An absolute construction needs the whole sentence
The teacher writes a newly composed example on the board: „His rebus cognitis, legati discesserunt.“ The class has learned that rebus can be dative or ablative plural and that cognitis can also have formally overlapping endings. One student therefore argues that matching endings alone prove the phrase is ablative. Another translates the sentence as though the envoys were the things that became known. A third notices the conventional circumstantial construction but adds a specific cause for the departure that the short example does not establish. The task is to identify the construction, give a cautious natural translation and explain which evidence actually resolves the analysis. There is no preceding story about a war, a verdict or the envoys’ intentions, so those details cannot be supplied as if they were part of the source.
1. Why is the phrase analysed as an ablative absolute?
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The complete expression supplies independent circumstances for the envoys’ departure. Rebus and cognitis agree as ablative plurals within that construction. Agreement alone is insufficient because matching dative forms would also be possible in another governing context.
2. Translate without changing participants or inventing a cause.
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Once these matters had become known, the envoys departed. The matters are what became known; the envoys are who departed. A causal paraphrase might fit a fuller context, but this sentence alone does not identify their precise motive.