Key to Reading Unit 4

Some perfect tenses could be translated by the English perfect, as indicated in 1. From here on, the absence of a part of the verb 'to be' is not noted.


1. At length you overcame (or have overcome) the Carthaginians.
   
   
2. We were sailing to Britain but there we saw the men of Spain.
   
   
3. You dined at Tongilianus's house, O Caecilianus. Both Tongilianus and a boar have a big nose.
   
   
4. Why used the boy to love the goat? I do not know but he was always stupid.
   
   
5. Afterwards the Carthaginians won the friendship of the Romans.
   
   
6. O Philip, the leaves of the black cypress in the garden will be dear to your daughters.
   
   
7. We shall sail to Egypt and there we shall buy many statues.
   
   
8. Yesterday your apples were bad, O Brutus. When will you sell good [ones]?
   
   
9. I went to the library and read many books.
   
   
10. We keep the vices of others in our sight (lit. eyes), our own are on our back (lit. from our back; i.e. we cannot see them).
    
    
11. A donkey is beautiful to a donkey.
    
    
12. A Trojan horse is inside (i.e. the enemy have effectively infiltrated).
    
    
13. They turn black into white (candida is n. pl. accusative; the plural can be used for the singular according to the figure of speech enallage, which is very common in Latin verse).
    
    
14. A rose flowers on thorns (lit. from thorns; a rosebush is covered with thorns but it produces objects of beauty; floruit, lit. has flowered, is a gnomic perfect; the perfect is sometimes used in Latin proverbs where is English we would normally use the present tense, but cf. faint heart never won fair lady).
    
    
15. The tongue of the people is sacred (i.e. what the people say deserves unqualified respect).
    
    
16. Even the autumn of beautiful creatures is beautiful (only living things can grow old and so we should translate pulchrorum by beautiful creatures rather than by beautiful things).
    
    
17. Timid men never put up a monument to victory (i.e. are never victorious; on statuerunt see 14 above).
    
    
18. A constant drop hollows out a stone.
    
    
19. Not even a thorn will wound the good.
    
    
20. He has not even a hair of a good man
    
    

(c) Gavin Betts 2000