You will readily see that this must be improved in several points. Thus:—
(a) Use Oratio Recta—more graphic and better suited to our idiom.
(b) arts. Change this to some more suitable military term—e.g. tactics.
He was well acquainted (he said) both with the enemy and the country, and would shortly make it worth their while, and would employ against their originator those very tactics by which both our leaders and our armies had up to that time been baffled.
[V.] Id non promissum magis stolide, quam stolide creditum: tamquam eaedem militares et imperatoriae artes essent!
(i.) Vocabulary.—
stolide, cf. stolid = dull, foolish.
(ii.) Translation.—The finite copula est is, as often, omitted; the two principal verbs are promissum (est) and creditum (est) linked by the comparative particles magis—quam, and the subject is id; tamquam—essent! is a subordinate clause modifying the two principal verbs, and expressing contemptuous wonder.
Cf. ‘tamquam clausa sit Asia, sic nihil perfertur ad nos.’
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