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Category Archives: Latin Literature
Testing a New Format
I’ve been mulling over the problem of displaying texts with facing translations on the web. It is not as easy as it should be to make it work with various combinations of browser, screen size, and font size. For my … Continue reading
Amusing Comment in AP Vergil
In the funeral games in Aeneid V, which we read in English — none of it is in the AP selections — all five of the participants in the foot-race are given prizes (340-61). Vergilians will recall that Euryalus, Helymus, … Continue reading
Supreme Erudition
Terry Teachout quotes some words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., on his 90th birthday: And so I end with a line from a Latin poet who uttered the message more than fifteen hundred years ago: “Death plucks my ear and … Continue reading
Text I: Pliny 3.14 on the Murder of Larcius Macedo
Dear Acilius, 1 A terrible thing, worthy of more than just a letter, has been suffered at the hands of his slaves by Larcius Macedo, a man of praetorian rank, a haughty and savage master who remembered too little — … Continue reading
New Feature: Ancient Text of the Week
Coming up shortly, an English translation of the Younger Pliny on the murder of Larcius Macedo (Epistle 3.14). This is a private letter, but no doubt polished up, since Pliny published it himself in his own lifetime. I have tried … Continue reading
Is This A First?
From my referral logs I find that a university professor in the Midwest has assigned my Juvenal e-texts as the primary text in 4th-year Latin class. I’m flattered. The only other required text is Peter Green’s Penguin translation. Only 14 … Continue reading
Pictolanche
In checking my blog statistics yesterday, I found that I had gotten well over 100 hits from a link in The Scotsman last Monday. The author complains that the newspaper’s porn filters think that my Latin text of Juvenal’s 10th … Continue reading
More On Statius’ Somnus
The most recent (though not very recent) post on Gabriel Laguna’s Tradición Clásica is on Statius, Silvae 5.4, the ‘Ode to Sleep’. One of first things I put on the web here was ‘Sonnets to Morpheus’, with texts of Statius’ … Continue reading
Horace In Rossini
In honor of the 2012th anniversary of the death of Horace, here is the opening of Act I, Scene XIV of Rossini’s delightful Il Turco in Italia, which I saw and heard for the first time today (on DVD). The … Continue reading
Pedantic Leg Footnote
If I’m not mistaken, the “gloriously accoutred warrior”* Chloreus who inadvertently lures Camilla to her death in Book XI is the first character in the Aeneid who is wearing any pants: of his many colorful garments, the last mentioned is … Continue reading
Gómez Dávila on Caesar
La prosa de César es la voz misma del patriciado: dura, sencilla, lúcida. La aristocracia no es un montón de oropeles, sino una voz tajante. Caesar’s prose is the very voice of the patriciate: hard, simple, transparent. The aristocracy is … Continue reading
Ancient Shock Therapy?
Laudator Temporis Acti joins Rogue Classicism in wondering “whether there is any truth to the claim that the ancient Romans treated brain disorders or headaches with electric eels”. LTA also asks whether the electric ray or electric catfish (pictured below) … Continue reading
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Reading Notes: Trollope
From Chapter I of Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Wortle’s School, I learn that British schools provided their pupils (aged 11-17) with beer every day, and with wine and even champagne when they were ill. In Chapter III, a boy who falls … Continue reading
Semi-New Feature
I have added a category in the left column for ‘Lists of Commentaries’. So far, the only one is for Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, though Ovid’s Heroides will follow. This is not a complete bibliography, but a cross-reference of letters against … Continue reading
What Did Seneca Know About Babies?
Not much, to judge by E. M. 22.15, where Natura addresses those dying old: ‘Sine cupiditatibus uos genui, sine timoribus, sine superstitione, sine perfidia ceterisque pestibus; quales intrastis exite.’ “I engendered you without desires, without fears, without superstition, without treachery … Continue reading
This Day In History Hagiography
Today is not only the 2,074th birthday of Publius Vergilius Maro and the feast of St. Teresa of Ávila, it is also the feast of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831-1906), Episcopalian bishop of Shanghai, a dedicated missionary who translated the … Continue reading
Great Minds Think Alike
Helmuth, Graf von Moltke (the Elder): No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Seneca (the Younger): Vetus proverbium est gladiatorem in harena capere consilium; aliquid adversarii vultus, aliquid manus mota, aliquid ipsa inclinatio corporis intuentem monet. Quid fieri soleat, … Continue reading
One-Word Joke
Silius Update: (9/5, 4:15pm) Since no one has ‘gotten’ it yet, here’s another version of the joke with the same answer: Baebius And here are two more, non-Classical this time, with a different, but parallel, answer: Philip Charles
Fulke Art II
Here’s another neoclassical poem from Caelica, number XCIII complete: The Augurs were of all the world admir’d, Flatter’d by consuls, honor’d by the State, Because the event of all that was desir’d, They seem’d to know, and keep the books … Continue reading
Spooneristic Misreading
After my trip to the U.N.C. library, I’ve been leafing through Toto Notus in Orbe, Perspektiven der Martial-Interpretation (ed. Farouk Grewing, Palingenesis LXV, Stuttgart, 1998). One sentence in T. J. Leary’s paper on the Xenia and Apophoreta caused a double-take. … Continue reading
