the other way around: arma here is the substantive modified by the adjective media. (These words are in the accusative, governed by the preposition in).
Perhaps the adjective media is tricking you a little: it works differently from “middle of” in English (which might lead you to think that it should be followed by the genitive in Latin). Instead, it agrees with its substantive, e.g. in mediam uiam ‘into the middle of the road’.
As a “hack”, you can think of medius here as “mid-” in English (rather than “middle of”). Soon however it will become natural and you can just understand it in its native Latin form.
I understood that arma is a noun and media an adjective, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that type of arrangement sound good in English. Literally the youths would be throwing themselves “into the middle of the arms of the enemies”, which sounds weird. But perhaps there is a better way to translate in media hostium arma than I did. Any suggestions?
Hi Antonius, great to hear you understand the Latin construction. I’ll leave to others the best way to translate it into English: that’s really an exercise in the English language, not Latin.