I am trying to read through Nutting’s reader. It’s pretty easy and I don’t expect it to take long. However, there is this one sentence I’ve been banging my head on for a little bit. I understand what it is saying. However, the exact sense and the grammar doesn’t make sense.
Here it is: Coloni tamen iniurias mox Indis fecerunt ac brevi ad unum ab eis interfecti sunt.
The colonists, nevertheless, soon hurt the Indians and in a short time they killed one of them.
The ad looks strange to me.
Check your dictionary. Here’s Lewis:
—In phrases, ad unum, all together, unanimously, to a man, without exception: consurrexit senatus cum clamore ad unum: Iuppiter, si nondum exosus ad unum Troianos, V.: cum ad unum omnes pugnam poscerent, L.
interfecti sunt passive. Who? The colonists or the “Indians”?
The colonists, nevertheless, soon hurt the Indians and in a short time they (Indians) were all killed to a man (i.e., all of them?)
It’s a bad sentence (and bad history?) if so, since no change of subject has been indicated.
A good choice for Columbus Day!
If there is no change of subject indicated, then the subject is the same. It’s only a “bad sentence” if a change in subject is intended. It’s the Coloni who were killed. Notice “ab eis” not “ab se.”
Perhaps my “if so” was too cryptic, or Barry wouldn’t have felt the need to repeat my point. Yes it’s the colonists who are said to have been killed, and we can tell that by the fact that no change of subject is indicated. If it were the “Indians” (as Ursinus took it to be, as I’d suspected he might), then it would be a bad sentence. But it’s not. (At least, not if Nutting understood his sentence correctly, which I presume he did.)
ab se, or a se, would be ridiculous either way.
I was expanding on your “brevis nota” for the sake of clarity.
ab se> , or > a se> , would be ridiculous either way.
Ah, now I’m the one being cryptic, I simply meant to point out that ab eis indicates that the agency is other than the subject, where as ab se (attested 488 times in the Perseus collection), would indicate someone else being killed by the subject as the agent. The goal, I presume, is to help Ursinus understand the Latin sentence.
Need help with a certain part of this sentence, which I cannot figure out. …nec gratias colonis egit, qui operam suam ultro polliciti sunt: nam ne conspectum quidem legionum suarum putabat Indos esse laturos. Could someone give a literal translation?
“For he thought that the Indians would not bear even the sight of his legions.”