Pliny the Elder and his Historia Naturalis

"The more I observe nature, the less prone I am to consider any statement about her to be impossible.” (Historia Naturalis 11.6)

Front page of a the second book of Historia Naturalis, from an edition printed...sometime after the advent of the printing press but before they learned about white space.

I gave a presentation on Pliny the Elder and his major work, Historia Naturalis, in class yesterday. Below is the text of my handout, which comprised most of my presentation.

I like the Elder Pliny - he's charming. He was, in fact, some of what I would like to be. He worked his whole adult life and wrote books in the evening. There is a letter he wrote to the Emperor Vespasian assuring the emperor that the large number of books coming from the Pliny Press did NOT mean that his work wasn't getting done - he simply didn't sleep much and wrote at night.

Pliny died rescuing friends and investigating the biggest natural event of his lifetime - the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. That somehow feels like a fitting end for such a naturally curious man.

Pliny the Elder: Biography
Works
Historia Naturalis
Pliny's Approach to His Work
Excerpts from Historia Naturalis
Bibliography of Secondary Sources

Five more quotes

The next five. These are slightly more embarrassing - I can only remember that this is what struck me before I turned 20.

Love is like a big ball of mustard - you wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it. --Molly Jorgensen
Molly is now Molly Oliver and has been married for over ten years. She's still my best source of comforting aphorisms.
_____
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Amen to that. I think manners are the rules by which we make others feel at ease, which makes me suspect that most people have more than a smidge of social anxiety.
_____
Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember. --Seneca the Younger
Seneca served as the tutor and then main advisor to the emperor Nero. He helped Nero kill the Dowager Emperess Agrippina, his mother, and in the midst of acting as Nero's consiglieri, Seneca wrote tragic, grisly plays and high-minded philosophy. He died when he disagreed with Nero one too many times and Nero ordered him to commit suicide. I think Seneca knew what he was talking about here.
_____
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. --Winston Churchill
Very comforting to a geeky girl - finally an arena I felt comfortable competing in.
_____
You can always tell a real friend: when you have made a fool of yourself, he doesn't feel that you've done a permanent job. --Lawrence J. Peter.
Aw, I love that one. And here I need to reference Molly again.

Metamorphoses 3.13-14

Thoughts about this passage:

• Apparently nothing cures a crying jag like the chance to impress a girl. Lucius continues to be an emo playboy.
• After translating the last paragraph, it occurs to me that I might not post the next passage on the blog.
• More of curiosity and caring leading to...something. Lucius is driven by his desires and pursues them indiscriminately, and Metamorphoses seems to be of the "curiosity killed the cat" mindset. This desire for Photis is going to go badly for him.  

"Fire and Ice", by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

--Robert Frost

I've always liked this poem, possibly because it is so easy to memorize and comes up in conversation surprisingly often. I also used it in high school as the intro for impromptu speeches at debate tournaments; it's a marvelously flexible poem and you can make it fit almost any subject.

However, while I like it for its ease and utility, I don't believe it. Not that I prefer ice over fire, but that I don't believe the world ends. Phases end; communities end; eras end; other people end; friendships end; even dispensations end. But the world doesn't end - there is always a tomorrow. There is no such thing as "ending up" because there is no ending. Any theory of the final curtain rings hollow because it will never fall. I find this quite heartening.

Metamorphoses 3.12: "Seriously, I still have to go to the dinner party?"

A Roman bathroom from the ruins of Pompeii; the best place, even then, to recover from a good cry.

Notes on this passage:

• Sadly, I don't have many. The passage's translation was spread out over four days, because my niece is visiting me, and I can't remember now what I was thinking before.
• Okay, I do notice, again, how very human and vulnerable Lucius seems. It makes his excesses and bad choices later more sympathetic.
• I told my niece not to let me go to sleep until I finished my homework for today. She held me to it. She's so much a better student than me, even at 11.

Five Quotes

In perusing my planner, I realized again that poetry is only about half of the words in that section, and that includes Prufrock. The half is favorite quotes, so those are going here as well.

Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside, El-ahrairah, where none comes to feed and on the stony bank the rabbit scratches a hole in vain. --Richard Adams, Watership Down
I need to read that book again. It is truly, truly excellent.
_____
Ubi Romani solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. --Cornelius Tacitus
Whoa - serious self awareness from THE Roman historian. It means "Where the Romans create a wasteland, they call it peace."
_____
Someday, when we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tide and gravity, we will harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. --Rene de Chardin
_____
Zeal without knowledge is fire without light. --Thomas Fuller
Lots more fire quotes where those came from.
_____
And it is the privilege of man to work for fruits beyond his immediate reach, and to adjust his life not in slavish conformity to the examples of some present success or even to his own prudent past, limited in its aspiration, but to an infinite future bearing in its heart the ideals of our higher expectations. --Tagore

I think the quotes are going to be listed in order. The poetry was everywhere, but I'm curious to see if there was a linearity as to what struck me when regarding trenchant words. Having said that, although I recorded the Tagore quote back when I was 18, it still makes me want to fly.

Metamorphoses 3.10-11

I had no idea there were so many words for "cry" in Latin.

Notes on these passages:

• Lucius is not a hero here. I kind of like how he's in shock and tears after thinking it was all over for him. 
• But he recovers once obeisance is given to his family. He was supposed to be related to Plutarch - I think it's funny how Apuleius picked a literary luminary rather than a monetary or political figure.

Metamorphoses 3.9

Poor Lucius. The magistrates aren't messing around when it comes to sentencing for murder. Other things, yes; sentencing, no.

The conclusion of the Rashamon story in Metamorphoses.

• This scene feels to me like something of a sick joke, which it surely was. I wonder if its purpose is, in part, to gain for us sympathy for the protagonist, who up until now has been a bit of a hothead. In this situation he got to be fierce and to show genuine remorse, but it all turning out to be a joke keeps the book from being a tragedy and allows it to remain a light, if a bit morbid, comedy.  
• Apuleius absolutely loves participles. Almost half of the verbs in this passage are in participle form, which can be handy to determine who is doing what, but makes translating the tenses trickier. It seems like the text skips back and forth between the perfect and the present tense - I wonder if there is a pattern. I'm sure there is. Sometime in the last 1800 years, someone else has noticed this.

"I Shall Bathe", by Scott M. Roberts

One more, because it is "Other People's Poetry" open mic night at Busboys and Poets, and I want to have a copy of the poem below with me.

It was written by Scott M. Roberts, a writer living here in Virginia, and my favorite living poet. His fabulous site, with lots of hilarious poetry, is Lord of All Fools. I would link to this poem directly on his site, but it's blocked by the firewall. Sorry, Scott.

I Shall Bathe

I've been rolling in dew, running in rain,
But I've never seen a river
Never heard water whisper, in love and in pain,
So deep to my heart that I shiver
And burn.

I've walked in blizzards, and stumbled in mist
But I've never heard the sea.
Never felt the waves around my legs, and reach to kiss
My lips. The hopeful all of me
Licks salt.

I shall not wade.
I shall bathe.

And this dust that I shake into the waves
Dust from snow, and dew, and rain,
May it rest. May it stay lost in the sea of days,
And never see the sky again
Forever.

"Constantly Risking Absurdity", by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This poem came from Ferlinghetti's book A Coney Island of the Mind. This poem is an image below, because the composition of the poem on the page is as important as the words.

The Back of My Planner

My grandparents gave me a Franklin planner for high school graduation. I carried it for the next thirteen years, primarily for one section: my poetry.

I don't mean poetry as what I've written, although there is some of that. But as I encountered poems and quotes that I loved, I wrote them down in the back section. The back of my planner is a record of my intellectual life, a close reading of what struck me as important and when. I finally set aside my planner when I got a BlackBerry, but I still miss my poetry section. Back before I could surf the Washington Post when things got slow in Sunday School, I would read my planner's poetry again and again.

I've tried transcribing the poetry again into a file on my BlackBerry, but ephemeral technology thwarted me. Maybe I can put it here.

I won't put them all at once, or in order, but I might include my thoughts about each poem.

Translation considerations

Roman festival, as concieved by...someone. After Rome, before America. Like most works of art, this painting tells us more about the painter and the age in which it was created than about the subject it is attempting to depict.

The English language is filled with words that have roots in other, more distantly connected languages, most often Greek and Latin. The Greek words came straight from Greek literature and philsophy, while most of the Latinate words were filted through Norman French before coming to roost among natives speaking Anglo-Saxon (or Old Saxon), descended from Old High German. (For more info, see The Oxford History of English. Or, on a less dry note, maybe Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.)

The borrowed words rarely describe completely new concepts, although there are some. This produces many synonyms in English, where there is a Greekish, Latinate, and then Anglo-Saxon word for the same concept. (I am not as familiar with the Greek cognates because I haven't really gotten into Ancient Greek yet - two measly classes only.)

For example(s):
metamorphosis - Greek
transformation - Latin (also mutation, but that has a non-neutral connotation)
change - Anglo-Saxon

aristocratic - Greek
regal - Latin
kingly - Anglo-Saxon

verbose - Latin
wordy - Anglo-Saxon

prior to - Latin
before - Anglo-Saxon

Knowing where the words come from matters because English speakers speak, unsurprisingly enough, Anglo-Saxon first (primarily). While a majority of the words in the dictionary come from Latin and Greek, about 80% of the words Americans use (employ) every day come from Old Saxon. In a way, when we listen to Latinate words, we have to translate into our native tongue (language). When you want to write something arresting and clear, use Anglo-Saxon words.

This matters in translation because while several Latin words have English cognates, using the English cognate does not always capture the spirit of the original text. Often when Latin writers want to appear cultured and above their peers (superior), they will use a Greek word - Latin is for the gritty truth. To convey this sense of what it was like for Latin-speaking readers to read the text, English translators can replace a Greek word in the text with a Latin word, while using Anglo-Saxon words for the earthy (terrestrial) concepts set forth in Latin.



Midterm Post Mortem and Metamorphoses 3.3-5

The test went okay - it was three passages from Metamorpheses, and we were to translate all three in an hour. I studied exactly nothing that was on the test, but she prefaced the test by saying that she didn't expect perfection and she would only take off for dumb mistakes, as opposed to intelligent mistakes. In other words, if I got the grammar down, it would be all right if I came up with the wrong translations, I think.

Still, the last passage was completely by sight. I was missing so much vocabulary that I could only write down about a third. She reassured me as she picked up my test, though, so maybe it will be all right. Another student says that she grades more on the knowledge we show in class and how much we obviously prepare rather than the accuracy of the sight translations.

Most of the passages below we went over in class, which makes doing it here CONSIDERABLY easier. Apparently we are always supposed to be going back over the passages we did in class. So, we should be translating two weeks worth every week, one looking forward and one looking back? Oh my stars.

A Roman short sword, a mucronum

Notes on this passage:

• cuncta vs. cunctatio. cuncta = all, while cunctatio = delay, hesitation. While crazy confusing to translate, I think these playful, close words are a part of Apuleius's style. There is an element of Keyser Soze to it. The accuser uses cuncta over and over again in his accusation, so when Our Hero makes up dialogue to put in the "robber's" mouth, he uses a variation of the vocabulary that he just heard.
• That speech supposedly given by the burly robber - it reeks of Virgilian speeches. The hortatory subjunctives and the future-more-vivid conditions sound like something straight out of a battle scene in the Aeneid. But since it is a made-up speech, and the battle contemplated is a miserably dirty home raid, it's a mockery as well as an homage to the ancient (even to them) epics. It's like Apuleius was writing the second century version of Lord of the Rings, or maybe sketching an ancient Captian Jack Sparrow.
• Lucius invokes the good name of Milo, his host and a local citizen, to lend some credance to his story. He also admits being a little tipsy when the events happened, but denies that he will try to weasel out of it on that matter. It's amusing how he carefully establishes that he'll admit to a few less-flattering circumstances in order to increase his audience's trust in him, because in the next paragraph he starts embellishing and spinning a story like a wild man, flat out inventing the speech the main bad guy gives.
• This is like Rashamon for a fool - same event, described three ways, although only two ways are translated below. We hear the event recounted first by Lucius to the reader, and then by the prosecutor to the jury, and then by Lucius to the jury, and it is markedly different every time. When the true events are finally revealed, the readers learn that none of the accounts were correct.

Apuleius, Metamorphoses 3.1

For the text, I am using the Bryn Mawr Latin Commentaries, Metamorphses Book III, ed. William Turpin.

A Roman bed from around 100 A.D. Lucius' little cot was almost certainly not this nice.

Latin	Vocabulary	Translation
Commodum punicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum quatiens lacertum caelum inequitabat, et me securae quieti revulsum nox diei reddidit.	commodum quatiens lacertum revulsum	It was around the time that Aurora was riding into the sky with rosy trappings, waving an arm, and night returned to the day myself, wrenched from untroubled rest.
aestus invadit animum vesperni recordatione facinori. complicitis denique pedibus, ac palmulis in alternas digitorum vicissitudines super genua conexis, sic grabatum cossim insidens ubertim flebam, iam forum ac uidicia, iam sententiam, ipsum denique carnificem imaginabundus.	aestus facinori palmulis conexis grabatum cossim ubertim	Worry siezes my soul with the memory of last night's crime. Finally with my feet folded up and my hands clasped together above my knees, fingers intertwined, hunched down on the little cot, I cried my heart out, imagining first the court and the judges, then the sentence, and finally the execution.
"An mihi quisquam tam mitis tamque benivolus iudex obtinget, qui me trinae caedis cruore perlitum et tot civium sanguine delibutum innocentem pronuntiare poterit?	mitis obtinget perlitum caedis delibutum	"But what judge would fall to me so gentle and so benevolent that he might be able to pronounce me innocent, me who is smeared with the gore of three murders and spackled with the blood of so many citizens?
hanc illam mihi gloriosam peregrinationem fore Chaldaeus Diophanes obstinate praedicabat."	peregrinationem obstinate	Diophanes the Chaldean was obstinately predicting that for me would be that glory of travel."
haec identidem mecum replicans, fortunas meas heiulabam. quati fores interdum et frequenti clamore ianuae nostrae perstrepi.	replicans heiulabam quati ianuae perstrepi	Repeating this over and over again to myself, I bewailed my fortunes. Meanwhile the doors were shaking and our hallways resounding with the shouts of a mob.

Notes on this passage:

• Apuleius may just be my favorite Latin writer. I love his play with words, and he is a very vivid, immediate dramatist. Other writers wrote more elegant verse and certainly nobler stories, but I get the sense that Apuleius loves the language he is playing with, and he isn't afraid to make his main character a fool. Drama is more lauded, but comedy is harder. Seneca was called the father of the modern theatre (the perk of being rediscovered a century before the Greek dramas), but Apuleius can write circles around him.
• Heaven help me if I forget what quatio means now. I wish I could think of a modern cognate.
• Apuleius will spend time on the physical details of a scene and then refuse to answer the most obvious of questions. Since he clearly knows what  he is doing, it must be deliberate. You can see some of the details he does include in his description here of Lucius sobbing in the fetal position on his "little cot."

Midterm - Apuleius, Metamorphoses Prologue

Apuleius' Metamorphoses is the major work being studied in my class this semester. We read all of Relihan's translation of it in English, and we are reading select passages in Latin.

The Golden Ass is a traditional name for Apuleius' work,

although he called it the Metamorphoses, which is more descriptive of the theme and plot.

My midterm is this afternoon, and there is also homework due. Book III only arrived last night, so I'm not completely ready. I'll spend my lunch hour at work looking over what I need, and maybe I'll guess correctly.
This will be, sadly, a literal translation. It will not be poetic. Perhaps in future posts, I will do both a literal and a poetic translation.

Latin	Vocabulary	Translation
At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram auresque tuas benivolas lepido susurro permulceam — modo si papyrum Aegyptiam argutia Nilotici calami inscriptam non spreveris inspicere — , figuras fortunasque hominum in alias imagines conversas et in se rursus mutuo nexu refectas ut mireris. Exordior. "Quis ille?" Paucis accipe. Hymettos Attica et Isthmos Ephyrea et Taenaros Spartiatica, glebae felices aeternum libris felicioribus conditae, mea vetus prosapia est; ibi linguam Atthidem primis pueritiae stipendiis merui. Mox in urbe Latia advena studiorum Quiritium indigenam sermonem aerumnabili labore nullo magistro praeeunte aggressus excolui. En ecce praefamur veniam, siquid exotici ac forensis sermonis rudis locutor offendero. Iam haec equidem ipsa vocis immutatio desultoriae scientiae stilo quem accessimus respondet. Fabulam Graecanicam incipimus. Lector intende: laetaberis.	perculeam spreveris exordior indigenam aggressus aerumnabili excolui praefamur equidem immutatio desultoriae lector	But I will join together various tales for you in that Melisian speech and I will please your friendly ears with a sugary whisper - only if you do not scorn to look closely at an Egyptian papyrus having been written with a sharp Nilotician pen - the figures and fortunes of men having been turned into other images and rebuilt in turn into themselves again so that you might marvel. I commence. "Who is that man?" Accept these few details. I am from Hymettos in Athens, and the isthmus at Ephyrea and the Taenaros in Sparta; these are my family and homelands of old, rich blobs of soil sowed eternally with richer books; here I in my first studies of boyhood I conquered the Attic language. Soon in the foreign Latin city, a foreigner to zeal of the Quirites, I improve my native the study of the Romans, I attack and improve my native speaking with distressing labor and no teacher guiding.  And behold, we mention in advance your indulgence, if I as the speaker will offend with the strange and rude speeches of the Roman forum. Now  indeed, this change of voice with a pen which we come near corresponds to actions of circus riders, leaping back and forth. We begin the Greekish story. Reader, start your engines: you will be blown away.