Mdthbs

I'm a novice trying to learn Latin, and I hope this question is appropriate to this forum (please let me know if it is not the case).

I tried to read this section from De Brevitate Vitae (text here):

Maior pars mortalium, Pauline, de naturae malignitate conqueritur, quod in exiguum aeui gignimur, quod haec tam uelociter, tam rapide dati nobis temporis spatia decurrant, adeo ut exceptis admodum paucis ceteros in ipso uitae apparatu uita destituat. Nec huic publico, ut opinantur, malo turba tantum et imprudens uulgus ingemuit; clarorum quoque uirorum hic affectus querellas euocauit.

Even after reading a possible translation, I still could not make sense of this sentence grammatically. several problems for me here:

1) "huic publico" - that is clearly the dative case(?) but I could not find dative to what.

2) "ingemuit" - is singular verb, so I suppose it only related to the "imprudens vulgus". so I don't understand the "et" before. The translation seem to include both: "masses and the unthinking crowd ..."

3) "opinantur" - is the substance implicit here?

Thanks.

I looked up a translation also. For clarity, here is what I found:

Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that bemoan what is, as men deem it, an universal ill; the same feeling has called forth complaint also from men who were famous.

"On the shortness of life", translation by John W. Basore, Wikisource)

I am also only a beginner, so I can't answer all of your questions. Here is what I understand about the grammar of this sentence:

• I think that the verb ingemo takes a dative complement in this sentence. Lewis and Short says that that is possible: the entry includes a section "II. Neutr., to mourn, groan, wail, lament: [...] —With dat."




• I think the dative noun phrase is "huic publico, ut opinantur, malo".
  "Huic" and "publico" seem to be adjectives to the neuter noun malo.



• 
  

  I think you are right about the subject of opinantur being implied rather than explicit. I think it could be understood as "homines opinantur". Zumpt 1845 says that in a certain sentence, "quibus vulgus opinantur" means "in quibus eos esse vulgo homines opinantur"(A Grammar of the Latin Language, p. 523).

  
  
  

  I also found a reader that comments on the meaning of the word opinantur in the sentence "Et praetextum quidem illi civilium armorum hoc fuit; causas autem alias fuisse opinantur", from De Vita Caesarum by Suetonius.

  
  
  

  
  

  the subject is indefinite, "people"; Eng. might use the impersonal pass., "it is believed"

  
  

  
  
  

  (Aeneas to Augustus: A Beginning Latin Reader for College Students, by Mason Hammond and Anne Amory, 2nd ed., p. 143).