Help with several sentences

[Decimvs]

Hello all, I was wondering if my translations for these sentences were accurate. I was doing a bunch of them tonight and was getting hung up on a few.

1. Poeta et nauta de deorum factis cogitabant.

I translated as..."The poet and the sailor had thought about the deeds of the gods."

Is this correct? de deorum factis is confusing me. I know that with an ablative de means down from, about, concerning. I am assuming that the de goes with the factis? de cannot go with a genative plural so why is deorum after de and not factis after de?



One other sentence set that I am having a hard time with are these three.

1. Neque nautae bella timent nec feminae.

The thing that confuses me here is that the subject of the sentence could be either feminae, bella, or nautae since those are all also the plural forms of those nouns. So it could be "the women are afraid of neither sailors or wars", the sailors are afraid of neither women or wars, and on and on. I don't understand how to make 100% sure of the subject on this one. Help!


2. Nautae nec bella timent nec arma.
"niether wars nor weapons frighten the sailors?
Why are the "necs" placed in such confusing order here?

3. Nautae nec bella nec arma timent.

I think I am figuring these sentences out more now, but I will post this anyways for the interest of discussion. timent needs an accusative (direct object" so nautae cannot be it, the object has to be arma and bella, weapons, wars, so....."niether weapons nor wars frighten the sailors."

Thank you in advance for the help/advice on these what may seem to a lot of you as simple sentences.

 

[QMF]

Prepositions are one place where syntax isn't really that variable, but it can be variable, especially in poetry. De does go with factis, however, you're correct.

In the second, the key is to note that timeo takes an accusative, and that feminae and nautae cannot be accusative, whereas bella can be accusative (even though it can also be nominative).

The order of the "nec"s is peculiar, but it could have an emphatic purpose; the writer might want timent to be where it is in the sentence. Syntax with neque/nec isn't quite as forced as it is in English.

 

[Decimvs]

So in the sentence...

Neque nautae bella timent nec feminae

timeo : to fear, be afraid, dread

so timent = they dread, are dreading.

So I guess it should be: "Niether the sailors nor the women dread wars."

I didn't think dread would take a direct object because it isn't something that you are doing something to. I mean, you can fear something, but you are not doing something to it or acting on it, more like just feeling fear. Could it be.."Wars fear niether women nor sailors."? I am confused.

 

[Imber Ranae]

So in the sentence...

Neque nautae bella timent nec feminae

timeo : to fear, be afraid, dread

so timent = they dread, are dreading.

So I guess it should be: "Niether the sailors nor the women dread wars."

I didn't think dread would take a direct object because it isn't something that you are doing something to. I mean, you can fear something, but you are not doing something to it or acting on it, more like just feeling fear. Could it be.."Wars fear niether women nor sailors."? I am confused.

It can't mean "Wars fear neither women nor sailors" because both the words nautae and feminae are nominative plural, not accusative plural. Timent can only take accusative objects. Not to mention that "wars" logically can't fear anything.

 

[Imber Ranae]

There's nothing out of the ordinary with these sentences; they're fine examples of good Latin prose.

First of all:

Poeta et nauta de deorum factis cogitabant.

It is quite common to find a preposition separated from its object by a genitive. The Romans viewed the genitive as more or less just an adjective, and just as an adjective can come between a preposition and its substantive object, so can a genitive. This seems weird to us, but it doesn't present any translation problems in Latin because hardly any prepositions take a genitive object. Tenus and causa are the only exceptions I can think of, and both of these are normally preceded by the genitive they modify, making them even more exceptional. Only in poetry do you commonly find other prepositions following their objects.

You can also have an adjective that modifies the substantive object of a preposition precede that preposition, e.g. magna in insula "on a large island", but this oddity is mostly limited to common monosyllabic prepositions.

As for the other sentences:

Neque nautae bella timent nec feminae.

Nautae nec bella timent nec arma.

Nautae nec bella nec arma timent.

These nec (neque)...nec(neque) constructions are actually quite logical in their word position: you just have to pay attention to which words are actually being negated. The first one says that neither the sailors nor the women fear wars. Naturally each negative adverb comes before the specific word it negates.

The second one says that the sailors fear neither wars nor arms. Again, the negative adverbs come right before the specific words they negate. The third sentence says the exact same thing as the second, just with the verb in a different place. You'll notice the negative adverbs remain before their respective nouns, however.

This kind of sentence structure is common with all coordinating adverbs, which also include et...et, aut...aut, vel...vel, etc. It isn't entirely alien to English either. We can likewise say, "The sailors fear neither women nor arms," or, "Neither the sailors fear wars, nor [do] the women." The only thing more restricted about the word order in the English sentences is the position of the verb in relation to its subject and object, which has to be so since nouns aren't marked by case in English.

 

[Decimvs]

Thank you all for all of your help, it is making more sense now. In the book, they just tell you de(+abl.) so when I saw de...and then something not an ablative I was confused. magna in insula also seems so weird to me. I just don't understand the concept of it, to say literally translated, "large on the island." It sounds odd. but Dative of the Possessor seems slightly odd to a native English speaker also. Shifting my understanding of est to mean "there is" instead of "it is" takes a few seconds sometimes, such as in the sentence liber domino est. The king has a book, or, there is a book to the king.

Anyways, thank you for all of the clarification, it really helped a lot.