Posts by Joshua

Sticking this here for lack of a better place. This essay (attached) is the original inspiration for my fitful start at memorizing Lucretius. The proposed Interlinear Edition had its conceptual beginning with Prof. Harris' method. Scroll to section 2 for his ideas on the subject. The seed has been several years in germinating, I'm glad I was able to find it again this evening!

Yes, choosing a Latin text to work with is an ongoing consideration. The text used by Perseus would be easiest, but I'm not sure I want to be tied to their licensing agreement (however free and easy). I believe they use William Ellery Leonard's correction of the text, which should be Public Domain, but since revision is ongoing for all Perseus texts that presents a problem.

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At some point maybe there's not much choice other than deciding on an authority to copy.

Quite so! I'm tempted to go back to Munro, and use his Revised 4th Edition. (1900) If I can find it...

Good question...

I'm downloading LaTeX right now. It has a package (ExPex) built specifically for Linguists. I'm hoping it can solve a lot of the formatting issues that are invariably cropping up. It would be nice to have one long stream of lines for each book and have the code format it while keeping footnotes on the appropriate page.

Here is an example using a table exported from LibreOffice Calc to Writer, and saved as a PDF.

LaTeX is a typesetting mark-up format that's supposed to be great for this kind of thing. There's a learning curve, but I may see if I can get a handle on that before I commit to doing it this way.

For my purposes I want it in print, so the online version will likely have to be a PDF.

Right. The idea is to have a simplified interlinear text at the top of each page, and the extra annotations below the solid line. Sort of a middle path between Draper and NoDictionaries.

Yes, it is Libreoffice.

Here is a page from P.A. Draper's annotated Greek text of Iliad Book 1;

And my Loeb copy of Lucretius, with unsatisfactory results;

I've discovered that it's very easy to copy and paste whole sections of text into Excel to where it puts one word into each cell and still maintains the appropriate line break. So getting the Latin text into my tables will be really simple.

I'm betting there's also a way to "inter-leave" the rows from two different spreadsheets in a merger. If I can figure that out, then the only challenging part will be to type out the English in a word document. Then it will be a simple matter of merging the two in excel, exporting the combined table to Word (or a typesetting program like InDesign) and building out the rest of the annotations around the tables. I need to get more proficient with Excel (or the open-source knock-off I'm currently using!)

No no! That's why I'm suggesting an additional glossary or lexicon on the same (or perhaps facing) page, under the line as it were. I just want to get all that extra stuff out of the main body of the interlinear text. A year or so ago I memorized the Hymn to Venus in Latin and can still recite and translate it in my head. What I want is an efficient way to read and memorize more of the text with just a helpful hint as I go through it. I'm off work again tomorrow, I'll work up a page or two to show what I mean.

https://www.amazon.com/Revellers-Chor…s/dp/0526006145

Ok, this appears to be the McBride text mentioned above. It's not actually interlinear from what I can tell; it is a translation of the third book of Lucretius published alongside a translation of a selection from Euripides.

I can't find any evidence that there has ever been an interlinear Latin-English edition of the complete text of DRN.

Yes, Cassius and I briefly discussed that one. It only contains the first book, and even when pared down using the filters is far too cluttered for my liking.

I did find an obscure reference to an interlinear edition in an issue of Publisher's Weekly from 1921:

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"On the Nature of Things , Lucretius , interlinear . Revellers , McBride , Broadway Pub . Co."

I haven't been able to track it down.

Proposal:

To prepare an edition of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura with English gloss under Latin text.

Proposed Source Text:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…%3a1999.02.0130

Proposed License:

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

(Necessary if using the Perseus text)

Proposed Format:

Not yet determined.

Brill Publishing (a printer of scholarly works, who I mention for no other reason than that they have a webpage on this subject) recommends for its authors that interlinear glosses should be typeset in a table. The linework is to be made invisible upon completion.

The academic standard for linguistic glossing is the Leipzig System. My preference for this work, however, is for the simplest presentation, and the greatest possible focus on the Latin. To that end, I propose;

-A two line system for the main body of the text, Latin over literal English

-A separate glossary on each page beneath the main body of text for extraneous lexical information (word stem, part of speech, alternative meaning, etc.)

-Snippets of translation within said glossary for more difficult passages.

This table is a proposed gloss for Book I, line 1. Input and feedback welcome!

Proposed Software:

I haven't used Google Docs in quite a long time, but it does seem to be an option for ease of collaboration or even simply feedback. It might be best to use a spreadsheet for the table-work, for importing large quantities of Latin text into separate cells.

I've been combing the internet for the last few days in search of a more elegant solution, but all of the code-based options look frankly like trouble.

-Josh

Eikadistes

Just planting a seed

Diogenes of Oenoanda is excellent on this point;

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In addition to my fellow-citizens who are in this predicament, I desire to help future generations, for they too, though unborn, belong to us, as do any foreigners who may happen to come here.

And a little further down;

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This includes those who are called “foreigners,” though they are not really so, for the compass of the world gives all people a single country and home. But it does not include all people whatsoever, and I am not pressuring any of you to testify thoughtlessly and unreflectively. I do not wish you to say, “this is true,” if you do not agree with us. For I do not speak with certainty on any matter, not even on matters concerning the gods, without providing you evidence, and the proper reasoning to support what I say.

What humans (and some other mammals!) have in lieu of a moral imperative is an empathetic faculty. Even more than that, our evolutionary history has endowed us with a neurological reward circuit to reinforce this faculty. Altruism is then in itself another avenue for the pursuit of pleasure! Nor does this pleasure-reward by any means cheapen the experience of the fulfillment of empathy; indeed, quite the opposite. it means that the act of helping is beneficial both for the one who helps, and for the one who receives help--it brings good to everyone involved.

After all, Vatican Sayings no. 52 doesn't say that friendship dances around the block, or down to the social club and back; "Friendship dances around the world bidding us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness."

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-1057

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I have read Seven Volumes of De la Harpe in course, and the last Seven I have run through and searched but cannot find what I chiefly wanted, His Philosophy of the 18 Century from the Beginning to the End—that revival of the ineffable Nonsense of Epicurus as related by Lucretius not as explained by himself in his Letter in Diogenes Laertius.

I think I agree that DeWitt's reach exceeded his grasp on this point. It is far from settled, in my view, that "Peace and Safety" was a watchword among Epicureans. But it ought not be controversial that these were important, and they were often presented as a pair:

Peace and Safety

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But nothing brings more joy than to live well

in serene high sanctuaries fortified

by wise men’s learning—where you can look down

on other men, see them wandering around

in all directions, roaming here and there,

looking for a path in life, competing

in their natural gifts, striving for honours,

seeking with all their effort night and day

to rise to the top, to win great power.

O wretched minds of men, O blinded hearts!

In what living darkness, what great dangers,

you spend your lives, however long they last!

Do you not notice nature barking out

her one demand, that pain be kept away,

divorced from body, so that, free from care,

free from fear, she may derive enjoyment

in her mind from a sense of pleasure?

Hence, we see that for our body’s nature

only a few things are truly needed—

the ones which do away with any pain.

-Lucretius

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It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but the old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped he has brought into safe harbor in his grateful recollections.

-VS 17

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There is no advantage to obtaining protection from other men so long as we are alarmed by events above or below the earth or in general by whatever happens in the boundless universe.

-VS 72

And yes, Lucian;

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The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquillity, and independence of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms, and marvels, vain hopes and inordinate desires, of the judgement and candour that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.

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For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid;

-Letter to Menoeceus

And in a similar vein:

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Know then, that the only aim of the knowledge of the heavenly phenomena, both those which are spoken of in contact with one another, and of those which have a spontaneous existence, is that freedom from anxiety, and that calmness which is derived from a firm belief; and this is the aim of every other science.

-Letter to Pythocles

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This is the first zoom presentation I have watched involving presentation of a paper. She's basically reading large sections of it, but this will hopefully be followed by question and answer. What's the best format using zoom? Is it ok to basically read a paper as the main presentation? (thinking out loud)

I didn't watch any of this, but this question strikes me as interesting. I went to several book readings in college, mostly of poetry and nonfiction/essays. I always enjoyed the author reading selections from their own work, but the key word is selections! With poetry this is easy, but one essayist in particular does stand out in mind as having been totally captivating; but of course he was writing about his life, his students, his dying father...

An academic work must be more taxing to listen to, as well as to present.

The very best reading I ever attended was one of my professors'. I've never seen a man so completely alive to the power of language. He was also a jazz musician, and he enlisted a few students from that category for accompaniment, so the thematic range of the evening was truly powerful.

So how might we take this concept and make it more approachable...

The oak wreath is also emblematic of a certain pope Julius II, who was a patron of the arts at this time.

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OK so he's the ONLY figure in the fresco with a laurel wreath. The suggestion that laurel wreaths are identified with poets would go a long way toward helping with the identity of this figure if we are confident of that association.

It might...except that its not a laurel wreath! Bay Laurel is indeed associated with poets. But this is an oak wreath.

[Part II]