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I am quite confused about how I can translate the two following lines:

[Iuno] monstrarat, caput acris equi; sic nam fore bello
egregiam et facilem victu per saecula gentem.

The real difficulty comes after the semicolon: what is the subject of "fore"? Maybe, the accusative "egregiam et facilem gentem"? Anyways, if this really were the subject, I would not figure out the meaning of the clause yet, since there are words like "victu" and "bello" whose functions I can't understand.

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It seems to me that the core structure after the semicolon is:

sic fore [monstra(ve)rat] egregiam et facilem gentem

The gens is egregia and facilis. Both adjectives come with an ablative of respect (ablativus respectus), so that it is egregia when it comes to bellum and facilis when it comes to vincere. The first ablative is one of a noun, the second one of a supine.

The accusativus cum infinitivo structure is subordinate to an implicitly understood second instance of monstra(ve)rat.

For an introduction to the supine, see e.g. Allen & Greenough. What I called ablative of respect is also known as ablative of specification. More literally, you can read facilis victu as "easy with respect to winning" but in better English as "easy to win".

That is, the subject is gentem.

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    I think OP might not understand that "monstarat" needs to be understood elliptically in the nam-clause to trigger indirect discourse. Also, given the future tense, the gens "would be" egregia and facilis.
    – Kingshorsey
    Commented Aug 11 at 13:19
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    I actually don't understand the supine yet. Why is this in the passive form, instead of the active one? victum would not be more appropriate than victu? In your answer, it seems to me that the gens is facilis when it comes to be defeated (since vincere is passive, so that they suffer the winning).
    – Iesus Hominum Salvator
    Commented Aug 11 at 13:23
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    @IesusHominumSalvator The supine isn't really active or passive. Do note that the supine is not the same thing as the perfect passive participle. A full introduction to the supine is too much to give in an answer, but I included two links to an online grammar on the relevant topics. A textbook will probably explain it better. Let me know if you need further pointers.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Aug 11 at 14:07
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    Joonas llmavirta: Supine "victum" does not have a "victu" form. Isn't "victu" from nonn "victus"--"sustenance"; "way of life"? The translation: "Queen Juno showed the head of a spirited horse, for now they would be a people outstanding in war and easy to sustain,"? Do you agree?
    – tony
    Commented Aug 12 at 9:36
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    @tony No, I disagree. Don't confuse the supine with the perfect participle. The former has the stated from, the latter doesn't. The perfect participle is passive in nature, the supine isn't. Be careful with the distinction. (The supine seems to be related to the derived nouns of fourth declension but are different from them in classical and later Latin. We have a question about this somewhere.)
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Aug 12 at 11:35

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