What exactly is the meaning and usage of "communemque?"

Question

I'm reading through a Latin edition of the Republic. Book III starts off as follows:

Haec igitur sunt, ut mihi videtur, quae de Diis audienda aut non audienda sint prima a pueritia his, qui Deos et parentes honoraturi sunt communemque amicitiam non parvi facturi.

I was drawn to what seems to be a conjunction, communemque, and searched through dictionaries, but never found a result. I found some sentences online that use it, but it just seems to be translated as "and," obscuring any contextual nuance.

What does this term mean, and how is it used?

Answer 1

The conjunction is not communemque, but just -que; it's an "enclitic" that attaches onto the previous word, like English 's. (It's generally written as part of the word, but that's a modern convention: the ancients abbreviated senatus populus-que Romanus as SPQR, with the -que separate.)

Communem here is an adjective modifying amicitiam:

…qui Deos et parentes honoraturi sunt communem-que amicitiam non parvi facturi.
…who should honor the gods and their parents, and not take their shared friendship lightly.

There are only a few enclitics in Latin; the others are -ve "or" and -ne "?" (marking a question).