# When about three hundred soldiers had been disembarked from these ships and were marching to the camp



## Lamb67

When about three hundred soldiers had been disembared from these ships and were marching to the camp, the barbarians, induced by the hope of plunder, surrounded them, at first in no great numbers, and ordered them to lay down their arms.
Cum circum CCC milites expositi essent ex his navibus et iter facerent ad castra, barbari, adducti a spei praedae, circumdederunt eos, primo in nullis numeris, et iusserunt eos ponere.( or imperaverunt eis ut ponerent)

At first glance, I turned ' were marching' into ' iter faciebant' , but on second thought, it became' iter facerent' because it is in a cum clause.

Any criticisms are welcome

thanks


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## rs2740

First, I'm not sure what you can use, but nullus is "not at all", which makes no sense there.
Second, spes is not a person, so it's instrument, not agent; therefore, no a/ab; the ablative is spe, not spei.
I don't have time to go over it thoroughly or research the words you used, so I can't really say about the correctness of the word choices, but those are the problems that seem apparent.

Also, I recommend that you do some work on word order; if the Latin word order matches the English one, there's probably some problem; e.g., barbari spei praedae adducti eos circumdederunt is much better. Similarly, ex his navibus should precede expositi essent.
If you want, you can use a participle (actually, two) instead of the cum clause, so
barbari spe praedae adducti milites ex his (if you are not emphasizing _these_ ships, then omit his) navibus expositos et iter ad castra facientes circumdederunt should also work.


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## Lamb67

Your correction for spe and some word order is appreciated.
I would like to turn your last Latin sentence back into English : The barbarians, induced by the hope of plunder. surrounded the disembarked soldiers from the ships and marching ones to the camp. So your 'two participle approach' seems to be no good. I think the reason is that the two actions i.e. 'disembarked 'and ' were marching' need to be differentiated very precisely.


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## rs2740

I meant for both to modify milites - the barbarians surrounded the soldiers marching to the camp, having been disembarked from the ships; but I see your point - it's confusing with or without the 'et'. Since it's when the soldiers were matching, something like milites, qui ex navibus expositi erant, iter ad castra facientes would certainly work.


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## Lamb67

No, yours still sounds no good because I would like to see the 3 verbs modifying 'milites' in three different sequences stretching from the beginning to the end.
1)had been disembarked
2) were marching
3) be surrounded just as what the Enlish tenses tell us to follow.


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## rs2740

Now I'm not sure what you're talking about; present participle is time contemporaneous with the main verb - the soldiers were surrounded while they were marching. And I used the pluperfect in the relative clause. I fail to see a problem.


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## Lamb67

I am sure we both are not aware of is ' they had disemarked' should be rendered into Subjunctive pluerfect ' exposuissent' following a Cum clause.
Using clauses here instead of a single-for-all sentence as you have suggested is better.


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## rs2740

In a cum clause? It's of course plupf. subj.; you used the passive at first, so I didn't verify if it's active or passive here (I still haven't). I'm just saying that participles can do the same thing here, just pointing out a possibility. There's probably thousands of ways to render this thing.


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## Lamb67

Barbari spe praedae adducti ( circum CCC) milites ex his navibus expositos et iter ad castra facientes circumdederunt VS Cum circum CCC milites ex his navibus expositi essent et iter ad castra facerent,barbari spe praedae adducti, eos cirumdederunt.
The former is done by RS2740, the latter is improved from the OP.

There is a proverb about English structures: The onion's layers after layers of leaves are like the many clauses in an English sentence. Can I make a similar saying about Latin sentences ? 

Regarding ' Iter ad castra facientes' in the former, it can never be read as a participle to modify ' marching soldiers'.

Another adverbial phrase, ex his navibus together with the above are misleading because the reader could read as the followings : Barbarians, induced by the hope of plunder,( were) from the ships and (were) marching to the camp surrounded the disembarked three hundred soldiers.

The finishing part is primo in nullis magnis numeris, et iusserunt eos ponere.( or imperaverunt eis ut ponerent)= at first in no great numbers, and ordered them to lay down their arms.


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## rs2740

Okay, I never said that the first is best - I checked w/ my Latin prof; it's grammartically correct (removing the 'et' would make it clearer) but of course the style is very, very bad. A Roman would probably be scratching his head. It's a conceptual work to show that participles can do the job. That's it. There's no need to polish it - though I still think a pres. participle + a relative clause would work - see post #4. As to the adverbial phrase, it's sandwiched between a noun and the participle modifying the noun which the phrase's modifying. I see no problem. In any event, it would be indeed very unusual if a word and a participle modifying it are separated with irrelevant words in between, as would happen under your reading (what would milites be doing?). This is prose, not poetry; we do not look at the gender, number and case of each word and try all possible matches (not really in poetry either). The word order is there for a reason.


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