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everyone. This sentence is from a medieval book known as "De antiquitate regum Norwagiensium", which was written by Theodoricus Monachus. What follows are the sentence and what I think about it:

Sentence:

Northmanni, inquit, aquilonaris gens atrocissima, advecti in Gallias cum longis navibus intraverunt Ligerim fluvium et Thurones usque pervenerunt omnia vastantes.

Thoughts: I am certain that "Northmanni" has to be a plural subject for the verb "intraverunt" in this sentence, but I am unsure about the verb "pervenerunt". It seems clear that this verb is still referring to "Northmanni", but I am a bit unsure whether the subject for this verb is inexplicit due to the "et" creating a new clause.

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    Hey, these are some interesting sentences. And it is great that you explain your thoughts on them, what puzzles you about them. However, Stack Exchange is intended also as a repository of questions future readers might also have or be interested in. For that reason, the following two points are important: 1. a question should be about one specific thing, not several things that could be asked as separate questions; 2. a title should be as specific as possible, so that future readers can immediately see what a question is about.
    – Cerberus ♦
    May 27 at 14:10
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    So I would ask you the following. 1. Split your question into three separate ones. That way, people won't see a text wall with several different questions, but a shorter question that is to the point. As a bonus to you, people are more likely to answer specific questions than text walls! 2. Give each question a very specific title. Example: Is 'optatis nuptiis' adverb or indirect object in Theodoricus Monachus? P.S. I don't know if this is practical, but a link to the source text might also be helpful, and some line and/or section numbers.
    – Cerberus ♦
    May 27 at 14:15
  • Thanks for the info.
    – Something71
    May 27 at 14:43
  • Excellent, thank you!
    – Cerberus ♦
    May 27 at 17:58

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Thoughts: I am certain that "Northmanni" has to be a plural subject for the verb "intraverunt" in this sentence, but I am unsure about the verb "pervenerunt". It seems clear that this verb is still referring to "Northmanni", but I am a bit unsure whether the subject for this verb is inexplicit due to the "et" creating a new clause.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "inexplicit"; however, either the subject of pervēnērent is present explicitly in the sentence, or it has been dropped as understood or implicit.

In the context, Thurones seems to be a good candidate for the subject. I could not find this word spelled this way, but did find Turonēs as an ethnonym for a Gaulish people living in the region near the modern city of Tours during classical times.

I believe it was common in Latin and in many Germanic languages to use an ethnonym metonymically for the principle city or region of a people (e.g., "Paris" from Parīsiī, "Reims" from Rēmī, "Cahors" from Cadurci, English "Wales" from Walas (Welsh people), "Sweden" perhaps meaning among the Swedes, and German Polen (Poland) perhaps originally meaning among the Poles.) With this understanding "Thurones" could be a spelling of "Turones" and refer to either the people, their region, or one of their cities, Tours.

In the context, the previous clause talks about the Northmen entering the Loire River in their boats, which is where Tours and the Thurones once were. Given the context and the late date, we can assume from the first that "Tours" is being described, since I am not sure that the Turones would still existed at the time of the events described. The next word, usque, further disambiguates the meanings, giving us "and (they) reached as far as Tours, ravaging everything," referring to the actions of the Northmen/Vikings/Norwegians.

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  • I think that Thurones, like Ligerim fluvium is an object, meaning the city of the Turones. Whether it's an object of intraverunt or usque pervenerunt I don't know, both maybe. I think that Northmanni is the subject of both verbs. They came laying waste to everything all the way to Turones.
    – Figulus
    May 29 at 2:01
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    @Figulus When I peruse through the citations in Lewis & Short, it seems almost all the examples use perveniō with a preposition, except that it does say: "for which poet. with simple acc.: “verba aures non pervenientia nostras,” Ov. M. 3, 462." Given this data, I assume that Turonēs is a town or city displaying an accusative of the goal with a verb of motion. The verb intrō, however, seems to have more citations with a bare accusative.
    – Vegawatcher
    May 31 at 13:32

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