ante annos octingentos

[Aeolis]

Hi, I'm searching a document for the key words, "800 years." Here is the whole sentence that I found:

"Ibi repperimus euangeliorum codices complures, quoru aliquot inscriptione etia testabantur se descriptos ante annos octigentos."

Can someone tell me exactly what this says? Is it 8 years or 800 years?

 

[Pacifica]

Hi,

It's 800 years.

"There we found several manuscripts of the Gospels, some of which even declared in their titles that they had been copied out eight hundred years before."

 

[Aeolis]

Oh, I just saw I misspelled a word. It's "octingentos". Does that change the meaning?

 

[Pacifica]

No, since "octigentos" isn't a word. I hadn't even noticed the typo, in fact (and you wrote it correctly in the thread title).

 

[Aeolis]

Excellent. Thank you!

 

[Pacifica]

NP. By the way, quoru should be quorum and etia should be etiam. I assume there were abbreviations that you failed to expand.

 

[Aeolis]

Oh, so that's what the little horizontal mark above the "u" and "a" means. Thanks again.

 

[Pacifica]

Yes, that mark stands for "m". I let you know just in case you were going to use the transcription in a paper or something.

 

[Aeolis]

Much appreciated.

 

[Dantius]

Is "ante annos octingentos" classical? I'd expect something like "ante annis octingentis".

 

[Pacifica]

It isn't the first time I've seen the construction, but I can't remember in which authors I saw it or how classical they were.

A Latin-Library search will tell us: some results in Cicero and Tacitus, so it's classical enough.

 

[Dantius]

Interesting. Thanks!

 

[Aeolis]

It's from Erasmus, Novum Testamentum omne, 1522.

 

[Pacifica]

Erasmus is known for having written in good classical-style Latin, I think.

 

[Aeolis]

Here is the paragraph:

 

[Pacifica]

Do you want it translated?

 

[Aeolis]

No.
Well, the last two sentences are giving me problems. "nolui lector" and "pleriscb".

 

[Pacifica]

Hoc te nescire nolui, lector = "I did not want you to be ignorant of this, reader."

What you take for "pleriscb" is an abbreviation for plerisque.

 

[Aeolis]

That's great. Thanks.