Shakespeare’s ‘double, double toil and trouble’ doesn’t even come close to the horror of this poem. No, this is Hollywood horror.
We have evil women, witches, who have captured a pre-pubescent little rich kid, whom they torture to death in the most gruesome manner. Why? So that the main witch, the focus of Horace’s abuse, Canidia, can make a love potion from select parts of the dead boy’s body.
Horace divides the poem up into four parts. In the first part, the boy speaks with the usual ‘what’s haaaaappening to meeee?” In the second, Horace tells us what’s going on and directs our attention to the witch Canidia. In part three, Canidia speaks and tells us her troubles. Finally, Horace allows the boy to speak, heaping Thyestean curses on Canidia. (Thyestean? Yes, Thyestes got his brother’s wife to go to bed with him. His brother got his revenge by killing Thyestes’ young sons, cooking them up, and serving them to Thyestes to eat. I guess Thyestes’ reaction, when he found out, was to heap…well…Thyestean curses on his brother.)
The entire poem is quite a spectaculum, which seems to have all of the same connotations in Latin as ‘spectacle’ has in English. Horace even gives the word pride of place by putting it at the very end of the poem. Because of this, I have not followed other translators who make spectaculum the object. I have kept spectaculum the subject. The spectacle rules all. The show is everything, and Horace does his best to provide the best.
In this long poem, there is an overabundance of grammatical points to discuss, but I will limit myself to just one: the lack of a word in Latin for our word ‘as,’ as in:
As a poet, Horace wrote…
With no word like ‘as,’ the Romans instead used the appositive. They said:
Poeta Horatius scripsit…
With no ‘as’ I often have trouble understanding long passages, especially if the appositive is separated from the noun it goes to. Check out the use of the appositive in today’s poem:
line 14: corpus impube
line 93: nocturnus occurram Furor
line 94: petamque vultus umbra
line 97: vos…obscenas anus
Not having a word for ‘as’ was probably part of Latin high-class speech, for Roman street talk must have begun using quomodo as we use ‘as,’ for all the daughter languages have an ‘as’: come, como, comme, com, ca. Even so, some of the daughter languages resemble their parent more and prefer a circumlocution in elevated speech when it comes to translating the phrase ‘as a poet, Horace wrote.’
French: [comme], en qualité de / en tant que poète, Horace écrivit
Italian: come poeta, Orazo scrisse
Rumanian: ca un poet / în calitate de poet, Horațiu scris
Portuguese: como um poeta, escreveu Horácio
Spanish: como poeta, escribió Horacio
Catalan: com a poeta, va escriure Horaci
Translation ::
“But, uh, what on earth is that uproar for?
Uh, what are you just scowling at me for?
By your kids, you—if Lucina were there
at a real birth—I call—by this inane
purple stripe, by Jove, ready to damn you—
why like a stepmother do you watch me,
uh, like a beast set upon by a knife?”
As the boy, mouth trembling, pleading thus, stood,
emblem-stripped, his body hairless, something
to melt the hearts of wicked Thracians,
Canidia, hair entwined with short snakes
and uncombed, orders fig trees ripped from tombs,
orders graveyard cypress trees and eggs smeared
with vile frog blood and a night-owl feather
and plants that poison-rich Iolcos and
Iberia send and bones taken from
a starving bitch’s mouth to be burned with
Colchican flames. But Sagana was set,
dowsing the whole house with Avern’ water,
hair bristling like a prickly sea urchin
or a boar running. Veia, moved by no
conscience whatever, with a hard pickaxe
was digging a hole, groaning from the work,
where the boy, buried the whole day long, might die
at the sight of a feast changed twice or thrice,
with his mouth sticking out—as a body
would be hanging by the chin in water—
then the marrow’d be cut out, the liver dried,
for a love potion, once the pupils fixed
on the forbidden meal had dissolved.
She was there, Folia from Rimini,
so believed lazy Naples—all the towns
nearby too—she rips stars, charmed with her voice
of Thessaly, from the sky and the moon!
Now what did Canidia, wild, gnawing
with her bluish teeth on her untrimmed thumb,
say or not say?
“O Night, of my actions
no faithless arbitor, and Diana,
who rules the silence when sacred secrets
are done, now, now, come, now toward the houses
of my foes turn your anger and power!
In fearful forests as wild animals
tired hide in soft sleep, Subura bitches
bark at an old lecher, laughed at by all,
overgreased with nard-oil, the kind my own hands
couldn’t have more exquisitely prepared.
What happened? Why are brutish Medea’s
dire drugs less potent—with these she got back
at the stuck up whore, great Creon’s daughter,
then fled, when the cloak, a gift steeped in filth,
did away with the new bride in a fire.
But no herb, no root hiding in any
hard to get places has escaped from me.
He sleeps in ‘grease-smeared’ beds so that he is
oblivious to all the prostitutes.
Hmmm. Curses! He’s walking around, freed by
the spell of a witch more savvy than I!
With these not-your-everyday potions,
Varus, o [fountain] head that will weep much,
you will run back to me and—not called by
Marsian voices—your mind will return:
A bigger cup I will prepare; I will
pour you out more because you scorned me, and
before the sky sinks lower than the sea
with the earth stretched over, you will so burn
for my love—like bitumen—with black flames.”
With these words, the boy now, not like before,
trying to mollify the wicked hags
with soft words but, hesitant, as he breaks
silence and sends Thyestean curses:
“Magic poisons—they can’t change good and bad,
can’t redirect the human condition;
I shall chase you with dire words, let no
sacrifice avert these dire curses;
but that, when I, so fated to perish,
shall have expired, I, the Night Fury,
shall attack, and I'll get your faces
with my curved nails, I, a shade-ghost who
is the power of the spirit gods, and,
sitting on restless hearts, shall with terror
take sleep away: multitudes, attacking
from town to town, from here to there, with stones
will crush you obscene hags; later wolves will
carry the unburied body parts away,
the winged things of Esquiline Hill as well.
Such a spectacle won’t escape the notice
of my parents, alas, who’ll outlive me.”
translation © 2014 James Rumford
The Poem ::
- Red indicates the original words.
- A light pink indicates that the syllable is not spoken.
- The macron ¯ indicates a long vowel.
- The acute accent ´ indicates a stressed vowel.
- A superscript letter indicates a w or y sound (intueris, Cānidia)
- The meter is Iambic Strophe.
- There are 12 syllables in the first line, 8 in the second.
- Black italics indicate the prose version of the epode.
- Dindicates the Delphin Ordo of the 1670s.
- Beneath the Ordo are notes in italics.
1“At, o deorum quidquid in caelo regit
terras et hūmānum genus,
At, o quidquid deorum in caelo
terras et genus humanum regit,
DSed, ô Numina, quotquot in cœlo
gubernatis hunc orbem atque homines,
quid iste fert tumultus? aut quid omnium
vultūs in unum me truces?
quid iste tumultus fert? aut quid
vultūs truces omnium in me unum [ferunt]?
Dquid sibi vult ille strepitus! Vel quorsum [cur] facies
omnium istarum apparent terribiles adversus me solum!
5 per liberos te, si vocata partubus
Lucina verīs adfuit,
[ego] per liberos te, si ‹Lucina
vocata› partubus verīs adfuit,
DTe oro per filios, si Diana adfuit veris
partubus invocata;
per hoc inane purpurae decus precor,
per improbaturum haec Iovem,
per ‹hoc decus inane purpurae› precor,
per Iovem haec improbaturum,
Dper vanum istud insigne purpuræ:
per Jovem talia condemnaturum:
per Iovem qui haec quae tu facis vituperabit
quid ut noverca me intueris aut uti
10 petita ferrō belua?”
quid ut noverca me intueris aut
uti belua ferrō petita?”
Dquare me aspicis quasi noverca, vel ut
fera telo confixa?
noverca : nova uxor patris; e.g.noverca mala in Hansel et Gretel
petita : aggressa
ut haec trementi questūs ore constitit
insignibus raptis puer,
ut puer ore trementi haec questūs
constitit, insignibus raptis,
DPostquam puer ore trepidanti has fudit querelas,
ornamentis exutus est.
insignibus : i.e., toga et bulla
impube corpus, quale posset impia
mollire Thracum pectora,
corpus impube—quale [corpus]
pectora impia Thracum mollire posset,
DCorpus erat sine pube, quod posset
flectere corda Thracum ferocia.
15 Cānídi|a, brevi|bus || ímplicāta vīperīs
crīnis et incomptum caput.
Canidia, ‹crīnis vīperīs brevibus
ímplicāta› et caput incomptum.
DTum Canidia exiguis viperis implexos habens
capillos, et incompositum caput,
Crīnis in hac ode est in genere feminino
quamvis saepissime de genere masculino.
iubet sepúlcrīs caprīficōs ērutās,
iubet cū/cupressōs fūnebrıs
caprīficōs sepulcrīs ērutās iubet,
cupressōs fūnebrıs [ērutās] iubet
Dmandat caprificos evulsas tumulis,
mandat ferales cupressos,
caprificos: fīcōs silvestrēs; fīcus etiam est
fructus fīcī saepe purpureus
et uncta turpīs ova rānae sánguine
20 plūmamque nócturnae strigīs
et ‹ova sanguine rānae turpīs uncta›
plūmamque strigīs nocturnae
Det fœdæ rubetæ cruore aspersa ova,
plumasque strigis nocturnæ,
herbāsque, quās Iolcos atque Hibēria
mittit venēnorum ferax,
herbāsque, quās Iolcos mittit atque
Hibēria, venēnorum ferax,
Det herbas quas producit Iolchos
atque Iberia venenis fertiles,
Iolcos: portus in Thessalia
Hiberia: Hiberes, Spain
et ossa ab ore rapta iēiūnae canis
flammīs adūrī Colchicīs.
et ossa ab ore canis iēiūnae rapta
flammis Colchicis adūrī.
Det ossa erepta ex ore canis famelicæ,
cremari ignibus Colchicis.
Colchicis: Colchis, regio in latere orientali Ponti
25 at expedīta Sagana per tōtam domum
spargēns Avernalıs aquās
at Sagana, expedita, per tōtam domum
aquās Avernalıs spargēns,
DMox Sagana succincta per totas ædes
inspersit Avernales aquas,
Sagana: nomen quaedem sagae aut venēficae
expedita: parata
Avernalıs aquas: aqua ex lacu Averno. In Campania
est crater in quo pestifer est lacus. Crater autem est,
dicitur, aditus inferni.
horret capillīs ut marīnus ásperīs
echīnus aut currrēns aper.
capillīs asperīs ‹ut echīnus marīnus
aut aper currēns› horret.
Dhabens crines rigidos velut echinus
marinus aut aper currens.
abacta nullā Veia conscientiā
30 ligōnibus dūrīs humum
Veia nullā conscientiā abacta
humum ligōnibus dūrīs
DInde Veïa nullis consicentiæ stimulis absterrita
labore ingemiscens, duro bipalio effodiebat terram,
Veia: quaedam striga, venēfica
exhauriēbat ingemēns laboribus,
quo posset infossus puer
exhauriēbat, laboribus ingemēns,
quo puer infossus
Din quà puer immissus diuturno tempore
mori posset, aspectu ciborum
exhauriebat: excavabat
ingemens: suspirens cum difficultate
infossus: sepultus, in terram positus
longō diē bis terque mūtātae dapis
inēmorī spectāculō,
‹diē longō› ‹bis terque› ‹spectāculō
dapis mūtātae› inēmorī,
Dbis aut ter immutatorum,
inemori: mori
35 cum prōmīneret ore, quantum exstant aquā
suspensa mentō corpora,
cum ore prōmīneret, quantum
corpora aquā mentā suspensa exstant,
Dsi quidem capite extaba quantum corpora
mento suspensa eminent super aquam,
promineret: exstaret, emineret
quantum: aeque
exsecta uti medulla || et āridum iecur
amōris esset pōculum,
[cum] medulla exsecta esset (et iecur
āridum [esset]) uti pōculum amōris,
Dut arescens medulla et hepar exsiccatum
fieret armoris pharmacum,
interminātō cum semel fixae cibō
40 intābuissent pūpulae.
cum semel ‹pūpulae cibō intermināto
fixae› intābuissent.
Dpostquam contabuissent pupilæ
semel infixæ cibo interdicto.
interminato: vetito, prohibito
intabuissent: dissolutae essent
non dēfuisse másculae libīdinis
Arīminénsem Fōliam
‹Fōliam Arīminénsem libīdinis
másculae› non dēfuisse
DPorrò et otiosa Neapolis et urbes vicinæ
omnes crediderunt istis veneficiis adfuisse
Foliam Ariminensem: Folia est nomen strigae,
quae ex Arimino urbe, hodie Rimini
et ōtiōsa crēdidit Neāpolis
et omne vīcīnum óppidum,
et Neāpolis ōtiōsa (et omne
óppidum vīcīnum) crēdidit.
DFoliam Ariminensem nefandâ
libidine famosam,
45 quae sīdera éxcantāta vōce Théssalā
lūnámque caelō dēripit.
Quae ‹sīdera vōce Théssalā éxcantāta›
lūnámque caelō dēripit.
Dquæ verbis Thessalicis incantata astra et
Lunam cœlo detrahit.
quae: et ea, et illa, et haec
hic irresectum saeva dente lividō
Cānidia rōdēns pollicem
Hic, Cānidia, saeva pollicem
irresectum dente lividō rōdēns,
DTum verò ferox Canidia dente livido rodens
unguem pollicis non amputatum
hic: tum
quid dīxit aut quid tacuit? “o rebus meīs
50 nōn infidēlis árbitra
quid dīxit aut quid tacuit? “O
Nox, arbitra nōn infidēlis rebus meīs,
Dquid locuta est? vel quid non dixit? O,
rebus meis, inquit, testes favente,
Nox, et Diāna, quae silentium regis
arcana cum fiunt sacra,
et Diāna, quae silentium regis
cum arcana sacra fiunt,
Dnox et diana silentium faciens
quando secreta peraguntur mysteria,
nunc, nunc adeste, nunc in hostilıs domōs
īram atque nūmen vértite!
nunc, nunc adeste, nunc in domōs hostilıs
īram atque nūmen vértite!
Djam, jam adjuvate: jam in ædes inimicorum
convertite iram et potestatem divinam.
numen: postestatem divinam
55 formīdulōsīs cum latent silvīs ferae
dulci sopōre languidae,
Cum ferae [in] silvīs formīdulōsīs
sopōre dulci languidae latent,
DInterim dum bellvæ absconduntur silvis
formidinem creantibus pacato somno vacantes,
senem, quod omnēs rīdeant, adulterum
latrant Subūranae canēs
canēs Subūranae senem adulterum,
(quod omnēs rīdeant)
Dcanes Suburanæ allatrent mœchum senem
(quod cunctis ludibrio sit)
Suburanae: regio sordida media Romae
meretricum vel fornicatricum
nardō perunctum, quāle nōn perfectius
60 meae labōrārint manūs.
nardō perunctum, quāle [unguentum]
manūs meae perfectius nōn labōrā[ve]rint.
Dperfusum unguento, quo præstantius
nullum elaboràrunt meæ manus.
nardō: < nardus, ī, f., unguentō ex Syriā vel Assyriā
quāle: et hoc genus [unguenti]
quid accidit? cūr dīra barbarae minus
venēna Mēdēae valent,
Quid accidit? Cūr venēna dīra Mēdēae
barbarae minus valent,
DVerum quid evenit? Quare acria hæc pharmaca
minùs pollent venenis barbaræ Medeæ,
quibus superba[m] fūgit ulta paelicem,
magnī Creontis fīliam,
quibus [venēnīs], [haec] ‹paelicem superba[m],
fīliam Creontis magnī, ulta› fūgit,
Dquibus superbiens aufugit, sumptâ ultione
de pellice, magni Creontis filia;
Creontis: Creo rex cuius filiam Medea
pallā venenā imbutā interfecit.
radix fefellit me locīs.
arduis locis me effugit.
pellicum inunctis oblivione.
scientioris carmine.
restituetur aut curabitur.
sicuti bitumen nigris ignibus.
emisit execrationes Thyestis.
destatio nullo sacrificio purgatur.
formidine eripiam somnum.
vos incessens, execrabiles vetulas obruet.
