COUNTRY LIVING
Let’s look at the second half of that first passage.
neque excitatur classico miles truci
neque horret iratum mare
forumque vitat et superba civium
potentiorum limina.
Neque you know. Miles, you may remember, is a soldier – a military man. So the man is neither, as a soldier, excitatur by the classico truci, nor does he horret iratum mare. Iratum is irate, but a classicum is a military trumpet, related only distantly to our use of classic. Truci comes from trux, and leads to our truculent. You may remember trucidaverent from lesson three. It means savage or fierce. Mare (think maritime) is the sea. Horreo is to fear something, to have a horror of it. Horret iratum mare: he fears the angry sea.
Something inevitable is a thing which cannot be avoided. Vitat means he avoids. Limina is one of those Latin words which throws a light on common English. A limen is a threshold (limina is the plural). So something subliminal is under the threshold of perception. Superbus is proud – remember the superbia or pride of the Dursleys in lesson four. Superba here is the neuter plural to go with limina: proud thresholds.
Potens is powerful, so potentior is more or rather powerful. Cives are citizens. Potentiorum civium is the genitive plural: of more powerful citizens.
So ille (from way back in the opening line) is neither, as a soldier, stirred up (excitatur) by the savage trumpet, and he does not fear the angry sea, and he avoids the Forum and the proud thresholds of powerful citizens.
Two important Roman concepts are neatly encapsulated here. The Forum, in the city centre, was where most legal and other business was conducted. Under clientilism, the culture of patronage which greased every path in Roman life, a powerful man’s threshold would greet the dawn with a crowd of suppliants looking for favours. Writers like Horace often express exhaustion at the thought of it.