Silvas, Occulto

Caesar admires the Nervii, even though he’s got to fight them for Rome. One gets the idea they were at least a worthy adversary. And here’s an elegant little sentence.

Intra eas silvas hostes in occulto sese continuebat… -The Gallic War, Loeb Classical, p112.

“Within these woods,” Edwards translates, “the enemy kept themselves in hiding.” Silvas for wood, of course, related to sylvan; and in occulto–something hidden. It pleases me, while reading aloud, to make the connections, tracing a word through centuries into my own mother tongue.