In Gk the neuter plural can be used for abstract nouns, e.g., kala, “the Good,” rather than “the good things.” Does this use of the neuter plural occur in Latin?
I’m working on St. Ambrose’s Epistula XL.3, in which bonorum and malorum seem better rendered as “good” and “bad,” rather than “good things” and “bad things.”
Thanks!
ATD
Yes, it is very normal to translate substantive adjectives in that manner. In the case of the genitive, it is somewhat ambiguous as to whether it is “the good (men/people)” or “good things”, but I assume the context makes that clear.
It’s amiguous in English too.
One would have hoped that a Professor and ‘Director of Classical Languages’ would have been familiar with so Classical an idiom, especially when the parallel of Cicero’s de finibus bonorum et malorum is ever at hand.
~D
Touché, salesman.