No Kick from Champagne :: Petti, Nihil Me Sicut :: Ep. 11

I get no kick from champagne.

Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all.

So tell me why should it be true

That I get a kick out of you?

Was there a Frankus Sinatrus in Horace’s time to croon the lines from today’s epode? We’ll never know. Roman cabarets closed long ago.

In this epode, Horace tells us he used to enjoy writing love poetry, but this time it’s different, so he wants us to believe. This time Horace is wrapped up with some snotty boy named Lyciscus, presumably with girlishly long hair. I suppose we might mention here the title of the musical that gave us “no kick from champagne”: “Anything Goes.”

Yes, anything goes chez Horace, chez le vieux roué, but he knows better. Horace vows to take a new path even though he knows that that path like all the ones he’s traveled on before will lead him back to the same place. Because of the orbits of love and sex, regret and hate, bitterness and sweetness that go whizzing round us—I suppose we must leave Cole Porter’s simple comparisons between the effect of champagne and the taste of love. Horace’s lines are far more complicated. 

In fact, I’d say that, far from being a love poem, these lines are a bitter comment on man’s lot.  Had Horace been a Buddhist, he might have mentioned the folly of earthly desire. But since he was not, his only remedy to suffering is more pain and suffering disguised in the form of another girl or another boy. Horace is caught in a web of lust. Although he might act as if he has come to his senses, crying his eyes out to his friend Pettius, it is, we see, just an act. Before he knows it, he’s back on the doorstep of love, begging admittance.

And who was this Pettius? We don’t know. Likewise, the names of a past love Inachia and the object of his present desire Lyciscus are unknown. Real people? Maybe not. More than likely, just symbols, metaphorical putty in the poet’s hands. 

As you read the original, observe the repeated words, candidum ingenium and puellae candidae, libera bilis and libera consilia; the words of passion: expetit, calentis, fervidiore, inaestuet; and the false logic of nil and nihil.  There is also a rare verbal form of promoverat—promorat and a rare form of quibus—quis. Below is the seventeenth century rephrasing done for the dauphin of France as well as, and, if you can take the weird spelling, the sixteenth-century scholarly cogitations of Mancinelli. Both are worth a good look.

Before all of this, here are some photos my wife Carol took when we were in Italy two weeks ago. They are of the ruins of Horace’s villa….at least the reputed ruins. Argued about for centuries, these ruins have, by a series of scholarly triangulations been fairly solidly verified as the farm Horace, often talked about in his work. The County of Licenza (pronounced in the dialect of the Sabine hills as Lishennnza), has undertaken to erect a visitors’ center. Too bad. For now, it is a beautifully quiet spot where I swear I saw the ivy, the verbena, the chicory, Horace once planted.

The Visitors' Center under construction (Sept. 2013) and the architect's drawing.

Below, the hilltop town of Licenza, built in the Middle Ages.

translation ::

Pettius, I get no kick like I did before

writing bits of verse, knocked flat by love

serious love, wanting more than anything

to be consumed in soft boys, in girls too.

This third December (of my ending it 

with Inachia) is shedding its beauty in the forests.

Ah me! I’m ashamed of so much!

How I was the talk throughout Rome!

It pains me, the parties where my idleness

my silence and sighs from deep inside

gave me the lover away. “Is there nothing

the shining qualities of a poor man can do

against the lucered?” I’d wail to you in tears,

once the god of shamelessness pulled the secrets 

out of me fired-up by hotter wine.

“But if anger unchecked heats my belly 

so I scatter to the winds the useless whining—  

poultices that draw no poison from my wound— 

then my self decency, swept away,

cannot compete with those not my equal.”

After I dead-serious had said this to your face,

though ordered home, I took myself on unsure feet

to a door—ah—not a friendly one and—oh

the hard threshold, where hip and side I bruised!

Now a love for Lyciscus, bragging he’s won over 

some servant girl with his softness, has hold of me,

a hold from which neither the frank advice of friends 

nor serious condemnation can free me,

only the ardor for another, be that some dazzling lass 

or some well-formed boy, tying up his long hair.

{Translation © 2013 by James Rumford]

In Prose ::

[O] Petti, nihil me iuvat sicut antea versiculos scribere—[me] amore gravi percussum, amore qui me prater omnis expetit in pueris mollibus aut in puellis urere.

Hic tertius December, ex quo destiti Inachiā furere, honorem [ex] silvis decutit.

Heu me! Nam tanti mali [me] pudet— quanta fabula per Urbem fui! Et [me] paenitet conviviorum in qui[bu]s ‹languor et silentium et spiritus latere imo petitus› [me] amantem arguit.

“Contrane lucrum ingenium candidum pauperis nil valere?” [ego] applorans, tibi querebar, simul [ac] deus inverecundus ‹arcana calentis› ex loco mero fervidiore promo[ve]rat. “Quodsi bilis libera praecordiis meis inaestuet, ut fomenta ingrata, vulnus malum [meum] nil levantia,ventis dividam, pudor summotus [meus me] desinet imparibus certare.”

Ubi [ego] severus haec te palam laudaveram, iussus [sum] domum abire, ad postıs mihi non amicos—heu!—pede incerto ferebar et—heu—[ad] limina dura, [in] quibus lumbos et latus infregi.

Nunc amor Lyisci ‹gloriantis mollitie quamlibet mulierculam vincere› me tenet, unde consilia libera amicorum [meorum] [me] expedire non queant, nec contumeliae graves [me expediant], sed ardor alius—aut [pudor] puellae candidae aut [pudor] pueri teretis comam longam renodantis.

original epode ::

[The undotted i in -ıs is the poetic ending for -es, v. infra postıs] 

Petti, nihil me sicut antea iuvat 

     scribere versiculos amore percussum gravi, 

   

amore, qui me praeter omnis expetit

     mollibus in puerīs aut in puellīs urere.

hic tertius December, ex quo destiti*  *dēsisto

     Inachiā furere, silvis honorem dēcutit.

  

heu me, per Urbem—nam pudet tanti mali—

     fabula quanta fui! conviviorum et paenitet,

in quīs amantem languor et silentium  

     arguit et latere petitus imo spiritus.  

“contrane lucrum nil valere candidum

     pauperis ingenium querebar applorans tibi,

simul calentis inverecundus deus [Bacchus]

     fervidiore mero arcana promorat loco.

“quodsi meis inaestuet praecordiis

     libera bilis, ut haec ingrata ventis dividam

fomenta vulnus nil malum levantia, 

     desinet imparibus certare summotus pudor.”

ubi haec severus te palam laudaveram,

     iussus abire domum ferebar incerto pede

ad non amicos heu mihi postıs et heu 

     limina dura, quibus lumbos et infregi latus.

nunc gloriantis quamlibet mulierculamt

    vincere mollitie amore Lycisci me tenet,

unde expedire non amicorum queant

     libera consilia nec contumeliae graves,

sed alius ardor aut puellae candidae

     aut teretis pueri longam renodantis comam.

For the Dauphin [1670s] ::

O Petti, nequaquam placet ut prius, versus facere, quia amore gravi occupor; amore, qui me præ cunctis incendere cupit erga teneros pueros vel puellas. Hic tertius December spoliat arbores foliis, ex quo desii deperire Inachiam. Heu me, quanta fui fabula per urbem! (Nam pude me tanti mali) pœnitet etiam conviviorum, in quibus amans declarat se languore, taciturnitate, et suspiriis è profundo pectore deductis! Tum verò simul ac ardente vino incalueram, et numen pudore carens secreta mea  dmoverat loco suo; ego flens apud te conquerebar, quòd sincera mens pauperis non prævaleret quæstui. Addebam porrò: Quòd si libera indignatio cor meum inflammet, ut in auras dissipet molesta hæc pabula nequaquam sublevantia dolorem improbium; protinus abjecta verecundia cessabit pugnare adversus inæquales. At postquam ista coram te graviter statueram, accepto mandato discedendi in ædes meas, dubio gressu ibam ad fores eheu mihi non propitias et dura eheu vestbula, in quibus rupi lumbos et latus. Jam me occupat amor Lycisci gloriantis omnem fœminam superare mollitiâ: Quo me exsolvere non possint sincera amicorum monita vel objurgationes acerbæ; sed tantum  alius amor, sive adolescentulæ speciosæ, sive rotunduli pueri prolixos capillos nodo colligentis.

 Mancinelli’s comments [i. = id est    s. = sum   q. = qui   d. = de] ::

Pecti. Pectio amico familiari amores suos fatetur satis inverecunde dicens. o pecti scribere versiculos nihil iuvat sicut antea me percussum amore graut [sic].i.tycilti? pueri: amore (repetit) q expetit.ipersequitur & excruciat me praeter.i.super omnes.s.alios amatores: urere aut in pueris mollibus aut in puellis hic.i.prosens? december tertitius exquo.i.postquam destiti.i.desij furere inachia.i.amore inachiae puellae: decuiti  silvis honorem.i.frondes.i.iam tertia agitur hyems postquam dereliqui inachiam: heu me quanta fabula fui per urbem: cum.s.furerem amore inachiae.q.d.quod dico. Nam pudet tanti mali & pœnitet conuitriorum: in quis i. in quibus languor & silentium.i.que in convivijs languens amore silerem: & spūs.i.anhelitus meus petitus i.attractus: imo.i.profundo latere: arguit.i.evidenti argumento probavit sup.me amantem. Et querebar.s.tibi & alijs applorans iuvenium pauperis.s.poetae: nil valere contra lucrum candidum.i.avaritiam quae meretricibus candida videtur: applorans dicit simil.i.statim ut.i.postquam deus inverecundus.i.cupido vel potius eius provocator bacchus ? modicus: promotat.i.promoverat loco.i.statione sua. mero fervidiore.i.acri vino. arcana.s.mea.i.intima praecordia calentis.i.ardentis amore. Que? sibilis libera.i.stomachatio & indignatio vera inaestuet meis praecordijs.i.me ad veram iram compulerit sicut tunc simulabam iratum: ita ut dividat? id est dispergat ventis haec fomenta?.i.medicamenta ingrata.i.has querimonias inutiles:quia nil allevantia.i.imminuètia vulnus.s.amoris:malum.i.perniciosum.pudor submotus.i.iqui nunc clanculum ame amotus est: desinet certare imparibus.i.potioribus.i.non amplius victus cedet: sed vincet. Ubi ego severus.i.tanquam severus: hoc est rigide sequens verum laudaveram haec.i.huiusmodi propostitum palam.i.coram te: aut te conscio? ego iussus.s.a te: abire domum: ferebar pede incerto.i.titubante: ad postes heu mihi non amicos.i.ad ostia inachiæ & heu ad limina dura: ut pote quibus infregi lumbo: & latus meum: cum neque lachrymis neque precibus cederent. amor lycisci pueri gloriantis vincere mollicia quamlibet mulierculam tenet nunc me: unum.i. a quo libera consilia amicorus nec graves contumeliae amicorus: non quaeant expedire.i.solvere me: sed ardor.i.fervens amor alius puellae candidae aut pueri teretis.i.proceri: renidentis?.i.religantis longam.i.prolixam comam.

:: 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.

Typesetting and Translation :: Revisions

I have not posted anything for a while. A little over a month ago, I got the idea into my head that I should publish a book based on these blog posts. I thought, foolishly, that the task would be fairly easy. All I would have to do was copy and paste.

Of course, I was wrong.

Why? I had forgotten that these posts were, from the very beginning, a log of my journey as I taught myself how to read Horace in Latin. I had forgotten, or rather I had not considered the possibility, that I had made the kind of errors that I found.

In my prose renditions, instead of disentangling Horace’s Latin, I had actually tied it into Gorgonian knots, hindering the reader not helping. I also found that the poems were filled with errors. I had copied the poems from the online LatinLibrary. That was, I now know, a mistake. There were misspellings, wrong words, and, more often than not, versions of the poems that are no longer part of the textus receptus of Horace’s work. 

So, I had a lot of corrections to make. The result will be, when the book is published next month, something a person serious about learning to reading Horace can and will use.

In the meantime, I am revising all of the past posts. I will insert a new prose rendition and an up-to-date text for each ode.

As an example, in the blog archive to the right, open 2009, then August. Choose the blog entitled "Non Omnis Moriar." This will take you to the revisions I made for Ode 30 of Book 3: Exegi monumentum aere perrenius.

In going over all of Horace’s odes, I discovered two interesting things.

First, I had often wondered, being a printer, why the odes were not all set in the same way. In other words, why were some of the odes set with indents, others with none. As I worked through the odes, sometimes verifying the length of vowels by working out the meter, I discovered this amazing fact:

The pattern of indentation or lack thereof was an indication of the meter used. How clever of some Renaissance printer! If you peruse through Mancinelli’s fifteenth century printed text, you can see the beginnings of variation. Here is Ode 22 of Book III: Montium custos nemorumque virgo:

Sometime after him, I suppose, an editor really went to work and devised a clever scheme of encoding the meter into the way the ode was typeset. I wonder if everyone knew this. I wonder, too, if students knew this. I suppose that even today a student could memorize these patterns and use that to identify the meter—unbeknownst to the teacher!

The indents were based on quads. A quad is the a non-printing piece of type used as a space between words. It is the width of the letter m. You see this word is crossword puzzles: em space. Here are the various patterns used. Click on the image to enlarge.

The second thing that I discovered surprised me and challenged my assumptions about authors and translations and plagiarism. In redoing my prose renditions, I relied heavily on Richard Zerega’s 1924 translations in his Odes of Horace (New York: Nicholas L. Brown) as well as Niall Rudd’s in the Loeb series and on Daniel Garrison’s book Horace: Epodes and Odes, a New Annotated Latin Edition (1991). In comparing the three, I noticed that many of the words Rudd and Garrison used were also used by Zerega. And since Zerega’s book predated either of the others, I began to suspect that maybe Rudd and Garrison had borrowed from Zerega. 

For example, in Horace I:1:5, Rudd like Zerega translated evitata as ‘cleared.’ Garrison, too, spoke of ‘clearing.’  In II:1:8, Rudd also wrote ‘treacherous ash’ for cineri doloso. In III:3:10, Rudd decided on ‘fiery heights’ for arces igneas, but Garrison just like Zerega wrote ‘starry heights.’ In III:21:22, Rudd rendered segnes as ‘loth.’ Zerega used the same odd word.

This ‘borrowing’ seemed more than a coincidence, more than the result of carefully searching through the definitions offered by some Latin dictionary. Had Rudd and Garrison used Zerega’s work? If they had, Zerega’s book is missing from their bibliographies. Or had Zerega used a translation that predated 1924, a translation that was available to both Rudd and Garrison, thus making Zerega irrelevant?

Before I answer this, I should say something about Richard A. Zerega, although there is not much to say. His book has no introduction, no foreword, and no postscript. It may have been printed at Zerega’s own expense, even though Brown was a publisher of some repute. There is a review of the book, but this was done by a fellow alumnus of St. Paul’s preparatory school in Concord, New Hampshire. The review is glowing, as befits a school magazine ever on the lookout for the odd endowment. (See Alumni Horae, Vol 4, Issue 2, 1924).

A search on the internet yielded little information.  On the internet, E. Bruce Brooks writes in 2002 (after garnering information from Zerega family members), that Richard Zerega was the grandson of a shipping magnet Augustus Zerega and was born in New York in 1866. He attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire and graduated with a B.A. from Harvard. He died in 1956. His obituary appeared in the Summer 1956 issue of Alumni Horae:

1883-Richard Augustus Zerega died at the age of ninety, May 13, 1956, in New York, N. Y. For many years he was Form Agent for the Form of 1883. Born in New York, February 16, 1866, the son of John A. and Katherine Berry Zerega, he came to St. Paul's in 1880, spent three years there, and graduated from Harvard College in 1887. He practiced law, and also published several volumes of his translations from Latin authors. He was a vestryman of the Church of the Incarnation in New York. He leaves no close surviving relatives.

  

Brooks mentions that Zerega may have known the ‘anonymous interlinear version’ of Horace’s odes. If he had, this may well explain some common source, but I have as yet been unable to locate a copy of the interlinear translation.

So, I took another route. I started with Niall Rudd’s 2004 translation, which was the most recent I had, and worked backward from there. 

Niall Rudd’s task was to redo Loeb’s 1914 edition of Horace’s odes translated by the scholar C. E. Bennett. Since Rudd’s work was to be an update, it is not surprising that he would use much of what Bennett had written. I found ‘cleared’ for evitata,  ‘treacherous’ for doloso, and ‘loth’ for segnes.  But for arces igneas, I did not find ‘fiery heights,’ but ‘starry citadels.’

Had Zerega used Bennett’s translation? It certainly seems so, especially since not only are many words the same but the syntax as well. 

Then I began to wonder: had Bennett, too, taken from his predecessors?  I looked at the various translations available to me. The ‘treacherous ashes’ showed up in many, including the ubiquitous English renditions of John Conington (1825-1869). But it wasn’t until I found an 1889 edition of C. Smart’s translation that I discovered not only what must have been the source of ‘starry citadels’ but of ‘loth’ as well.

C(hristopher) Smart was a on-again-off-again lunatic and sexually ambivalent character from the eighteenth century who was sometimes Mr. Smart and sometimes Mrs. Midnight. He wrote some interesting stuff and some of it got turned into music. But what concerns me is what he wrote in 1756: The Works of Horace Prose and Verse. I haven’t seen the original. I have only seen its nineteenth-century transfiguration known as The Works of Horace, Translated Literally into English Prose. This was done by a Theodore Buckley a century later and went through many editions and printings, of which the 1889 edition is but one of them. 

I suppose that Bennett and Zerega and Garrison and Rudd all saw Smart’s work, for it was a Latin classroom ‘must.’  Yet none of them mentions the work in their bibliographic references. So, I am left with these questions:—

Is a translation an original work?  Surely that would be the case with Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam, but is that the case with Mr. Smart’s 1756 translation of Horace? Apparently not.

If not, why not? Perhaps this has to do with the amount of material ‘borrowed.’ It is impossible to deny the right to take a little here and there. If this were not the case, no retranslation would ever be possible.  After all, who’s to say that two people couldn’t come up with the same translation of a particular word?  

I suppose they could, but my thought is this. If a translator knowingly uses another’s translation, he or she should say so; otherwise, there is always a whiff of disrespect for what came before, a hint of plagiarism. To my way of thinking, you can’t write ‘loth’ for segnes and not give some credit to the ultimate source, if it can be found. I like the way Paul Shorey put it in his 1919 work Horrace Odes and Epodes  (Chicago: Benj. H. Sanborn & Co.) when he mentions his indebtedness to scholars past and present and ends with ‘and others.’  And today, with the internet, where thousands of books may be consulted with a few taps, not to give credit would be a bit foolish.  

I suppose I have raised these questions because I am dealing with Horace, not some obscure author from the Caucasus, whose work is known only by one translation. Instead it is precisely because Horace has suffered at the hands of many, many translators over the centuries, that there has grown up such a thicket of English that it is impossible to say now who borrowed from whom or who has the rights over a particular word. 

My little foray into the translation of four words has made me consider these questions about authorship and ownership. I don’t have any answers, just thoughts.

I will end with this: when I discovered Zerega’s little grey book in the University of Hawai‘i library, I was amazed at the smooth and straightforward nature of his translations. I immediately went online and purchased a copy of his book for a few dollars. I did not use it for my own translations. Instead I saved it to help me correct my Latin prose renditions of Horace’s work. I had no idea how much Zerega was indebted to all of the translators who preceded him. My enthusiasm for Zerega has cooled a bit, but then I think: no, what he did still has merit.

:: 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.

Right Back at You :: Quid Tibi Vis :: Ep 12

In my last post I described the epode in question as “unusual.” Little do I know. Seems like Horace likes a dirty word or two. I guess we are in for a spate of spice. 

In the last century at least, some scholars were fond of imagining what Horace’s life was like. They would extract lines from his poetry and construct a biography of a man about whom little is really known. For example, they would say he was a gentleman farmer. He liked wine. His friend and patron was Maecenas, etc., etc. It amuses me to think what those scholars took away from today’s epode, or if they dared “go there.”

It is hard to find any good commentary about this epode. The epode is so filled with the smell of two-thousand-year-old sex that I am afraid that the headiness of it has made it difficult to understand not just today but perhaps shortly after it was written. Slamming one’s sexual partner and letting her have her say makes for a potent mix of words. The epode almost has the rawness of a shouting match. And like a shouting match, it is difficult to disentangle what’s being said. Why does Horace think that the woman he is with is most worthy of a black elephant? Is this the only way she can get satisfied? Is this a racial comment? Were Romans a particularly clean people? I mean did they bathe a lot so that body odor was a real sticking point in a relationship? Were there procuresses for women as well as men? 

I don’t have the answers to these questions; so I am appending two interesting commentaries done at the beginning of the Renaissance. One is by a scholar named Antonio Mancellini, who lived between 1452 and 1505 and the other is by a Flemish printer and scholar Jodocus Badius Ascensius (1462–1535). I have transcribed this early printed text to the best of my ability. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, printers followed the writing practices of their day, filling their books with the odd abbreviations and conjoined letters of scholars and copyists (examples of which I have put below as well). And since Ascensius was a printer (in Paris), as the title page says, you will see a fair number of arcane letter forms.

Such odd signs served a purpose. They saved space (paper and vellum were expensive). And they saved time (it took days to copy a book). Once printers and editors realized that designing these signs, casting them, and adding extra boxes to the type case wasted time, they began to use fewer and fewer of them. Today only a few survive: &, ¶, and @, not to mention the fast disappearing ff, fi, ffi, fl, etc.  (The funny thing is, today, with text-messaging, abbreviations and shortcuts are back and a sign like @ has taken on a new life.) Here are examples of the signs from the early sixteenth-century book:

It is hard to imagine a printer being a scholar. But in the early days of printing, printers were highly educated. Gutenberg himself knew a fair amount of Latin. So did his partners and the ones who came shortly after him. The division of labor between printer, editor, publisher, and promoter hadn’t yet come about. Often the so-called printer wore all of these hats, especially the itinerant ones who, after some disastrous events in the city of Mainz, where printing had been invented, had fled their apprenticeships and business association with Gutenberg and his one-time partner Fust, setting up printing/publishing shops all over Europe. (Here I will shamelessly put a plug in for two books I did recently:

I will add that the first book was published by a traditional publisher (Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of McMillian) but the second I published. It seems with print-on-demand books we return to the days of Badius. On a small scale, those who have something serious to say have the means thanks to computers with complicated programs for word-processing and book design to publish.)

Now back to Horace and Epode 12. I could say something about each line, even wail and bemoan how each is difficult, but I’ll limit myself to just a few comments.

One indication as to the difficulty of this poem: many of phrases from this epode were cited in the definitions given in Lewis and Short’s Latin dictionary. These are colored blue. An interesting word is barrus (m), which comes from the Sanskrit word for elephant: bhri. Another is the word obesus, which is from obedo (to eat away, lean, meagre). Somewhere along the way it acquired an opposite meaning: fat, explained by Lewis and Short as “that has eaten itself fat.”

In lines 9–11, Horace describes the woman’s make-up after sex:

. . . neque illi

     iam manet umida creta colorque

stercore fucatus crocodili, . . .

. . . and not to her

     now remains wet chalk and the color

tinged with crocodile dung, . . .

Creta  was a kind of white chalk from Crete which the Romans used like make-up. Color stercore crocodili fucatus was a reddish foundation made from, I suppose, Egyptian crocodile dung. Could it be that this last was a sarcastic way to describe a woman’s makeup? Mancellini and Badius (highlighted in blue below) seem to think so and tell us a bit about the gooey stuff. My concern here is not so much the make-up but the meaning of the entire phrase. At first, I thought that her make-up was no longer wet and that it was perhaps cracked. But after reading our two Renaissance scholars, I realized that I had been wrong. The sweat of sex had washed the woman’s make-up away. One can only imagine the thick, white goo, dripping onto Horace.

Another particularly difficult passage begins with line 13. 

vel mea cum saevis agitat fastidia verbis

or else my distaste with savage words she mocks

With this Horace lets the woman have her say. She upbraids Horace for spending more quality time with Inachia. She also has something to say about Lesbia, who must have introduced Horace to her. By lines 16 & 17, for me, the Latin starts to fall apart. The grammar sputters. The words fume. I feel the woman’s ire and, I suppose, exasperation as . . . I try to figure out what Horace is saying. 

. . . . pereat male. quae te

Lesbia quaerenti taurum monstravit inertem,

. . . . let Lesbia perish badly, who 

by asking for a bull showed you inert, 

Who does Horace want to perish? We don’t know until the next line. What does quae refer to? Is the bull inert or is Horace?

The Delphin ordo ignores the problem, at least the version printed in Rev. Henry Premble’s Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera (Longman etc., 1832). Instead of a paraphrase, what the refined nineteenth-century reader saw was a series of asterisks, (like exploding fireworks?) going down the page. Could it be the same with the original version of the ordo? I mean, did the seventeenth century scholars think this passage too racy for the future French king. Le roi soleil aurait-il rougi?

Fortunately our friends Antonio Mancellini and Jodocus Badius come to the rescue. First Mancellini (if I have interpreted the marginalia correctly) followed by Badius:

 Pereat. ordo est.male pereat lesbia:quae quærenti scilicet, mihi taurus monstravit te inertem. Taurum, id est, virum venereum ac fortem ut taurus est. nam ut philosophus scripsit .liber.v. de animalibus. vaccæ tauros non patiuntur propter rigorem genitalis: nimiamque tentiginem. sed clunibus subsidentibus semen recipiunt genitale. id autem & nos vidimus

(Let [her] perish. The order is: badly let Lesbia perish who showed you, the inert one, to the one asking (to me, of course). A bull, that is, a man sexually active and strong like a bull. For as the philosopher [Aristotle] has written in Book V about animals: cows don’t open up to bulls [unless] because of the hardness of their genitals: beyond measure and full of lust. But when they submit their buttocks to the male, they receive semen from the genital organ. But this even we have seen.)

Pereat lesbia male quae mihi quaerenti taurum, id est, fortem subactorem monstravit te inertem, id est, ignavum & torpentem.

(Let Lesbia perish badly who showed to me asking for a bull, that is, a strong debaucher (Lewis and Short’s translation of subactor), [actually showed] you, an inert person, that is, inactive and listless.)

These two commentaries accord with Niall Rudd’s (in the Loeb Series) translation: 

Damn that woman Lesbia who, when I was looking for a bull, directed me to a passive creature like yourself!

A similar translation is by John M. McMahon in Paralysin Cave: Impotence, Perception, and Text in the Satyrica of Petronius (Brill, 1997):

I wish a horrible death for that Lesbia

     who pointed me to you, limp as you are,

When I was looking for a bull of a man . . .

Ronnie Ancona in Time and the Erotic in Horace’s Odes  (Duke University Press Books, 1994) understands the lines differently:

May Lesbia perish badly who pointed out you, an impotent bull, to me, looking,

There are many other translations I might append here (each one with its own problems and peculiarities), but I will stop. 

I cannot believe that Horace’s lines are in the clearest Latin, but this is all the information that Horace gives us. Okay. It’s poetry, but it looks like I am losing the tug of war between what Horace wants to say and what I need to make sense of what he’s said. Horace has more strength on his side than I do on mine. He knows what he wants to say. I don’t. So, like the other translators before me, I’ll just have to give it my best shot. 

translation ::

What are you after, woman? You really deserve 

a black tusker. What about the gifts? What about 

the wax tablets you send me—no firm, thin-nosed youth?

Because I for one have a keener sense of smell,

(A rank growth or goat lying in your hairy pits?)

than a fierce dog when a female boar’s hiding.

What sweat, what a bad smell comes up everywhere from 

shriveled limbs! Though my “tail”’s gone limp she hurries on 

rabid to subdue an untamable sex drive. 

Now her wet chalk’s gone, along with her foundation—

a crocodile shit color; now in a sow-like 

heat, she ruptures rope beds and canopies over head,

or else with savage words she mocks my disgust:

“You tire less with Inachia than with me.

You can do her thrice a night, with me you’re soft in one 

go. Damn her! That Lesbia, showed idle you 

to me-asking-for-a-bull when I’d have had an 

Amyntas of Cos with his cock in his valiant

crotch, rooted firmer than a new tree in the hills!

Who was the fleece dyed twice with Tyrian purple 

rushed to? To you, that’s who, so there’d be no guest your

equal, no one whose woman loves more than I you.

Oh, I’m not happy, How you run off like a 

frightened she lamb from wild wolves, a doe from lions.”

(translation © 2013 by James Rumford

rabies: madness of love

subo: be in heat (of sows)

cubile: nest, lair, bed, den

tenta: from tendo

agito: mock, blame, insult

fastidium: loathing, squeamishness, disgust

Cos: one of the Sporadic Islands in the Myrtoan Sea

Amyntas: father of the Macedonian king Philip

vellus -velleris n. wool shorn off, fleece

convīva -ae f.: table companion

crēta -ae: chalk from Crete used as makeup

in prose ::

Quid tibi vis, mulier dignissima barrīs nigrīs?

    quid munera, quidve tabellās

mihi (nec iuveni firmō neque naris obesae) mittis?

     namque unus sagacius odoror,

pōlypus gravis an hircus in alīs hirsutīs cubet,

     quam canis acer ubi sus lateat.

qui sudor [m] et odor [m] quam malus undique 

     membrīs vietīs crescit, cum pene solutō,

rabiem indomitam sedare properat, neque illi

     iam creta umida colorque fucatus 

stercore crocodili manet, iamque subandō

     tenta cubilia tectaque rumpit!

vel mea fastidia cum verbīs saevīs agitat:

     Inachiā minus ac me languēs;

Inachiam ter nocte potes, mihi semper ad unum

     opus mollis [es]. Lesbia male pereat, quae,

taurum quaerenti, te inertem monstravit,

     cum Cous Amyntas mihi addesset,

cuius nervus in inguine indomito constantior

     inhaeret quam arbor nova collibus.

cui vellera lanae muricibus Tyriis iteratae

     properabantur? tibi nempe,

ne foret aequalis inter conviva, quem mulier

    sua magis diligeret quam te.

o ego non felix, quam tu fugis ut agna lupos

    acris pavet, capreaeque leones!”

original ode ::

    

Quid tibi vis, mulier nigris dignissima barris?

     munera quid mihi quidve tabellas

mittis nec firmo iuveni neque naris obesae?

     namque sagacius unus odoror,

polypus an gravis hirsutis cubet hircus in alis,

     quam canis acer ubi lateat sus.

qui sudor vietis et quam malus undique membris

     crescit odor, cum pene soluto

indomitam properat rabiem sedare, neque illi

     iam manet umida creta colorque

stercore fucatus crocodili, iamque subando

     tenta cubilia tectaque rumpit!

vel mea cum saevis agitat fastidia verbis:

     “Inachiā langues minus ac me;

Inachiam ter nocte potes, mihi semper ad unum 

     mollis opus. pereat male, quae te

Lesbia quaerenti taurum monstravit inertem,

     cum mihi Cous adesset Amyntas,

cuius in indomito constantior inguine nervus

     quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret.

muricibus Tyriis iteratae vellera lanae

     cui properabantur? tibi nempe,

ne foret aequalis inter convīva, magis quem

    diligeret mulier sua quam te.

o ego non felix, quam tu fugis ut pavet acris

     agna lupos capreaeque leones!”

Argumentum odes.xij. [Mancinelli?]

     In mulierem & deformem & olentem hic invehitur:quae quidem saepe horatio tum munera tum litteras mittere solebat veneris gratia. Quid tibi vis. ode est similis. vij.li.j.Barrhis, id est, elephantis: quorum quidem coitus adversus est: uti & leonum.lyncum.camelorum.tigrium: & rynocerotum. author est Solinus. dicit autem illam elephantis dignam: quantum aversi coeuntes eius deformitatem videre non possent. Tabellas. pugillares triplices intelligit: a tribus scilicet, folijs:qui quidem rebus amatorijs & levioribus serviebant. Martialis li. viti. Tunc triplices nostros non vilia dona putabis. Quum se venturam scribet amica tibi Nec firmo iuveni.erat enim natus annos.L.ut superius ostendit. Neque naris obesæ, id est, crassæ:nam interdum etiam in naribus carunculæ quandam fimiles muliebribus mammis nascuntur. eæque imis partibus qui carnosissimæ sunt inhærent: author est Celsus li.vj.habentes itaque talia odorem ali quem non facile sentiunt. Namque sagacius unus. ordo est. namque unus ego, id est, solus &c. Polypus, id est, caruncula modo alba modo subrubra: qui narium ossi inhæret: & modo ad labra pendes narem implet: modo retro pro id foramen quo spumus a naribus ad faces descendit: adeo increscit uti post uvam conspici possit: strangulatque hominem maxime austro aut euro flante: fereque mollis est: raro dura. Author est Celsus li.vj. Hircus, id est, hirci fœtor:qui sub brachijs esse aliquibus solet ob humorem illuc defulentem: unum Alexander aphodiseus in problematis ait. Cur axilla inter alia loca multo gravissime olet:utrumque spiramentis fere caret: gravis aūt odor in his praecipuus? est propter putredinem quem ibi gignitur ob humiditatis moram:quem nec dimovetur nec exercetur. Philosophus item particula decima problematum scribit. cur alæ omnium maxime partium nostri corporis male olent. Utrumque omnium minime respirare possunt:malus autem odor locis huiusmodi contrahi maxime solet:qm putredo quiete interioris qualitatis consistit:an ideoque immobiles inexercitatæque habentur. Scribit etiam ibidem cur homines qui virus redolent fœdius quam hirci oleant quum se odorifice unguentarint: an hoc in multis accidere solet:velut cum acido dulce commixtum est dulcius totum exultat. tum etiam omnes postquam sudarunt gravius olent: unguentum autem concalefaciendi vim habet itaque sudorem potest provocare. Vietis membus, id est, sanguidis: sine vi & naturalibus privatis viribus. quod Festus edocet. Soluto pene. emisso virili semine. Penem enim caudam vocabant: inquit festus a pendendo quidem. Humida creta erat in medicamibus & chia terra candicans. usus ad mulierum maxime curem lactei? coloris est hæc. author Pliny.li xxv. Humida ob coitus sudrorem. Phucatus. Φυκος color dicitur latine phucum dicunt  verso υ græco in u. Stercore cro. e crocodillo vita in aqua terraque cōis. Duo autem sunt erorum genera:aliquis multum infra magintudinem in terra tantum odoratissimisque floribus vivitur ob id intestina eius diligenter exquiruntur iucundo nidore refracta crocodileam vocant oculorum vitijs utilissima cum porrisucco iunctam: & contra suffossiones vel caligines. illita quoque ex oleo cyprino molestias in facie enascentes tollit. Ex qua vero morbos omnes quorum natura serpit in facie nitorem que reddit. lentigines tollit. ac varos omnesque maculas. Author Ply. lib. xxviij Subando subagitando. est enim a suibus tractum:quum libidinem provocant. Tenta strata. Tecta linteis ac culcitra. Vel me quum ordo est. vel quam malus odor undique crescat vietis membris: quum sævis verbis agitat mea fastidia. Inachia Ia. verba sunt illius anus ad Horatium. Ac me, id est,quam me. Mollis.es.Ad u.o.ad unum coitum. Pereat. ordo est.male pereat lesbia:quae quærenti scilicet, mihi taurus monstravit te inertem. Taurum, id est, virum venereum ac fortem ut taurus est. nam ut philosophus scripsit .liber.v. de animalibus. vaccæ tauros non patiuntur propter rigorem genitalis: nimiamque tentiginem. sed clunibus? subsidentibus semen recipiunt genitale. id autem & nos vidimus. Chous. chos insula est in carta: ut scri. mela. Strabo li.x. inter cycladas numerat. li. autem xiiij. docet & insulam & urbem chon appelantam. urbs vero non magna est sed optime omnium habitata & aspectu iocundissima: his qui eo navigant. insulae magnitudo est ad. ccccc.&.i stadia:tota fertilis. & quemadmodum Chius & lesbus optimo vino abundans: viri choi illustres fuerunt hippocrates. item Simus medicus phyletas poeta simul ac iudicialis nycias: qui chorum tyrannus fuit & ariston: hinc fuit Thenomestus vir clarus in administranda repu. nyciae aemulus. Iteratae, id est, de purpura dibapha, id est, bis tincta intelligit: de qua latius in odis. tibi horatio scilicet, Mulier volebat enim horatium purpura ornare ita optima ut inter convivas aequales etiam ab alienis uxoribus magis diligeretur.

[Badius?] Quid tibi vis. Petulanter petulantem anum carpit dicens. O mulier dignissima barrhis, id est, elephantibus nigris (sunt enim omnes nigri. unum de ipsis primum dictum est. It nigrum campis agmen coeunt autme averse. unde ab illius fetore & obscœnitate minus offenderentur:quocirca illam ipsis dignam argute censet) quid vis tibi? id est quid pretendis? cur mittis mihi munera:ve pro vel quid, id est, ad quid mittis mihi nec iuueni firmo id est satis potenti ad libidinem tuam explendam: neque naris obesæ, id est, occlusæ & punguis seu crassæ: hoc est neque habenti narem obtusam & occlusam ita ut parum olfaciam. obesum pro pingui etiam apud maronem? legunt illic: obesaque terga.aut obesæ, id est, circumeiae? aut circumrosæ naris ita ut virtus odoratiua perierit. dicit ergo cur mittis mihi neque te exatura re neque fetorem tuum sufferre valenti munera & tabellas, id est, triplices pugillares in quibus amores & res amatoriæ inscribebantur. Docens etiam se non obesæ naris addit. Namque ego unus id est solus: odoror, id est, olfacio (pro quo vulgarius dicitur odoro) sagacius, id est, maiore sagacitate & peritia nasi (Nam sagacitas nasi est: unum plautus sagax nasum habes) an plupus sup. sit cãfetoris? in naso: Est autem ut mancinelius recitat caruncula quandã putida in naso. An hircus, id est, hircinus fetor gravis, id est, molestus & difficulter tolerabilis: cubet, id est, quiete maneat (Alludit autem ad cubilia hircorum quae fetidissima sunt) in alis, id est, sub axillis: hirsutis, id est, pilosis.sagacius dicit quam canis acer, id est, strenuo olfactu: sup. odoratur aut sentit:ubi lateat sus, id est, aper (Posset dici ubi lateat sus acer:sed plus roboris est dicendo canis acer ut se vel acri cani proferat) Odoror etiam sagacius: quas?.id est, qualis sudor & quam, id est, quantum malus odor crescat undique membris vietis, id est, flaccidis & vetustate languentibus. cum, id est, qñ?: mulier fetida: properat sedare rabiem indomitam, scilicet, libidinis: pene, id est, cauda virili:soluto scilicet, ab intentignine emisso semine: aut soluto e subligaculus: Nec creta humida, id est, chia terra creti coloris: manet illi scilicet,  vetulae: quia sudore & anhelitu resolvitur. iam scilicet, in coitu: & color phucatus, id est,  phuco & adulterino colore quaesitus: stercore, id est, oleto: crocodilli illius animalis in aegypto frequentis: & ipsa anus rumpit iam subando, id est, subendo more suum diuturno coitu:cubilia tenta, id est, strata & tecta, id est, cooperta tapetis aut lineis cooperimentis. Vel quum vetula illa (Mutavit aūt personam. nam a secunda ad tertiam transivit) agitat, id est, movet mea fastidia, id est, quibus eam fastidio & contenno?: verbis saevis, id est, superbis dicendo scilicet, o horati: tu langues minus inachia, id est, minus fatigatis subagitando inachiam: ac, id est, quam me. tu potes ter nocte scilicet, una inachiam sup. cognoscere aut (ut honor sit oneribus) futuere:quod ex more subticuit sicut comicimiles ego eunuchum illum vel sobrius. Tu autem ( es mihi semper mollis, id est, languens & impotens: ad unum opus scilicet, veneris. Pereat lesbia male quae mihi quaerenti taurum, id est,  fortem subactorem monstravit te inertem, id est,  ignavum & torpentem. Praecipue cum amuntas chous: ex cho insula iuvenis:addesset, id est, praesto esset mihi: cuius nervuus, id est, mentula: inhaeret constantior in inguine, id est, membro muliebri: indomito, id est,  indomabili & semper prurienti: quam nova arbor inhaeret collibus. Cui putas o horati.q.d.ne gratis a te stuprum quaesisse dicat (unde prius munera cur mihi) vellera lanae iteratae, id est, bis tinctae: muricibus, id est, purpuris tyrijs: properabantur, id est, cito parabantur. Nempe, id est, si nescis certe sup. properabantur: tibi. Ne conuiua foret interaequalis, id est, coaevos sodales: quem sua, id est, propria mulier, id est, amica aut potius uxor:diligeret magis quam super ego te. O ego levis, id est, inconstans & imprudens:quam tu fugis: ut agna pavet, id est, pavore fugit lupos acris: aut ut caprae sup. pavent leones.

:: 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: 

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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.