# maritum comitem mortis complexa



## je-ne-regrette-rien

Hi, I'm a bit confused about the 'maritum comitem' in this sentence; I think it refers to the same person, her husband? It's from the OCR GCSE Latin Lang 2 paper, 2006. 

_Theoxena ipsa, maritum comitem mortis complexa, in undas se deiecit_ 

Theoxena herself, having embraced her husband, her friend, in death, threw herself down into the waves. 

Thanks!


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## XiaoRoel

The translation is:
*Teoxena herself, embraced to its husband, in the death companion, was thrown to the waves. *
It indicates that Teoxena embraces its husband and are sent to waters with him, reason why is  "comitem mortis" (in the death companion).


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## Imber Ranae

_comitem mortis_ = "as her companion in [lit. 'of'] death"

I understand it to be an object complement of _amplexa_ rather than merely an appositive of _maritum_. Since _mortis_ directly modifies _comitem_ as a limiting genitive, you cannot translate it adverbially as "in death" separate from the noun "companion".


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## je-ne-regrette-rien

> Since mortis directly modifies comitem as a limiting genitive



Thanks. What do you mean by a limiting genitive, though? 

Edit: Oh I think I know what you mean, like 'urbs Romae' = city of Rome?


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## XiaoRoel

I tried to translate my previous post to the English. The corrections are welcomes.


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## Imber Ranae

je-ne-regrette-rien said:


> Thanks. What do you mean by a limiting genitive, though?
> 
> Edit: Oh I think I know what you mean, like 'urbs Romae' = city of Rome?



Perhaps "limiting genitive" is not the correct designation. I used that term mainly because I'm not sure what else to call it, and also because, however vague it may be, it still seems to make sense on an intuitive level: their companionship is limited to death.


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## XiaoRoel

It is a *genitive complement of the name*. This is what *morphosyntax* says. The values of this genitive are a *semantic* question that _depends on the meaning of all the words_ in game, as much in text as in context. 
It does not have to mix the semantic with the syntactics values of the cases, from a morphosyntactic functional perspective .


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## Imber Ranae

XiaoRoel said:


> No se debe mezclar lo semántico con los valores sintácticos de los casos, desde una perspectiva funcional morfosintáctica.



I don't think anyone is doing that. I mentioned the semantic relationship of the genitive complement to its head noun, as determined by the context, to aid in understanding.


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## je-ne-regrette-rien

Oh dear, I don't know any Spanish! Thanks for all your help, both XiaoRoel and Imber Ranae. Hmm, I'm trying to think of other, similar, examples... 

Quintus Flaviam uxorem Decimi necavit? (I just made that up; it's probably wrong!) 
_Quintus killed Flavia, the wife of Decimus? _

but we're translating the original sentence like '_as_ her friend in death'... Oh dear, my example's rubbish, sorry!


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