Although I started studying Latin almost ten years ago, and then had it for one year at university, I’ve never really gone too far with it, and always ended up dropping it for one reason or another. This time, however, I made up my mind about starting from scratch and sticking to it, and so I’ve been studying Latin again since around the beginning of the month. I’m studying it on my own, and, although I’ve got a couple of very good support materials (both in paper and online, and both in English and Portuguese), I’m mostly following Napoleão Mendes de Almeida’s Gramática Latina, which is both a grammar book and a course. I’ve been able to go through it quite well so far, but it seems I’ve finally got stuck on a couple of points and can’t help reaching out for some guidance.
The lessons are usually set with throughout explanations about the topic they’re on, then general questions on the points presented, and finally translation exercises (both from Latin to Portuguese and vice-versa). Right now I’m in lesson 54, ‘Compounds of Sum’. The following are the sentences I got stuck on, and I’d really appreciate it if someone could give me some hints about the problems I’m having with them.
First, the translations from Latin (which I’ve then translated from my Portuguese versions into English for the sake of exposing my doubts more clearly, of course, even though I’m sure I can lose something in the process):
‣ Prudentia abest a malitia distatque plurimum.
Although this one wasn’t particularly difficult, I thought it sounded a bit awkward in Portuguese, so I’m not sure my translation is correct: ‘Prudence is distinct from wickedness and stands apart from it.’
‣ Inter meam domum et tuam interest flumen et pons.
When I first looked at it, it posed no mystery, until I paid attention to the verb itself. My initial translation was just ‘There are a river and a bridge between my house and yours’, but since flumen et pons is the subject, I’d have expected intersunt, so I’m puzzled – am I missing something obvious or do I just lack knowledge on some special agreement issue going on here? I see in Charles E. Bennett’s A Latin Grammar (§ 255, 2) that the verb may agree with just the nearest subject when it comes before it, but I can’t tell whether that’s the case here because I haven’t been taught anything about that in Almeida’s course yet.
‣ Quid hoc mihi profuit? Immo obfuit.
This is a typical case of a sentence the sense of which I’m quite sure of, but which I can’t put together grammatically. Almeida is kind enough to point out that hoc is the subject and quid the direct object, and I’m positive that translates along the lines of ‘How was this useful for me? On the contrary, it was prejudicial.’ I’m probably confused because of prosum governing the dative and then quid being accusative, and also possibly because I’m not being able to translate quid itself properly (as I can’t make it fit as ‘what?’, ‘which?’ in this exact context).
Then, two sentences I’ve just remembered from an earlier lesson (lesson 52, ‘3rd and 4th Regular Active Conjugations’). These were to be translated into Latin. I’ll give the original Portuguese sentences below, then my own English translations of them, and then the Latin translations I came up with, and finally mention the exact point I’m curious about.
‣ O inimigo se aproxima para devastar os campos.
‘The enemy approaches in order to devastate the fields.’
Almeida explicitly pointed that para devastar (‘in order to devastate’) was to be translated with the Future Participle, so I came up with:
Hostis agros vastaturus appropinquat.
So far, so good (sorta). Then, however, the next sentence of the exercises was:
‣ Vou para ver os jogos.
‘I’m going (in order) to see the games.’
My rendering of it:
Eo ludos spectatum.
In this case, as Almeida didn’t indicate anything special about it, I used the Supine, since ‘(in order) to see’ comes after a verb of motion and expresses a purpose. No problems with this concept. The question I’ve got in mind, however, then is – if appropinquo, from the sentence before this one, is also a verb of motion, and devastating the fields is the enemy’s purpose, why was I asked to use the Future Participle instead of the Supine there?