# agmine denso



## Lamb67

Haec ubi dicta dedit, portis sese extulit ingens, 
telum immane manu quatiens:simul agmine denso 
Antheusque Mnestheusque ruunt, omnisque relictis 
turba fluit castris. tum caeco pulvere campus 

*Vergil Aeneid book12.442:
*http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/vergil/aen12.shtml





_*Th*e martial band _and_ a thick body _are those two explanations from google book rearch results. I am wondering what exactly the underlined part means and what the two following persons are i.e enenmies or friends of Aeneas.

In my excercise book the given title is Aeneas advances to battle against the Latins.

Thanks.


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## Scholiast

salve iterum, agnelle LXVII!

Once again, you have asked two questions in one. In response to (i) - what _agmine denso_ means - my own first reaction is to ask, have you understood in principle the ablative grammar of the phrase?


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## Scholiast

salve!

Answer (ii), yes, in the context "Antheus" and "Mnestheus" are Trojan warriors, arming themselves, or rather charging out into battle, on Aeneas' side.


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## Lamb67

Scholiast said:


> salve iterum, agnelle LXVII!
> 
> Once again, you have asked two questions in one. In response to (i) - what _agmine denso_ means - my own first reaction is to ask, have you understood in principle the ablative grammar of the phrase?



Thanks, I think I have known about it quite well now. Having formed a big strong column would be the meaning of this absolute ablative construction.


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## Scholiast

salvete!

Strict schoolmaster-grammarians might describe _agmine denso_ as an "ablative of attendant circumstances" rather than an "ablative absolute", but they would be only partly right to do so, because semantically these refer to the same sort of thing.

In the context of the Virgil passage you quote, the phrase does indeed mean "in a densely packed [military] formation", "in a thickly-packed mass".


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## relativamente

I agree with Scholiast's view.In fact absolutus means just untied, and an ablative that has not a preposition as commonly they have is kind of untied.But normally this expression "absolute ablative" is reserved to cases when there is also some independence in the meaning, which in modern languages usually require a whole phrase and goes between commas
examples "omne spe amissa" (having lost any hope)
"Mario consule" ( in the time when Mario was consul)


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## XiaoRoel

Querría recordar:
a) las comas son obra de editores modernos;
b) _agmine denso_ es un vulgar CC en ablativo (caso que convierte en adverbio funcional un SN);
c) la construcción llamada de ablativo absoluto, en realidad no es más que un SN en ablativo en su función adverbial de CC;
d) los participios son adjetivos y como tales se comportan en el SN.


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