I tried to read Sallust’s Jugurthine War. I spent a genuine hour on the first sentence and couldn’t translate it…
Falso queritur de natura sua genus humanum, quod inbecilla atque aevi brevis forte potius quam virtute regatur.
The best I got was genus humanum … forte potius … virtute regatur “if a strong and capable people are ruled with courage”.
Take forte for instance. It could be the ablative singular of fors (luck); it could be an adverb meaning “luckily”, “by chance”, “perhaps” or even “once upon a time”; or it could be an inflection of the unrelated adjective fortis “strong”, and you just have to figure this out from context.
I don’t think I’m reading Sallust any time soon.
I’m reminded of my translation of tabula duorum pedorum or whatever it was as “two-footed table” and then reading the BGA translation of “table with two-foot sides”…