Proinde in agmine impeditos adoriuntur. Si pedites suis auxilium ferant atque in eo morentur, iter facere non posse; si, id quod magis futurum confidat, relictis impedimentis, suae saluti consulant, et usu rerum necessariarum et dignitate spoliatum iri.
Therefore let them attack the encumbered on the march. If the foot soldiers should offer help to their own comrades and should delay in this, a march cannot be made; if as he is confidant it more likely to happen, upon leaving the baggage and they look to their own safety, they would be stripped in the use of their personal property and in their dignity.
Why are the verbs in these sentences in the subjunctive mood?
adoriuntur is a typo and should also be in the subjunctive (adorirentur).
These verbs are subjunctives and infinitives because this is in oratio obliqua or reported speech, stating what Vercingetorix is saying. See a few sentences before this, where the OO starts: ‘convocatisque ad concilium praefectis equitum venisse tempus victoriae demonstrat’.
Thank you Truks for pointing out the typo; my book is a first printing and has remarkably few typos.
I have another question relating to my first post: I noticed that the subjunctive verbs are a mixture of both present and imperfect. Is this because these verbs are used in oratio obliqua? I am used to sentences using only one subjunctive tense based on the tense of the main verb. THanks.
Verbs are put into the subjunctive in OO when they would have been part of a subordinate clause in oratio recta (whether they would have been in the subjunctive in OR to begin with or not).
The answer to your question about why you’re seeing a mixture of present and imperfect subjunctives has to do with the sequence of tenses in relation to the governing verb and is a little involved.
A primary (present, future, perfect) subjunctive in OR remains unchanged in OO if the governing verb is also primary. If the governing verb is historic (imperfect, aorist perfect or pluperfect), an original primary tense is changed to the corresponding historic tense of the subjunctive.
Original OR historic subjunctives always remain unchanged no matter what their governing verb is.
Original OR indicatives become either primary tense subjunctives in OO if the governing verb is primary, or historic tense subjunctives if the governing verb is historic.
These are the bare-bone rules, but I would suggest you consult one of the grammars or North and Hillard’s Latin Prose Composition (available here on Textkit, I believe) to brush up on indirect statement. Another great resource that goes into quite some depth on this topic is Woodcock’s New Latin Syntax. Good luck!
I found Woodcock’s syntax online so I will not need to purchase it. The general rules are not difficult to understand; the problem I have is relating the concepts to what I am translating. I went back to the paragraph you mentioned in your previous reply and started from there. Should I look for 2 main verbs? I think one main verb is demonstrat. From here things start to get fuzzy.
The only imperfect subjunctive in the passage starting ‘Vercingetorix consedit’ and ending ‘spoliatum iri’ is in this sentence:
Proinde agmine impeditos adorirentur.
Here you can understand the imperfect subjunctive as doing the work in OO of what Vercingetorix commanded his men to do in direct speech, i.e. ‘attack them encumbered’. So in indirect statement, ‘(V. said that) they should/had to/must attack them encumbered…’
The other present subjunctives seem fairly straightforward to me.
Thanks Truks for your help. All clear now. I was making it more difficult than it it really is. By the way, I was looking through Woodcocks grammar and I stumbled on to something I have not seen in a basic Latin book: multiple subordinate clauses in indirect discourse and conditional sentences in indirect discourse.