(3) In English we should translate by at least four separate sentences.
(4) The Latin contains only forty-eight words, while the English contains eighty-one.
Professor Postgate (‘Sermo Latinus,’ p. 45) gives the following example of the way in which a Latin PERIOD may be built up:—
| BALBUS vir optimus, dux clārissimus et multis mihi beneficiis carus, rogitantibus Arvernis ut populi Romani māiestātem ostentāret suīque simul imperi monumentum eis relinqueret, MŪRUM laterīcium, vīginti pedes lātum, sexāginta altitūdine et ita in immensum porrectum ut vix tuis ipse oculis crēderes tantum esse, nēdum aliis persuāderes, non sine adverso suo rūmore ut qui principātum adfectaret AEDIFICAVIT. | BALBUS, an excellent man and most distinguished commander, who had endeared himself to me by numerous kindnesses, was requested by the Arverni to make a display of the power and greatness of Rome, and at the same time to leave behind him a memorial of his own government. He accordingly BUILT a WALL of bricks, twenty feet wide, sixty high, and extending to such a prodigious length that you could hardly trust your own eyes that it was so large, still less induce others to believe it. But he did not escape the malign rumour that he had designs upon the imperial crown. |
Here, as in the previous example,
(1) There is only one main idea,
BALBUS MURUM AEDIFICAVIT.
(2) The rest consists of—
(a) Enlargements of BALBUS—vir optimus . . . carus; placed, therefore, directly after BALBUS.
(b) Enlargements of MURUM—laterīcium . . . persuaderes; placed, therefore, directly after MURUM.