A QUIET PROTEST
Hic animum sensusque meos abducta relinquo…
We’ve seen hic (here) and animus (spirit). Abducta is a woman who has been abducted. Relinquo means “I leave behind.” You may remember it from Ovid. Animus and sensusque meos (my senses) are the object of relinquo, so the line clearly means “I leave behind my spirit and my senses.” Can you see what abducta is doing? Abductus, abducta, abductum is the fourth principal part of the verb abduco, to carry off. The fourth principal part is the perfect passive participle. Abducta is feminine, so here it means “a woman having been abducted.” It is in the nominative case, so it has to be the subject of the verb: therefore the woman is Sulpicia herself. “Abducted, I leave behind my soul and senses.”
This is a ponderous way of getting to the meaning, which may well have been clear to you before I threw all this grammar at it. But it’s a good exercise sometimes to examine every word and decide exactly how it works in context.
arbitrio quam vis non sinit esse meo.
Quam is the relative pronoun, meaning whom. We won’t translate it like that: we just have to understand that it refers to the speaker. Vis is “power,” non sino, “I do not allow.”
Arbitration is judgement, from the Latin arbitrium. Arbitrio meo is the ablative, so try translating first with by, with or from. “Whom power does not allow to be by/with/from my own judgement.” Let’s go for with, since the other two options are even worse. “Power does not not allow me to with my own judgement.” That’s clunky, but the meaning is plain. If she is not granted the exercise of her own judgement in determining whether to stay or go, then she is being separated from her soul and her senses, and is choosing to leave them here in Rome. “You can drag my body to rotten Arezzo, but my heart and my feelings are staying here with Cerinthus.”
Hic animum sensusque meos abducta relinquo,
arbitrio quam vis non sinit esse meo.
Let’s put the watch back together, and see if it still ticks.