XXIII
Quarta aestas (quarta aestas: 81 A.D.) obtinendis quae percucurrerat insumpta; (obtinendis quae percucurrerat insumpta]: ‘was spent in securing ground he had run swiftly through but not occupied’; quae and its antecedent obtinendis are neuter plurals; as such, obtinendis – nom. obtinenda—is a noun meaning lit. ‘things to be held’; the passive meaning of the gerundive is lost in translation, being replaced by the active English gerund, ‘for consolidating what he had run over’.) ac si virtus exercituum et Romani nominis gloria pateretur, (si virtus,…gloria… pateretur: ‘if the valor and the glory would allow it,…’: imperf. subjunctive for condition contrary to fact) inventus in ipsa Britannia terminus. Namque Clota et Bodotria (Clota et Bodotria: the rivers Clyde and Forth, the first flowing into the Irish Sea, the other into the North Sea; their deep estuaries form a very narrow neck, dividing the parts of Scotland north of the Southern Uplands from the rest of Britain. Across this neck the Antonine wall would be built 60 years later, in 142 A.D.) diversi maris aestibus per inmensum (per immensum: ‘for a vast distance’) revectae, angusto terrarum spatio dirimuntur: quod tum praesidiis firmabatur atque omnis propior sinus (omnis propior sinus: ‘the entire winding coast closer to us’) tenebatur, summotis velut in aliam insulam hostibus.