The singular is regular 2nd declension masculine, except for the vocative ("deus"). The plural can be regular, *or* the following alternative forms can be used:

nom: dI
gen: deum
dat: dIs
acc: (no variant)
abl: dIs
voc: dI

You will run into the -um ending for -orum in many other words, but only in poetry. But "deum" gets used even in prose.

Laurie's answer:

I think it is Gen. Sing. so the sentence reads, "...enough of wisdom." However, in English we would translate "enough wisdom."

Grammatically, it doesn't matter. Stylistically, the infinitive usually follows the verb, and often, if it can be managed without disrupting the whole sentence, a word will be inserted between main verb and infinitive. The Romans really didn't like to follow one verb with another.

Joe Ireland's answer:

Your first suggestion, and not your final translation, is correct, Jill. It is commonly thought (and said) that "word order doesn't matter in Latin because you tell where things go by the endings". Like most truisms, it's only half true.

Word order is very important in Latin; it is just that they had a different way of constructing a sentence to ours. If the Latin author had wanted the sense of the sentence to be as you finally suggest, he would have linked the two verbs by "et", rather than the two clauses as he did.

There is a second objection to your translation. The verbs can't really be linked because they are followed by different constructions: the "cogito" by "de" and the ablative; the "laudo" by the accusative. So the approach that sees the sentence as two co-ordinate clauses is the correct one.

Chap 6, TR 2 reads: Populus Romanus magnos animos et paucaus culpas habebat.

Intuitively I translate: The Roman people used to have great spirit and few faults.

However, "habebat" is singular, while I think of the subject there as plural. This isn't the first time I've run across this, it came up in PR 5, with "Parvus numerus" being a subject that would be plural to me, but "poterit" being the verb in singular form.

Tony Vitonis's (home@vitonis.com) answer:

Michael's answer:

1. "Thyestes" is in the Nominative (the Accusative is "Thyestem")
2. "uxorem" is in the Accusative (the Nominative is "uxor")

so Thyestes (as the subject of the sentence indicates) is the one who is doing something to the "uxorem". What is that something? The verb is "corrumpit", so he is seducing her.

This is the only possible translation with those two nouns in the cases they're in.

Michael's answer:

Yes, one can use either "seduces" or "seduced" for this translation.

If you consider the passage to be written as historical present, (for dramatic effect even though the action took place in the past), then you can use "seduced".

If, however, you are translating it literally, "corrumpit" is in the Present tense, and would translate as "seduces". [The perfect tense indicating this past action would be "corrupit".]

Here is a case where either translation, "seduces" or "seduced", is justified.