Hostes portam urbis oppugnant, sed milites eam defendunt.

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Breakdown of Hostes portam urbis oppugnant, sed milites eam defendunt.

• urbs: the city
• miles: the soldier
• eam: it

Questions & Answers about Hostes portam urbis oppugnant, sed milites eam defendunt.

Why doesn’t the sentence start with milites or keep a fixed English-style word order?

Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order because Latin uses case endings to show what each word is doing.

So in Hostes portam urbis oppugnant, you can tell that:

• hostes is the subject
• portam is the direct object
• oppugnant is the verb

Even though the order happens to be fairly natural in English, Latin does not depend mainly on position to show meaning.

This sentence is arranged in a very ordinary and readable way:

• Hostes = the enemies
• portam urbis = the gate of the city
• oppugnant = attack

Then:

• sed = but
• milites = the soldiers
• eam = it
• defendunt = defend

A different order could still mean the same thing, though it might change emphasis.

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What form is hostes?

Hostes is the nominative plural of hostis, meaning enemy.

Here it is nominative plural because it is the subject of oppugnant:

• hostes oppugnant = the enemies attack

A learner should also notice that hostes is a 3rd-declension noun.

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