Stuck again...

I have been wading through Virgil today. Wading is such an astute word for this sense of literary and linguistic struggle; for it feels very much like wading into the sea in, say, a coracle, and struggling against the tides and the strong current with such determination, overcoming one wave (one sentence, or even just a clause!), fine; now comes the next one, bigger and more potent; great, that one is safely behind, and then I look up at this insurmountable wave coming at me with impetuous and unswerving force, and I flounder...eheu! The description of Gandalf given by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings when faced by the onset of the Balrog reminds me of this too: ''...he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.'' (The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter V, The Bridge of Khazad-dûm).

In this case it is this sentence: Non equidem invideo, miror magis: undique totis usque adeo turbatur agris. I have translated the first part easily: I begrudge not for my part, rather do I marvel. But the next part is gnawing away at my patience like a canker. Whenever I translate a difficult work, I go through the dictionary (if at University, the Lewis & Short, if at home, my cheaper, but less worthy Oxford edition) and look up every single word (even if I know them) to get every single possible meaning of the word. I then check the case endings, whether it is singular, plural, a deponent verb, in the subjunctive, indicative or whatever, and I then write out the sentence again, and try my best to string together a comprehensible sentence. This is how I did Cicero and St Bede, and this is now how I am doing Virgil. But as I say, it is frustrating; because I am not sure about ''turbatur'' and ''agris.'' Turbatur means ''it is disturbed,'' or ''confused;'' it is a passive verb in the third person singular; whereas ''agris'' means ''fields,'' being a plural noun in the dative or ablative. Now, turbatur is the only verb in the clause (adeo could be a verb, but I am not sure, the dictionary has two entries, one of them a verb, the other an adverb - it's probably an adverb) and it is in the singular; agris is in the plural - how then does turbatur agree with agris?

By the time I have any comments on this (presuming that I get comments) I shall probably have translated it already! I am so tempted to look at an English translation (I do have one) - what is disadvantageous about that, though, is that it all looks so simple afterwards!