Persius, part II

So Persius goes ahuntin’, and to get to where Medusa lives:

“Tum postquam tâlâria pedibus induit, in âera ascendit.”

‘Then after he put the winged sandals on his feet, he flew into the air.’

Why is pes in the dative/ablative? Is the ‘on’ assumed, or does induere take a case that my dictionary doesn’t mention? In fact, is the word even necessary? Where else would you don sandals?

Phil

It’s pretty common for compound verbs - that is, verbs that are formed from a root word (duo, I suppose) and a preposition (in) - to take two objects, one in the accusative and one in the dative. Consider praeficio, “to place in charge of.” Me exercitui praefecisti - you put me in charge of the army. Me is accusative and exercitui is dative.

Yes, pedibus seems a little redundant, but Latin can be redundant sometimes. Ineamus in cubiculum - let’s go into (into) the bedroom. Or consider sex numero milites - six soldiers (in number). (What else is six if not number??)

I’ve been studying Korean lately, a language the verbs of which lack number and gender, a language the sentences of which can do without pronouns. Latin is feeling awfully obliging and explicit as of late.

David