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Trōiānī vērō, cum Graecōs Argōs in patriam suam āvectōs esse arbitrārentur, tum dēmum post tot annōs portās aperuērunt atque exīre ausī sunt.

as is annotated, Argī is a city, but I can hardly understand the cum-clause:

The Trojans in fact, not only thought Greek Argi(?) had been driven away to their homeland, but also finally opened the gates and dared to go out after many years.

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    BTW the cum ... tum here is misleading: it looks like a "not only but also" construction, but actually the two aren't correlated -- the cum introduces a subordinate clause, while the tum goes with demum ("then at last").
    – TKR
    Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 19:29

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"Now, the Trojans, since they thought the Greeks had sailed away to Argos in their homeland, then, at last, after so many years, dared to open the gates and go out."

Graecōs is the subject of esse. It's an adjective used substantively, not an adjective modifying Argōs.

Argōs is the object of āvectōs. I gather that in the passive voice, āvehī, "to ride away", can take its destination as an accusative. It doesn't mean "to be driven away"; rather, the passive indicates the role of the subject in relation to the vehicle: the subject is borne away, carried away "by" the vehicle.

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    This probably is the intended meaning, but if so it feels wrong to add in patriam suam ("to Argos to their homeland"?), not to mention that not all the Greeks were sailing to Argos. The alternative is that Argos is supposed to mean Argivos, which doesn't seem too likely. Either way this seems like a badly composed sentence on Magister Ørberg's part.
    – TKR
    Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 19:26
  • @TKR Thanks—I was wondering about the use of the accusative case there. I tried looking in Book II of the Aeneid (above my level) for the passage that Ørberg was simplifying, and the original seems to include no mention of Argos: …nos abiisse rati et vento petiisse Mycenas… I hope someone posts another answer, which might provide some missing piece to the puzzle.
    – Ben Kovitz
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 6:34
  • @TKR Could i​n +accusative here mean "…the Greeks had sailed away to Argos on their way to their homeland"?
    – Ben Kovitz
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 6:56
  • I don't think that's a possible reading of in patriam suam (and it still wouldn't make sense in terms of the story -- for a few of the Greeks Argos is their homeland, and the rest would have no reason to sail there).
    – TKR
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 7:50
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    @cmw Ørberg has a marginal note on that line: "Argī -ōrum m: urbs Peloponnēsī." So, unless it means that the Trojans thought "the Greek city Argos had sailed away to its own country", I don't think Ørberg is getting an acquittal—unless there's some other basis for the accusative. I read the sentence as teaching the reader to avoid mischunking Graecōs Argōs (and also to introduce āvectōs before the line "Crēditis āvectōs hostēs?", quoted from Vergil on the next page).
    – Ben Kovitz
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 9:12

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