HW: Ablative & Accusative uncertainty

[Tomer]

Howdy ye all,
As part of an excercise, I am to translate this next sentence form English to Latin:

"His new hope had been destroyed by the common fear of uncertain things"
-Now, I feel it to be pretty easy, but I guess my concentration is slighltly agitated at this time of the night, so here it goes:

Nova spes eius, metu communi incertae rei, deleta erat.

Question is: am I allowed to use the ablative (of means, I suppose) as aforementioned?
Plus, do I need the accusative on "Nova spes" here ("THE hope had been destroyed")?

Well appreciated!

 

[Pacifica]

Hi,

"His new hope had been destroyed by the common fear of uncertain things"
Nova spes eius, metu communi incertae rei, deleta erat.

"Things" is plural and you translated it with the singular.
I feel you don't really need the commas, but no big deal I guess.

Question is: am I allowed to use the ablative (of means, I suppose) as aforementioned?

Yes, it's correct. But I think that here it's more like an agent than a means, though the difference is not always all that clear-cut when the agent is a thing.

Plus, do I need the accusative on "Nova spes" here

No; it is the subject of a finite verb, so it must be in the nominative.

("THE hope had been destroyed")?

I don't understand what you mean here. The case of a noun has nothing to do with its being translated into English with the definite article or not or anything like that...

 

[Ignis Umbra]

I don't understand what you mean here. The case of a noun has nothing to do with its being translated into English with the definite article or not or anything like that...

I'm going out on a limb here, and my sincerest apologies to the OP if I'm wrong, but my guess from what he wrote is that he thought "accusative" meant "emphasize".

THE hope had been destroyed

 

[Tomer]

Oh, that singular/plural mistranslation has to be due to tireness, should have reviewed myself earlier.
Ablative question fully answered, thanks.

No; it is the subject of a finite verb, so it must be in the nominative.

Figures; it was the English source that got me confused. I was thinking, almost applying "declensions" over to the English noun & definite article,
i.e. Q:What had been destroyed? A:-->His New Hope (pseudo-accusative ) had been.

Thanks again, est modus in rebus.