Pugio Bruti xxiv

john abshire

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Non solum, non viam hominum plenam, tenebras solas ante se iam videbat. Non placebat.
In raeda etiam sedebat sed ubi esset nesciebat. Tum sonitum, quo paulo ante excitata erat, rursus audivat.

She did not seem alone, not a road full of men, she saw herself now before lone darkness. She was not pleased.
She was still sitting in the carriage but she did not know where she was. Then she heard a sound (again), by which she was awakened, a little before.
??
I could not make any sense of the first part of this.
 

Pacifica

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- Solum is a typo for solem. Even if it were solum, it could not possibly refer to Terentia because it wouldn't be the right gender.

- Where do you get "seem" from? There isn't any videbatur there. There's only videbat.

- The object of ante is se, not tenebras solas.

- Solas should translate as "only" here, not "lone".

- In context, it should be "the sound", not "a sound".

- Why would you put "again" in parentheses? It isn't optional. It would be better placed right after "heard", though.

- Excitata erat is pluperfect.
sŏlum comes from the noun sŏlum, ī, n.
That's what I thought at first but it seemed a little weird so I googled and it seems that it should be solem: https://app.quizalize.com/view/quiz/pugio-bruti-ch-5-0cc875cf-d906-4f06-b748-95e40fbcd5b1
 

john abshire

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- Solum is a typo for solem. Even if it were solum, it could not possibly refer to Terentia because it wouldn't be the right gender.

- Where do you get "seem" from? There isn't any videbatur there. There's only videbat.

- The object of ante is se, not tenebras solas.

- Solas should translate as "only" here, not "lone".

- In context, it should be "the sound", not "a sound".

- Why would you put "again" in parentheses? It isn't optional. It would be better placed right after "heard", though.

- Excitata erat is pluperfect.

That's what I thought at first but it seemed a little weird so I googled and it seems that it should be solem: https://app.quizalize.com/view/quiz/pugio-bruti-ch-5-0cc875cf-d906-4f06-b748-95e40fbcd5b1
She did not see the sun, (or) the road full of men, she saw before herself now only darkness. She was not pleased.
She was still sitting in the carriage but she didn’t know where she was. Then she heard the sound again, by which she had been awakened a little before.
??
 

john abshire

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Seems good to me.
In the first sentence, the verb videbat was used 3 times. Is this common?
non solem, non viam hominum plenum, tenebras solas ante se iam videbat.
I.e. non solem videbat, non viam hominum plenum videbat, tenebras solas ante se iam videbat.

She did not see the sun or the road full of men, and she saw before herself now only darkness.
?
 
B

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In the first sentence, the verb videbat was used 3 times. Is this common?
non solem, non viam hominum plenum, tenebras solas ante se iam videbat.
I.e. non solem videbat, non viam hominum plenum videbat, tenebras solas ante se iam videbat.

She did not see the sun or the road full of men, and she saw before herself now only darkness.
?
Yes. It's more common than repeating the verb every single time.
You would or at least could do the same thing in English:
She neither saw the sun nor the street, only the darkness before her.
 

john abshire

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Yes. It's more common than repeating the verb every single time.
You would or at least could do the same thing in English:
She neither saw the sun nor the street, only the darkness before her.
I see what you mean, except in English there are connecting words, or, and, nor, etc. There are those words in Latin also, sometimes. It is good to know I can fill those in.
 
B

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I would argue that in this sentence, the words non ... non ... solas tend to be connecting words. However, it's true that you can have word groups that have no connectors at all. This stylistic device is called asyndeton. (cf. the orange section of this post: THREAD: stylistic-devices)
 
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