September 2004 Archives

This has been a good semester, but a hard one. My Shakespeare class is going well; I understand the language of our current play, Measure for Measure, far better than I did our previous one, Othello. I am behind in my reading for my Civil War class, but that's not tragic. Latin is, as always, quite hard. Today Natalie and I worked on Friday's homework, a translation of several lines from Petronius's Satyricon. I know that we translated most of phrases correctly, but we couldn't figure out where to put all of them, and the final product makes almost no sense. Indeed, I shall now type it for you, just so everyone can see how ridiculous it is. I laugh when I try to read it aloud.

The Satyricon, Chapter 5, Lines 8 Through 17

Therefore, I carefully clothed myself, forgetful of all evils, and we bid Giton very willingly servile duty guarded to follow into the bath. Meanwhile we, having been clothed, began to wonder, rather than jest more, and to approach a group of people, suddenly we saw a bald old man, having been clothed in a reddish tunic, playing amond long-haired boys with a ball. Although the long-haired boys were worth looking at, and not as much as the father of the family, who wearing sandals, was exercising himself with the green ball, had led to the sight. Nor was he seeking the ball longer, which had touched the ground, but having been full of the ball, they gave up playing.

And here is the original version, in Latin:

amicimur ergo diligenter obliti omnium malorum, et Gitona libentissime servile officium tuentem iubemus in balneum sequi. nos interim vestiti errare coepimus, immo iocari magis et circulis ludentium accedere, cum subito videmus senem calvum, tunica vestitum russea, inter pueros capillatos ludentum pila. nec tam pueri nos, quamquam erat operae pretium, ad spectaculum duxerant, quam ipse pater familiae, qui soleatus pila prasina exercebatur. nec amplius eam repetebat quae terram contigerat, sed follem plenum habebat servus sufficiebatque ludentibus.