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I'm struggling with the translation of the following sentence:
Praeterea quinque milia iuvenum iussu principis magna voce plaudere debebant.
It is not clear to me what to do with the word iuvenum, that I think would be "young" here. I believe it is Gen.Pl. but neither the milia nor principis agree with that. The milia, as far as I can tell, are in Nom. and the principis is singular. So I don't know who/what should be "young" here?
This is all about how thousands work in Latin. The singular mille is an undeclinable adjective, the plural milia is a third declension noun. When you are counting the youth, with mille the young are in whatever case you need and with milia it is milia that is in the correct grammatical case and the young are in the genitive. In the singular the number is the attribute of the noun, in the plural the noun is the attribute of the number.
In your sentence nothing agrees with iuvenum. The word iuvenum is a genitive attribute of quinque milia.
In a table:
| Case | One thousand young people | Two thousand young people |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | mille iuvenes | duo milia iuvenum |
| Acc. | mille iuvenes | duo milia iuvenum |
| Gen. | mille iuvenum | duorum milium iuvenum |
| Dat. | mille iuvenibus | duobus milibus iuvenum |
| Abl. | mille iuvenibus | duobus milibus iuvenum |
