Horace et al.: 2015

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Persius, the Risk-Taker :: Prologue to his Satires

View of Mount Parnassus, a painting by Claude Lorrain painted in 1652 and

entitled "Landscape with Apollo and the Muses"

I decided this time to write about Persius [34-62 AD] because he seems so much like Horace. In fact, Persius, it is said, modeled much of his work after Horace, who had died some 38 years before Persius was born. But unlike Horace, Persius never reached his full potential; he died young, at age 27.

To me, the poetry Persius left us is filled with the exuberance of his youth. Like young poets of any era, he strove to redefine poetry on his own terms, to use language in new ways and explore the limits of what it meant to be a poet. He was a risk-taker.

Thus, sometime in his twenties, he wrote this vibrant prologue to his book of satires:

1 Nec fonte lā|bra prōluī | caballīnō,

2 nec in bici|pitī sŏmniās|se Parnassō

3 memini ut re|pentē sīc poē|ta prōdīrem.

4 Helicōniadās|que pallidam|que Pīrēnen

5 illīs remit|to, quōrum imā|ginēs lambunt

6 hederae se|quācēs: ipse sē|mipāgānus

7 ad sacra vā|tum carmen ad|fero nostrum.

8 quis expedi|vit psittacō | suum chaere

9 pīcamque do|cuit nostra ver|ba cōnāri?

10 magister ar|tis ingeni|que largītor

11 venter, negā|tās artifex | sequi vōcēs;

12 quod sī dolō|si spēs reful|geat nummi,

13 corvōs poē|tās et poē|tridās pīcās

14 cantāre crē|dās Pēgasē|ium nectar.

1 No, I did not let my lips loose on the horse spring,

2 No, I do not remember dreaming on two-peaked

3 Parnassus then bingo! waking up so bard. I’ll

4 Leave the Heliconians and pale Pirenes

5 To those eager ivy-lickin’ marble busts. Me?

6 A wannabe, bringing songs to the poets’ shrine.

7 Who got anything back but hello from a parrot?

8 And who taught this magpie to give our talk a try?

9 Master over eloquence and wit—the bribing

10 Belly, a contriver striving for speech denied.

11 But if hope gleams with a treacherous silver coin,

12 you’ll believe crow poets and magpie poetesses

13 were singing of Pegasus’ sweet spring waters.
translation © 2015 by James Rumford

My translation of his prologue is a bit different from the many other translations I’ve seen. Take ‘let my lips loose on’ in the first line. The Latin is prolui. Most translators say that this word has something to do with washing: pro + luo. But what if luo is ‘loosen’? I know that proluo, meaning ‘to really let loose’ doesn’t exist in any dictionary, but what if Persius is playing on the similarity of the two words?

Then there is the word ‘wannabe’ in line 6. Persius uses the word semipaganus, which might mean ‘half-country,’ kinda like calling some rock singer who does some country music ‘half-country.’ I have thought about what Perseus could have meant by semipaganus and, given the context, came up with ‘wannabe.’

And what is the context? It is what it means to be a poet. While Horace wrote how magically he was turned into a poem-singing swan, Persius asks, perhaps with tongue in cheek, does being a poet just happen or do I have to be touched by the gods? Do I just drink from Horse Fountain (actually Hippocrene Fountain created when Pegasus gashed his hoof into Mount Helicon in Boeotia) or do I sleep on Mount Parnassus and poof! I’m a poet? Or do the Muses of Mount Helicon (sacred to Apollo) have to inspire me or do I have to be like some cadaverous princess named Pirene, who cried her eyes out and created a fountain in Corinth? Well, that’s what people think of men-poets: wan, almost effeminate beings who wind up being immortalized not just by their words but by marvelously sculpted effigies in marble. If not that, then being a poet is just parroting what’s already been said, and doing a bad job of parroting at that. I mean, who ever gave me the notion I could write? I know: my stomach. I write to get money, and if ever I get paid for what I write, you’ll finally believe, and so will I, that I’m a real poet able to write about the spring water Pegasus liberated from the mountainside.

There is, I'm sure, a lot more in the fourteen lines Persius wrote, but I will leave you to explore.

Persius in Prose ::

Nec labra [in] fronte caballino prolui [memini].

Nec [in] Parnasso bicipiti somniasse memini,

ut repente sic poeta prodirem.

Heliconiadasque Pirenenque pallidam illis remitto,

quorum hederae sequaces imagines lambunt.

Ipse semipaganus carmen nostrum ad sacra vatum adfero.

Quis chaere suum psittaco expedivit?

[Quis]que picam nostra verba conari docuit?

Venter [est] magister artis ingenique.

[Et venter est] largitor.

[Et venter est] artifex voces negatas sequi.

Quodsi spes nummi dolosi refulgeat,

credas poetas corvos et poetridas picas

nectar Pegaseium cantare.

:: Latin books by James Rumford ::

For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at

https://www.amazon.com/Carpe-Diem-Poetized-James-Rumford/dp/1891839179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479932219&sr=8-1&keywords=Carpe+Diem+Rumford.

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Pericla+Thomae+Sawyer

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015;

for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.

Friday, August 21, 2015

I Farted :: Satire I:8

This month marks the sixth year of this blog.

Horace begins the poem with an image of a useless piece of fig wood, which is turned into a statue of Priapus, who, in turn, tells us the history of his garden home and regales us with a few anecdotes. At the end of the poem the statue splits its backside. Pepedi, Horace writes, assuming the voice of the statue, “I farted.”

Ridiculous and obscene. So wrote Franz Bücheler (1837–1908), a nineteenth-century classical scholar about Satire I:8. I suppose that Herr Büchler is right. Priapus who can scare away thieves with his membrum virile, as scholars trained following nineteenth-century morals would say, is an obscene figure. So are the two witches who do unspeakable things. As for ridiculous, what is more ridiculous than Priapus farting to scare the witches away? Not high-minded literature this—on the surface.

Below the priapic imagery, the ghoulish story-telling, we see Horace reminding us once again to consider the enormous changes taking place in Rome. Where once there was a pauper’s graveyard, now is a garden for the very rich. Where once robbers and witches and vultures (perhaps) came, now stroll refined people, taking in the salubrious air of Esquiline Hill [Collis Esquilinus].

This poem is fairly straight forward. Even so, there is a bit of Roman geography one needs to know. Here’s a map of hilly Rome, with the Agger marked with a blue line. The Agger was the Agger Tarquini or Murus Servii Tullii, a defensive barrier erected by a Tarquinian king named Servius Tullus, who ruled in the sixth century B.C. If you look carefully, you can see it running through Rome’s main train station on Esquiline Hill (According to Wikipedia, parts of this defensive wall can be seen in the MacDonald’s in the station. So, if you have taken the train to Rome and walked around its environs, you have walked where this poem takes place.

There are several individuals named in this poem. There is the witch Canidia, whom we have seen before, and some new characters with names, almost Dickensenian in the images they invoke. There is the scurra [parasite, sponger] Pantolabus (a Greek word meaning all-take). There is also the nepos [nephew or spendthrift] Nomentanus (a Roman surname, someone from Nomentum, now Mentana). Finally there are three odd ducks, Iulius, the fragilis Pediatia (nickname of a particular Roman knight on account of his effeminacy), and the thief Voranus (perhaps a freedman of Catulus, and a name that makes me think of voro devour, waste, eat greedily).

And there are two mythical names: Hecaten, who presides over encantations and Tisiphone, one of the furies. Her name means “avenger of murder.”

Translation ::

¶Once I was a tree trunk, a junk piece of fig wood.

when a carpenter man, unsure whether to make

a Priapus or a stool, decided on a god,

so god I am, to birds and thieves a huge terror.

My right hand stops the crooks,(plus the red pole juttin’

out of my nasty crotch) and a reed stuck on my

head spooks the pesky birds and keeps ‘em from settlin’

in the all-new gardens. Before a fellow slave

would put the bodies thrown out of their cramped cells and

brought here in cheap boxes.Here was the cem’tery

for the poor people, for the takers and wasters,

for the filth of this world. Here a sign used to mark

a field a thousand by three hundred feet: “Graves

Uninheritable.” But now you can live on

the “wholesome” Esquiline, stroll the “sun-filled” Agger,

where just a bit ago, the bereaved would see a

field ugly with white bones. Okay, I’m not worried

about being hassled and bothered as much by thieves—

and the usual wild beasts—as by those who with spells

and potions bend men’s minds. I can’t get rid of ‘em,
no way to hinder ‘em, once the inconstant moon
sticks out her shining face, from gathering up bones
and herbs that can harm you.

¶Me, I saw Canidia, her black cloak all cinched up,

hurr’ing, barefoot, hair loose,with Sagana, older,

yip-yowling. Their pallor made’em both look horrid.

They began to claw the ground with their fingernails

and with their teeth, to rip apart a black-wooled lamb.

Its blood ‘n stuff was poured into the hole so that

with this they could bring forth the departed, the souls

who’d give’em the answers. And a figure of wool

there was, another of wax.The bigger was of wool

so it could lord overthe littler one through pain;

the wax one stood there in humbly begging, slave-like

as if about to die. One witch called on Hecate,

the other one called on cruel Tisiphone.

You’d see snakes and bitches from hell wand’ring around,

a moon, red-shamed, watchin’ this stuff’d be hidin’

behind the big grave stones. Now, if I am lyin’

about any of this, let me smear my head with

crow shit, and let Julius come pee and crap on me,

and the twink Pediatia and the crook Voranus.

What should I say about it all? How the ghosts spoke

first one then the other echoeing Sagana,

sad and shrill, how they hid a wolf’s beard and snake fangs

secretly in the earth and how the fire from the

wax figure burned bigger and how I, innocent

bystander, shuddered at the voices of the two

Furies and at their deeds?
Just then, like the sound of an exploding bag,
with my ass splittin’ apart, fig-tree me farted,
and they ran to the city. You’d’ve seen Canidia’s
teeth come out, Sagana’s pile of false hair come off,
herbs and bewitched love-knots come tumblin’ (what a scream!)
out of their arms’ embrace.

The Poem ::

|1¯ ^x |2 ¯ ^x |3 ¯ ^x |4 ¯ ^x |5 ¯˘˘ |6 ¯ ¯ |

Hexameter: x = a long ¯ or two shorts ˘˘. The fifth foot can be ¯ ¯ , as it is in line 15, but this is quite rare.

Delphin Ordo

1 Eram anteà stipes ficulnus, lignum iners: quando artifex dubius an scamnum fabricaret, and Priapum, maluit fieri Deum. 3 Exinde ego Deux extuli ingens terror prædonum atque volucrum. Etenim dextra mea arcet prædones * * * [Obviously this part was two vulgar for the dauphin’s ears]* * * at arundo in summo capite infixa deterret aves molestas, se prohibet consitere in hortis recentibus. 8 Anteà conservus cadavera cellis arctis ejecta locabat istuc efferenda in vili sandapilà. 10 Hoc erat commune plebeculæ sepulcrum, Pantolabo sannioni, et Nomentano patrimonii dissipatori. 12 Istic cippus assignabat agri pedes milenos in latitudinem, trecentos verò in longitudinem, vetabatque ne sepulchrum ad hæredes pertineret. 14 Jam verò licet habitare in Esquiliis salubribus, et ambulare in colle aprico, ubi nuper mœsti cernebant agrum albis ossibus deformem. 15 Quanquam non tam ne angunt et vexant pædones ac feræ agrum istum infestare solitæ, quàm mulieres, quæ humanas mentes inflectunt incantamentis et veneficiis. 16 Has nullâ ratione possum abigere, aut prohibere quò minùs colligant ossa et herbas noxias, statim atque luna currens pulchrum ostendit vultum. 23 Ego ipse conspexi Canidiam atrâ veste succinctam incedere nudis pedibus, crinibus solutis, ejulantem cum Saganâ seniore. 25 Pallor ambas fecerat visu terribiles. 27 Humum cœperunt unguibus effodere: moxque discerpere dentibus oviculam nigram. 28 Cruor in scrobem effusus est, ut hinc umbras evocarent, animas responsa reddituras. 30 Porrò aderat imago lanea, et altera cerea. 31 Grandior lanea, quæ minorem ceream plecteret. 32 Cerea supplex procumbebat, servili ratione quippe mox interitura. 33 Veneficarum altera inclamat Hecaten, altera diram Tisiphonem. 34 Tum aspiceres currere angues, et canes Stygias; lunam verò erubescentem se abscondere post majora monumenta, ne testis adesset istis sceleribus. 37 Quod si aliquid mentior, conspurcetur meum caput, merdis albis corvorum: ac mictum et cacatum super me veniant Julius, mollis Pedacia, et Voranus fur. 40 Quid referam singula? 40 Quemadmodum altenatim colloquerentur animæ cum Saganâ, voce tenui et stridula? 42 Quomodo clam humo infoderint barbam lupi, et dentes colubræ maculosæ: utque ignis ingens corripuerit effigiem ceream; denique quo pacto aversatus sim præsens, atque vindicaverim verba actiones ambarum Furiarum istarum? 46 Etenim quanto sonitu crepat vesica disrupta; tanto ego ficulnus olim truncus divisis natibus crepui. 47 Protinùs autem illæ veneficæ fugere in urbem cœperunt. 48 Tumque non sine ludibrio et cachinnis aspexisses Canidiae dentes, ac sublimem Saganæ comam decidere, herbas item et licia brachiis fascinata.

:: Latin books by James Rumford ::

For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at

https://www.amazon.com/Carpe-Diem-Poetized-James-Rumford/dp/1891839179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479932219&sr=8-1&keywords=Carpe+Diem+Rumford.

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Pericla+Thomae+Sawyer

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015;

for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Caution: Long Vowels Ahead

I wish that Latin dictionaries came with a warning label:

Use with Caution! Vowel length is only a guess.

A guess?!

“You mean the dictionary could be wrong?” you ask.

Maybe.

“And the high school textbooks, too?”

Maybe.

“How is that possible?” You ask.

The long and short of it is that the dictionaries and the textbooks we use were put together long after Latin died. No one knows anything about Latin pronunciation for sure, but before we get into the thick of it, let us start by saying this:

Latin has long and short syllables. The rhythm of Latin poetry is based on this simple fact.

A long syllable contains a long vowel: ōs [mouth].

A short syllable contains a short vowel: os [bone].

But a short syllable becomes long, if the short vowel is followed by two or more consonants: osseus [bony]. (Modern spelling doesn’t require us to write ōsseus.)

This rule is so powerful that it applies even if the second consonant is in the following word: os fractum [broken bone]. Compare that to fractum os, in which os remains short.

This rule is too powerful, however. It needs some qualification. The rule, it turns out, is optional when the first consonant is

p b t d qu or g

and the second consonant is

l r n or m

Thus there must have been two ways to pronounce a word like agricola. Some Romans may have said āgricola while others may have said agricola. No one can know for sure now.

These three rules—long vowels make long syllables, short vowels make short syllables, and double consonants often make long syllables—have another application. They determine whether the word is accented on the next to the last syllable or the one before that. Long Latin words are accented like this:

agri´ cola [farmer], agrā´ rius [relating to land]

But if the second to the last syllable contains a long vowel or a double consonant, the accent is:

Agrippī´na [a woman’s name] not Agri´ppīna

agrest´is [rustic] not a´ grestis

Of course the qualifying rule about double consonants applies here as well. Thus we have in Cassell’s dictionary:

mātrō´na [a married woman] as well as Mā´trona [the Marne].

What an easy system! The only thing you have to know is whether a vowel not followed by two consonants is long or not or whether the qualifying rule applies or not. This is where the dictionary comes in. It will tell you whether the word is ōs or os or how to pronounce matrona. Unfortunately the dictionary-makers and their accomplices, the textbook-makers, really messed things up.

Charles Jenny, Jr., who revised Smith and Thompson’s First Year Latin, decided that vox [voice], which is really voks, needed to be marked long: vōx. He could have left it unmarked, since the vowel is followed by two consonants. Here are more examples of his illogical and unnecessary marking: dēfēnsiō [defense], āctus [driven], Etrūscī [Etruscans], and fōrmo [I form].

To make matters worse, dictionaries and textbooks don’t always agree. The Lewis and Short dictionary has Matrona, not Mātrona. In Cassell’s Latin dictionary, we find dixi [I said]. In Lewis and Short, we have dīxi, and in Kennedy’s The Shorter Latin Primer, we see dixī.

Why all the discrepancies? It’s because Latin has been dead a long time. The only thing we have to go on is what they left behind. Some ancient grammarians wrote about vowel length. Sometimes the Romans used a tick mark called an apex to mark long vowels, and in the case of the long i, they simply wrote it taller:

Roman poets, too, left behind a wealth of information about vowel length, for the words they chose had to fit the meter. A word like amare [to love] was used when the meter called for ˘ ¯ ˘. Thus, we mark the word amāre. (Amāre was never used when the meter called for ¯ ˘ ¯ ). The poets also helped us figure out what happens to the vowel when it is followed by two consonants, as described in the rules above. Thus, amāre flōrem [to love the flower] can only fit the meter ˘ ¯ ¯ ¯ ˘

Sometime in the eighteenth century, someone decided to use the macrons [¯] and breves [˘] employed in scanning a line of poetry to mark vowel quantity. This coupling of marks used in scansion and marks used to indicate vowel length was brilliant. Too bad that some modern Latinists were a bit overzealous and destroyed the simplicity that was before them by unnecessarily marking a word like vox as vōx or by marking the first a in matrona as mātrōna. In this last case, was the lexicographer influenced by etymology, since mater is marked māter? This is the kind of thing that complicates spelling systems. Some pedant tries to show off. Just think of the spelling of ‘doubt.’ The b was inserted to show that the word had come from dubitum, as if we cared.

So, what of Horace? All I can say is that it has been incredibly difficult marking his odes up with macrons and breves for the new edition of my Carpe Diem. I never imagined what a can of worms I had opened. I never dreamed in my life that textbooks and dictionaries marked some words according to their own sets of rules, rules unknown to me.

As I mentioned above, I found three different ways to mark dixi. In the odes, we find Horace making no commitment as to the quantity of the first syllable but as for the second, he intends for it to be long. (Here the tilde (~) means either short or long according to the meter):

dĩxī sǎcrāmēntum: ībǐmǔs, ībǐmũs, [II:17:10]

In the next two examples, it looks as if the first syllable was either long or short. Only Lewis and Short give us mājor. As for Cassell’s, Jenner, and Kennedy, all of them write maior. Clearly they must be wrong, for in III:20:8, Horace intends for the first syllable to be long.

māiǒr ǎn īllī [III:20:8]

mãiōr Něrōnūm mōx grǎvě prōēlǐũm [IV:14:14]

Dictionaries and grammar books sometimes run contrary to Horace. Although it is possible that Horace may enjoy a bit of poetic licence from time to time, as far as I can tell, he does so very rarely. In fact, when he does seem to veer away from following strict metrical rules, scholars come to his rescue and cite arcane rules of vowel quantity as in these lines; for rīdēt and perrūpīt, they say, are ancient forms of the verb:

āngǔlūs rīdēt, ǔbǐ nōn Hymēttō [II:6:14]

pērrūpīt Ǎchěrōnta Hērcǔlěūs lǎbõr [I:3:36]

In the following examples, however, no scholar has come to the rescue to explain why Horace changes the quantity of the vowel. In all of the dictionaries I have seen, testudo ‘tortoise shell, lyre’ is marked testūdo, but in these two examples, Horace turns o into ō.

tūquě tēstūdō rěsǒnārě sēptẽm [III:11:3]

grātǎ tēstūdō Iǒvǐs, ō lǎbōrũm [I:32:14]

Jenner, however, to his credit, sides with Horace. But it is John Grant in his Institutes of Latin Grammar (London: Whittaker, 1823, pg. 333), who provides us with a bit of an answer. He says that a final o is common, i.e., either long or short and sensibly marks these “common” cases with a tilde: õ.

Finally, time and time again, marking the long vowels meant making sure that I understood what Horace was saying. Did he intend to use the ablative or not? Did he really mean to make the noun plural? In the following two examples I discovered that, according to Lewis and Short and Cassell’s there is a big difference between lavit and lāvit. Lavit is ‘he washes,’ and lāvit is ‘he washed.’ The meter makes it clear which tense Horace had in mind, or does it? Perhaps the dictionaries are wrong. Maybe it didn’t matter to Horace what the quantity of the a in lavit was.

vīllāquě, flāvūs quām Tǐběrīs lǎvǐt [II:3:18]

sǐmǔl ūnctōs Tǐběrīnīs ǔměrōs lāvǐt ǐn ūndīs [III:12:7]

Niall Rudd in the Loeb Series translates the first as “and your villa washed by the yellow Tiber.” The second, he translates as “as soon as he bathes his oiled shoulders in the waters of the Tiber.” Should Rudd have written “has bathed in the waters of the Tiber”? Maybe. As for my translation done in December 2009, I wrote: “washes his oiled arms in the waves of the Tiber.” Somehow the present tenses fits the meaning I think Horace had in mind. Let me look in Jenner’s highschool textbook. Ah ha! He gives the past tense as lavit. Somebody’s wrong, and I don’t think for a moment that it’s Horace.

As I said at the onset: I wish Latin dictionaries and textbooks came with a warning label.

:: Latin books by James Rumford ::

For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at

https://www.amazon.com/Carpe-Diem-Poetized-James-Rumford/dp/1891839179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479932219&sr=8-1&keywords=Carpe+Diem+Rumford.

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Pericla+Thomae+Sawyer

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015;

for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Carpe Diem Revised

A few weeks ago, I decided to revise my book Carpe Diem. I wanted to mark the long vowels for all of the odes and indicate the meter. This turned out to be no easy task. There are no books on the web or in the library that show vowel length, as it is indicated in a Latin dictionary, for each of the odes. Meter is everywhere discussed, but the peculiarities of Latin meter make it sometimes difficult to figure out the scansion for each line Horace wrote.

Here are the first few lines of the "non omnis moriar" ode (III:30):

Exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens

Unless you are the most excellent of students, these lines are difficult to penetrate. With the long vowels marked, you might have a better chance to see the grammatical glue holding them together:

Ēxēgī monumentum aere perennius
rēgālīque sitū pȳramidum altius,
quod nōn imber edax, nōn Aquilō impotens

As for the meter, the books say that it is the first asclepiad, which looks like this with a pattern of long ( ¯ ) and short ( ˘ ) symbols and a squiggly line ( ~ ) to indicate that the syllable may be either long or short:

¯ ¯ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ | ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ~
Knowing the meter is only the first step. Applying that meter, in other words, making it fit the lines can be excruciatingly difficult. Take the first line. There are too many syllables. Something has to give. What gives are the syllables like -um and situations were two vowels collide. These syllables are elided, erased—not said. If I mark these syllables in grey, you begin to see how the meter works, and, more importantly, how the line is to be read.

Ēxēgī monumentum aere perennius
rēgālīque sitū pȳramidum altius,
quod nōn imber edax, nōn Aquilō impotens

Thus these lines should be read something like this:

Ēxēgī monumentaere perennius
rēgālīque sitū pȳramidaltius,
quod nōn imber edax, nōn Aquilimpotēns

Of course, in revising Carpe Diem in this way meant that I had to redo much of the book. In the course of such travail précieux, as a French editor of mine once said, I found many inconsistencies and errors in the first edition of the book, which I corrected, keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't inadvertently spawn a new generation of mistakes.

Below is the introduction to the revised edition along with some sample pages. For more about this book, go to my blog posting of October 13, 2013:

http://jamesrumford.blogspot.com/2013/10/carpe-diem-horace-depoetized.html

And if you are interested in purchasing a copy for only $11.50, go here:

http://www.amazon.com/Carpe-Diem--Poetized-James-Rumford/dp/1891839179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427385238&sr=8-1&keywords=rumford+diem

or go to Amazon.com and paste this in search: Rumford diem