Posts by Joshua

It occurred to me today that it would be possible to use some basic statistical analysis to evaluate which translations are, on the whole, more literal and which are idiosyncratic.

You might, for example, take the Latin text of Book I. Go through it and isolate all of the root nouns and verbs (for simplicity's sake), and put them in the first column of a spreadsheet under "Latin". For the second column, Perseus; whichever definition the Perseus Project suggests for that Latin word goes in column 2. Then Munro. Then a column for numerically representing the deviation from the mode; 0 for using the mode word, 1 for using an idiosyncratic word, 2 for not translating the word at all. Then Bailey and deviation, and so forth.

Then add up the deviation for each column and divide by the number of words. This value is that translator's eccentricity. A higher eccentricity for that data set suggests a less literal translator. Because Perseus cites dictionary entries including multiple translations, it will not count toward modality, nor be included in the final tally.

Eccentricity = (X/7) where X equals the number of words for which there is a mode. Larger numbers signify more consistent outliers.

1743: 0

Bailey: 0.14

Munro: 0.14

Leonard: 0.43

This data set is obviously so small as to be meaningless, and the project is probably not worth doing with a proper set: say, the whole of book one. It could prove interesting to sample passages throughout the book, or perhaps from the beginning of each book.

...but I'm not going to do it!

And now with that understanding of piety vs religion in mind, we can look at Lucian of Samosata with fresh eyes:

Quote

My object, dear friend, in making this small selection from a great mass of material has been twofold. First, I was willing to oblige a friend and comrade who is for me the pattern of wisdom, sincerity, good humour, justice, tranquillity, and geniality. But secondly I was still more concerned (a preference which you will be very far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted with him.

My recent comment in this thread on pietas (piety) may be relevant for this chapter.

I was just listening to an unread book in my Audible library called Long Live Latin by Nicola Gardini. This is part of a review of that book, from the Los Angeles Review of Books, written by Will Boast.

Quote

A dead or “useless” language like Latin is not constantly shifting under your feet, asking you to change your habit of speech and thought every five minutes, or burning the ad man’s latest jingle into your brain. Latin can be more logical, less vividly debased. It can offer, Gardini tells us, both mental quiet and exuberance. “There’s something sacred about discovering Lucretius,” he says with no apparent irony. “It feels like stepping into heaven.”

Lucretius’s long poem, De rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”), is an atheistic tract on the principles of atomism. In Lucretius, it isn’t ritual and superstition that delineates and describes the world but clearly reasoned thinking and discourse. It’s ultimately Lucretius’s “faith in words,” their attempt at the “reeducation of mankind,” that Gardini finds exalting. For Gardini, the promise of Latin is that getting to the root of words, understanding what they meant before they got into Italian or English or any other Romance language, is getting at what underlies and defines our vexing Western culture. “A word’s meaning is history itself,” Gardini says. “[I]t’s our responsibility and our privilege to live it.”

Nearly every chapter of Gardini's book focuses on one aspect of the Latin language by exploring it's use in a particular ancient author. He begins each author with an overview, and then follows with a choice selection of that author's vocabulary; just a few words and their etymology, their later use, and their influence on modern languages and thought.

After that he quotes several passages in Latin from the author's work and explains their importance.

The book was originally published in Italian, but was translated and read by Todd Portnowitz. His reading of the Latin seems good to my ear; slow enough for a novice to pick out the words, but still quite beautiful.

One of the words he chooses from Lucretius is pietas.

Lucretius, Book V, around line 1200;

Quote

nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri

vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras

nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas

ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo

spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,

sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.

Display More

Bailey;

Quote

Nor is it piety at all to be seen often with veiled head turning towards a stone, and to draw near to every altar, no, nor to lie prostrate on the ground with outstretched palms before the shrines of the gods, nor to sprinkle the altars with the streaming blood of beasts, nor to link vow to vow, but rather to be able to contemplate all things with a mind at rest.

1743;

Quote

Nor can there be any piety for a wretch with his head veiled, to be ever turning himself about towards a stone, to creep to every altar, to throw himself flat upon the ground, to spread his arms before the shrines of the gods, to sprinkle the altars abundantly with the blood of beasts, and to heap vows upon vows. To look upon things with an undisturbed mind, this is Piety.

Munro;

Quote

No act is it of piety to be often seen with veiled head to turn to a stone and approach every altar and fall prostrate on the ground and spread out the palms before the statues of the gods and sprinkle the altars with much blood of beasts and link vow on to vow, but rather to be able to look on all things with a mind at peace.

Leonard;

Quote

Nor, O man

Is thy true piety in this: with head

Under the veil, still to be seen to turn

Fronting a stone, and ever to approach

Unto all altars; nor so prone on earth

Forward to fall, to spread upturned palms

Before the shrines of gods, nor yet to dew

Altars with profuse blood of four-foot beasts,

Nor vows with vows to link. But rather this:

To look on all things with a master eye

And mind at peace.

Display More

Pietas, then, is not a synonym of religio but its true opposite. Religio is a kind of madness born of superstition; it is attended by fear, traffics in well-worn lies, and delights in obscurantism and servility. Pietas is the spirit of understanding born of inquiry; it brings peace, "reveals darkly hidden things", and delights in clarity and the health of the unburdened soul.

The presence of mage in the Latin is interesting. Leonard translates it as "master" from magus, which word also has the meaning of magician or sorceror. The rest translate "sed mage" as "but rather", deriving mage from magis.

Perhaps the pun is Lucretius': that while there is nothing supernatural or superstitious in true piety, the study of nature through philosophy transforms life (in the words of Joseph Conrad) into "an enchanted state". A life, indeed, worthy of the gods.

Here's something slightly horrible that I didn't know existed. In the late 19th century a series of interlinear texts were published with the Latin "reduced to the natural English order", meaning that they rearranged the words of the Latin (usually subject->object->verb) to match the word order of English sentences, which is typically Subject->Verb->object.

Horace Complete Interlinear : Horace : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Horace Complete Interlinear

archive.org

I shall have to track down more information. What strikes me immediately is that this process would utterly ruin poetry and the "Latinity" of good prose; I wonder if contemporary reviewers had the same misgivings.

Yeah, fellow recovering Catholic altar boy here. 17 years in Catholic schools, baptized, confessed, and, against my better judgment, confirmed.

Learned young to lie early and often. When I got my first job at 16 I would skip Sunday mass for "work"; "work" in my private vernacular being to leave the house in my work uniform and go browse the books at Barnes and Noble. Imagine my surprise reading the Alexandrian novelist André Aciman years later: "People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are."

One of my prouder moments in secondary school was the paper we were asked to write on Natural Family Planning--or in very public vernacular, Vatican Roulette. I tore that whole business up one side and down the other. I didn't know at the time that I was really embarking on a long campaign which Christopher Hitchens was already defining in the aftermath of 9/11:

Quote

Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.

It could just as truthfully be argued that the conflict in question was not so different to the one articulated by Lucian of Samosata all those centuries ago. It was then and still is "war to the knife" between those on the one side who look for their reward in another life, and who more than merely scorn at the pleasure and beauty and wonder of this world, and those of us on the other who would do all in our power to make this one life truly worth living.

So reflecting on my early Catholicism is, for the second time today, like finding an old friend in Thoreau: "The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

That is a very good passage, thank you! I completely agree when it comes to memorization. I recall walking 18 blocks in the cold one morning with a socket set to change my sister's tire, and made the journey pleasant by silently reciting Lucretius.

Thoreau records that on the desk in his cabin he kept open a copy of the Iliad, and turned it over in his mind while hoeing beans.

Quote

^{A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest—waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.}

Latin-dictionary.net gives this for animans: animate/living being/organism (not man), creature

Wiktionary: A living thing or creature, an animal (as opposed to plants; as opposed to a man)

I'm satisfied as to the Latin. I will tentatively leave in the reference to Menoeceus, but I'm unsure that Greek treats ζωή like Latin treats animans. If I cannot come down to something more certain I will change the note so that it refers to the problem without making a definite conclusion.

Thank you very much Don !

Here is an attachment (I hope) of a draft which shows the general style of the project. When I finish the Hymn to Venus I will upload a more polished version with proper attribution to the sources I'm relying on.

I should also add that I am using OverLeaf as a Latex editor because it's much more tolerant of syntactical mistakes in the code. I am also using the package "glossy" instead of ExPex, because it was designed to be simple and easy instead of feature-rich.

This project has been dormant for two years, but I have recently picked it up from scratch and am making (glacial) progress. I'm grappling with the Latin word animans, which most dictionaries are careful to point out is used for lower order animals but not for humans. I am on the point of insisting that in Lucretius there is no great difference. I am supporting this claim by citing the Letter to Menoeceus, but would appreciate any thoughts as I plow ahead...particularly from Don .

My essential point is that Epicurus in that letter uses the Greek word ζῷον where βίος would be considered more "appropriate". Cyril Bailey translates; "And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; (but when we do not feel pain), we no longer need pleasure."

It's clear that Epicurus makes no distinction between lower animals and humans in this paragraph--both are equally motivated to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. In fact, the reference to fear in the preceding sentence really seems to drive home the point; it is humans and gods even more than animals that are under discussion.

I almost forgot to mention, EricR , that we occasionally have chats with Dr. Kevin Guilfoy who co-edited "The Cambridge Companion to Peter Abelard", so if medieval logic interests you that would be a good book to lay your hands on. Kevin is a great guy and could probably be convinced to answer any questions you might have on that subject.

The Cambridge Companion to Abelard (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

Although best known for his views about universals and his dramatic love affair with Heloise, Peter Abelard (1079-1142) also made important contributions in…

www.amazon.com

It would be fair to say that I have an ascetic streak--for part of my twenties I was a car-free vegetarian who commuted by bicycle and drank more tea than anything else, after much reading in Thoreau, Edward Abbey, Frank Herbert and Buddhism. Some of this I found to be impractical in a small Midwestern city. The vegetarianism I found to be a strain on interpersonal relationships. It made dining with others very troublesome.

The thing is I couldn't let philosophy in general go even if I wanted to. I think for some people the questions arise unbidden. When Salman Rushdie went into protection after the fatwa, Susan Sontag told him "Salman! It’s like being in love! I think of you night and day: all the time!" It's like that with philosophy.

Death, life beyond the grave, ethics, morality, the nature of human life; even without Epicurus I should spend much time turning these things over in my mind.

Welcome!

I've been listening to an audiobook by Matthew Stewart called "Nature's God; The Heretical Origins of the American Republic."

I am still in the early chapters, but his project is to trace the Deism of Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, etc--and the list is quote long--back through Charles Blount, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, and finally through Lucretius and back to Epicurus. I cannot really review it at this time (although I might recommend a paper copy as easier to read carefully), but I am finding it very interesting.

Too kind as usual, Pacatus !

Thank you.

Quote

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

This is an excerpt.

That clears that up! Thank you, I was trying to work out how he could have managed that.

Speaking of manuscripts, I watched this video on the digitization of the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad and found it really fascinating. It's amazing how many different specialists it takes to undergo this kind of project.