Quote: On The Teaching of Benjamin Jowett

from, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett: Master of Balliol College, Oxford. by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell. 1897. Vol I. p. 199-201.

He managed always to direct the study of language so as to promote literary culture. The pieces set by him for composition were choice specimens of classical English, which prompted higher efforts, and led to a closer intimacy with great writers. . .

His criticism in those days stimulated without discouraging. In setting before the mind a lofty idea he implied a belief in powers hereafter to be developed and the belief seemed to create the thing believed in. But the intellectual stimulus was not all. He seemed to divine one's spiritual needs, and by mere contact and the brightness of his presence, to supply them. If he was ready to repress conceit, he was no less ready to bestow encouragement on the diffident, and sympathy upon the depressed; not without timely warning, when he saw the danger or temptation was at hand. His intimate knowledge of his former pupils' lives was applied to heal the errors of their successors, and his own experience of early struggles also had its effect. He ignored trifles, but never let pass any critical point.

. . . If there was less of exact scholarship imparted by him. . . the whole subject was surrounded with an air of literary grace and charm which had a more educative effect.

Quote: Sallust on Self-Indulgence

Sallust. Bellum Catilinae. 13. (Trans. J. C. Rolfe. 1921)

. . .the passion which arose for lewdness, gluttony, and the other attendants of luxury was equally strong; men played the woman (muliebria pati), women offered their chastity for sale; to gratify their palates they scoured land and sea; they slept before they needed sleep; they did not await the coming of hunger or thirst, of cold or of weariness, but all these things their self-indulgence anticipated. Such were the vices that incited the young men to crime, as soon as they had run through their property. Their minds, habituated to evil practices, could not easily refrain from self-indulgence, and so they abandoned themselves the more recklessly to every means of gain as well as of extravagance.

Classics: Dead and Loving It

There are days, maybe one a week, on which I try to catch up on news in the Classics field in some detail. On those days without fail I come to the conclusion not that Classics should remain without revival but in fact that it is not dead enough. Maybe this says more about me than about the discipline. I don't talk a lot about my own academic experience because I have a Paul Bunyan-sized ax to grind with every school I attended and I don't think I can bring much unbiased reflection to the table. So take what I say about the field with this in mind: I am an angry outlier to the world of Classical studies.

What set me off today was something that epitomizes the source of my frustration with Classics: its utterly tone-deaf self-promotion.

I'm rarely speechless but I sat here for five minutes tongue-tied in frustration. I'm usually only this gobsmacked when I walk around a mall or watch people eat. But you have 280 characters and this is what you write?! Memo, via, versus, and bona fide! Then you sell it with a lead-in fit for a multivitamin and slap that ridiculous picture underneath?

That's it. We're done. Everyone pack up and go home. Classicists should be paid to stay home in silence and count gerunds.

Quote: The Carthaginian Who Said No to War

from Livy's Ab Urbe Condita. Book 21.

Translation by Bruce J. Butterfield

21.3 ... The soldiers led the way by bringing the young Hannibal forthwith to the palace and proclaiming him their commander-in-chief amidst universal applause. Their action was followed by the plebs. Whilst little more than a boy, Hasdrubal had written to invite Hannibal to come to him in Spain, and the matter had actually been discussed in the senate. The Barcines wanted Hannibal to become familiar with military service; Hanno, the leader of the opposite party, resisted this. "Hasdrubal's request," he said, "appears a reasonable one, and yet I do not think we ought to grant it" This paradoxical utterance aroused the attention of the whole senate. 

He continued: "The youthful beauty which Hasdrubal surrendered to Hannibal's father he considers he has a fair claim to ask for in return from the son. It ill becomes us, however, to habituate our youths to the lust of our commanders, by way of military training. Are we afraid that it will be too long before Hamilcar's son surveys the extravagant power and the pageant of royalty which his father assumed, and that there will be undue delay in our becoming the slaves of the despot to whose son-in-law our armies have been bequeathed as though they were his patrimony? I, for my part, consider that this youth ought to be kept at home and taught to live in obedience to the laws and the magistrates on an equality with his fellow-citizens; if not, this small fire will some day or other kindle a vast conflagration." 

21.4 Hanno's proposal received but slight support, though almost all the best men in the council were with him, but as usual, numbers carried the day against reason. 

21.10 The result was that, beyond being received and heard by the Carthaginian senate, the embassy found its mission a failure. Hanno alone, against the whole senate, spoke in favour of observing the treaty, and his speech was listened to in silence out of respect to his personal authority, not because his hearers approved of his sentiments. He appealed to them in the name of the gods, who are the witnesses and arbiters of treaties, not to provoke a war with Rome in addition to the one with Saguntum. "I urged you," he said, "and warned you not to send Hamilcar's son to the army. That man's spirit, that man's offspring cannot rest; as long as any single representative of the blood and name of Barca survives our treaty with Rome will never remain unimperilled.

You have sent to the army, as though supplying fuel to the fire, a young man who is consumed with a passion for sovereign power, and who recognises that the only way to it lies in passing his life surrounded by armed legions and perpetually stirring up fresh wars. It is you, therefore, who have fed this fire which is now scorching you. 

Cicero, Frightful Reactionary

You know an academic just finished a book and is ready to start hocking it when they start publishing a lot of fun, fluffy articles that people will actually read. Enter Mary Beard's "10 Best Ancient Romans." We'll of course ignore the ridiculous title, which we assume was written by an editor, and won't castigate the author for applying such a ridiculous criterion of "best" to the category of Romans. Whatever that means, she wrote 10 blurbs, one about Cicero.

The whole list vexes me, especially that of Cicero, whose description especially irks me for three reasons.

First, saying that you have many reasons but not articulating them makes that pronouncement of them a dishonest qualifier. Obviously there is no space there for lengthy explication and evidence, but the ambiguity is misleading and confusing: is she emphasizing that Cicero was predominately reactionary or that he wasn't wholly reactionary? I guess everyone can think what he wants. The fact that she subsequently refers to the events of Catiline's conspiracy as a low point invites someone to interpret that as evidence of Cicero's reactionary views, although I fail to see how it does.

Second, the word frightful is a cheap shot. It's the kind of word people casually toss in when they want to let you know that someone doesn't hold the approved opinions. I guess Cicero wasn't a LibDem. Who knew?

Third, she mentions that Cicero was exiled for the summary execution of Catiline's conspirators as if it was justice, when in fact Cicero's exile was simply what suited the advancement of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar and provided Clodius an opportunity to take revenge on Cicero. In February of 58BC Clodius as tribune proposed a law which would exile anyone who did or had executed a citizen without due process. While a redundant law, it would exact revenge on Cicero and distract the optimates. It is telling that, when Clodius passed a law which further punished Cicero, forbidding him from living within 400 miles of Rome and forbidding anyone from giving him aid, Cicero didn't have trouble finding people to put him up.

As for the conspiracy itself, it is unclear whether the found arms sufficiently demonstrate intent to betray the fatherland and thus condemn Catiline's conspirators. If it was, then one could argue they had by taking up arms against Rome relinquished their citizenship.

I'm not exonerating Cicero here, and I'm not doing justice to the intricacies of the conspiracy either. I guess the situation deserves a little more than a glib remark.

Fourth, what of such forthright criticism and disdain for being a reactionary when others get a pass in the very same article? Ovid gets a pass for being subversive and opposed to Augustus' moral regime, the wife of that same emperor gets a pass for no other reason, it seems, than she was female, and Caligula of all people gets a pass after brushing off "most" allegations as "invented or embroidered." I'm not condemning Ovid, Augustus, or even Caligula, but why is Cicero held to a completely different standard. Usurers, corrupt emperors, provocative poets–everyone gets a pass and Cicero slammed in this list of favorite people? I guess it's still better than being compared to Obama.

–

I realize Beard wasn't out to pick out the most moral and upright Romans. (Who would do such a terrible thing like that nowadays?) Her selections are all colorful characters, but alas, bias has to enter. Perhaps less bias than insecurity, for her criticism reminds me of when someone qualifies their agreement with someone by adding, "Not that I agree with everything he says," as if anyone would assume such a thing. As if, though, I would assume anyone of notoriety today would approve of Cicero. As an aside, though, how typically liberal is this list??

A hypocritical conservative white man is in charge, women are oppressed, evil men are victims of bad press, and a cool hip author write about sex. Reaction and conservatism are out, opposition to traditional power is in. Worst: Caelius est in horto needs to be translated. O temp–oh never mind.

Top Ten: Latin Proficiency Impediments

Latin has a bad rap nowadays. Actually it's had a bad rap for a while. It is stuffy. Archaic. Blah blah blah. I won't take aim at those paltry objections here, since I pity–and endure–modern man's alienation from his past. To one accusation, however, I strenuously object, and that accusation is of Latin's peculiar difficulty. Yes, the process of learning Latin has challenges, but far fewer than of learning languages like Greek or English, and no more than many other endeavors. Unlike the problem of learning the subtleties and seemingly endless variations of English, the difficulties in learning Latin, at least for the native speaker of English, are few and predictable. In my years teaching, they are the ten which follow. Additions welcome.

10. Ignoring the Part of Speech

One of the struggles I least expected was how unfamiliar some students are with the parts of speech: noun, verb, adverb, et cetera. Even having overcome this difficulty, I still have ripped hairs from my head trying to help students limit the function of words to what they are categorically able to do. Chiefly, this problem applies to comprehending verbs. For example, many times students define vultis, as "wish," which is all well and good excepting that in English, wish can be a noun or a verb. Similarly, many students try to determine case and use of adverbs, such as paulisper, "for a short time," since they seem often to conform to the case uses, ignoring that their part of speech makes such unnecessary and impossible. The problem is harder to overcome when explaining compound forms such as infinitives, participles, and gerunds.

9. Vocabulary and Broad Meanings

While every Latin teacher has to cope with students who don't diligently study vocabulary, more challenging is getting them to memorize the fully entry, and harder still to use that information. It is one thing to know that manus means "hand," another thing to realize it uses fourth declension endings, and still another to know its gender is feminine and therefore must agree with a feminine adjective. Likewise it is easier to know that pono means "put" than it is to know all of its principal parts by which to conjugate and recognize its forms in all tenses, persons, numbers, and voices. Even students who memorize their vocabulary, though, often struggle at calling them to mind as they read and using the information of the entry to identify the form in from of them.

At the upper levels, though, with the essentials mastered, the definition again becomes a challenge. No longer is it acceptable to know the most famous definition of condo "build," or even that it can also mean to bury, store, or hide, but the student must understand that its most essential, literal definition is "to put into," and that by extension it can mean "to found" (i.e. to put a foundation in the ground), "to save" (i.e. to put in a container for future use) and "to hide" (e.g. put in something out of sight.) I encounter the problem most prominently when I first teach Tibullus 1.1, where among many examples, lustro means not "shine" but "purify," lacus not "lake" but "trough," and levo not "lift" but "comfort," among others. The issue, though, is best exemplified by line 40 from Horace Ode 3.1:

Post equitem sedet atra cura.

Horace's line has been infamously mistranslated by Latin neophytes as, "The black lady sits cautiously behind the horseman," instead of "Black care sits behind the rider."

8. Brute Force Memorization

I have a passable memory, and I find it as often works to my disadvantage as to my benefit. For students with the gift of recall, the temptation is to memorize rather than comprehend. I have have seen students convince themselves, and others, that they can read Latin when they are in fact merely regurgitating. Sometimes the problem is obvious, as when a student vomits out a translation–how confused the look of a student whom I asked why he translated a phrase with "hath" and "doth"–but sometimes the error is concealed. Even students who don't memorize translations often simply remember the gist from the first read-through and use that as a tool by which to piece together what they missed. Other students, while they don't recall full translations, are apt at recognizing patterns, which is in some respects a virtue. (See #7) Other times, though, it can stunt their growth.

For example, it is one thing to remember that nomine may mean "named," because it is commonly seen as such, at least in some text books, but another to realize it is used in the ablative case to mean "with respect to name." This recall may simply look like experience, and it is in fact useful and as far as some students get in their understanding, but it is not proficiency. Such recall is commendable if it proceeds along with and feeds grammatical understanding, but alone is illusory understanding.

7. Heuristics

Similarly, one does want students to cultivate experience into rules which narrow down probabilities. It is reasonable, for example, to gravitate toward taking Marco as dative when the verb is one of giving, showing, or telling. I have seen many students struggle because they are unable to rule out what is improbable and they attempt every conceivable solution to a problem. On the other hand I have had difficulty restraining students from jumping the gun and getting them to explore the less obvious solution.

6. The Inflection Hump

A common situation: a student can perfectly write out all the forms of qui, quae, quod, but not translate it in a sentence. Likewise, a student translates all forms of the verb as if they were in the same tense. It's simply very hard for some students to break the habit, acquired by their familiarity with English, of taking words next to each other as related.

You can put a subject and object next to one another as in Marcus manum and you'll get "Marcus' hand." Likewise some students default to making proper nouns the subject, so if you put lupus Marcum terret, you will most certainly get as a translation, "Marcus scares the wolf."

Slaves, All Slaves

One of the most striking modern positions is the reluctance to consider the concepts of freedom and slavery from other than political premises. By political premises I mean those factors which control the individual from without. It also seems that people of all types avoid the question, for conservatives, libertarians, and liberals all most often consider economic liberty. The former groups think that that once he is not compelled by the deliberate force of another individual, they think, a man is fully free. The latter often have a broader view, to their credit, but not only do they so often sit ready to enslave some to free others, but they also neglect the human choice in pursuing virtue and true freedom, seeing only victims of circumstance. Eluding all are the various ways in which men enslave themselves.

Cicero enumerates these ways well in one of his least known treatises, Paradoxa Stoicorum, in which he discusses Stoic philosophy's maxims, called paradoxes, (from Gk. παράδοξος, strange) because they contradicted popular opinion. The illustrative section discusses the fifth paradox, that:

Ὄτι μόνος ὁ σοφὸσ ἐλεύθεροσ καὶ πας ἄφρων δουλος.
solum sapientem esse liberum, et omnem stultum servum.
Every wise man is free and every fool a slave.

We see plainly this view considers freedom not from the vantage point of politics, but of virtue. Let us consider the same.

N.B.: I move freely between Cicero's text, in Latin and translation, and my own thoughts.

–

Cicero begins by questioning the liberty of the man who cannot control his desires. Indeed it seems plain that a man who lusts for food or flesh or is driven by avarice or anger is certainly not free. He is controlled by no one, not even himself, and so he is not free. Freedom is not the total absence of constrictions, but self-control.

#1: Enslaved to Yourself

Suppose then a man is in total self-control, then. Is he by nature free? Let us consider the example of a killer, who controls himself rigidly so that he can achieve his grisly ends. He may deny himself things he wishes, but because his end is wicked we would not consider him free. As Cicero says, he is free who follows the right things, who is virtuous. It is also important to consider the reverse of this position: that a man who only does good because he fears reprisal or out of accident or incidence is not free, for his path is chosen for him, either by force or occasion. Cicero puts it best when he says that he is free who rejoices in duty (qui gaudet officio) and who "says nothing, does nothing, and thinks nothing indeed except gladly and freely," (qui nihil dicit nihil facit nihil cogitat denique nisi libenter ac libere.) Liberty is a condition of the mind, then, and slavery the "obedience of a broken will," (obedientia fracti animi.)

#2: Enslaved by Others

Cicero's next consideration is the slavery of the uxorious man, hilariously caricatured by the felicitous brevity of Latin: poscit, dandum est; vocat, veniendum; eiicit, abeundum; minatur, extimescendum. We might expand Cicero's explanation and say that he is not free who is under anyone's command under compulsion. He may be a king who tyrannizes with taxation, a robber who threatens your life, a bully who hangs ostracism over you, or even a lover or friend who manipulates by withholding, but any such person controls you.

#3: Enslaved to Things: The Lautiores Servi

One of the great trends of Cicero's day was the collection of foreign, especially Greek, artworks and the construction of grand houses. Today we may add gadgets, totems of fashion, luxury cars, and exotic vacations to the list of temptations to which people yield. Cicero is harsh upon the fools he observed oohing and aahing over works of art, saying such things ought to be "non ut vincula virorum sint sed ut oblectamenta puerorum," not chains of men but amusements for children. We may pause to wonder here whether Cicero is fully endorsing this harsh stoic tenet or merely presenting it for the Roman audience, and we may make prudent room for finery, travel, and technology, namely that their pursuit must for enriching ones virtue.

For example, one should dress well not to impress others because you are insecure about your status, but because it is fitting for a man to adorn a fine character with fine clothes. Similarly, one should travel not so that one is seen traveling, but to see loved ones or complete his duties for work. Likewise one should purchase art not to compete with other collectors or be thought fashionable nor one not gaze at nonsensical art so that others think you are a profound thinker, but rather one should collect good art and give oneself to that art which ennobles and enriches the spirit by drama and beauty. Finally, one should use not technology to do his job or as playthings, but to augment his ability to complete his work. By their nature, then, things enslave which one pursues either for the wrong reason or immoderately for the proper reason.

#4: Enslaved to Money

In its most simple sense, enslavement to money is tantamount to enslavement to any physical thing, as above. If one works for money to buy things, then one is still enslaved to the things one hopes to buy. If one acquires money for status, then one is enslaved to the opinions of others. And so on and so forth. Yet because money is no end in itself, but a means to an end, we must also consider it in a different light. Many times we hear people say that they earn money not for anything in particular and that they do not covet money, but that they desire the ability to do what they want. This might seem some wisdom, the realization that money is mere means, but how demeaning is it to work with no purpose in mind! Such work is not the rational pursuit of an end, but either the base indulgence of whim or a waste of one's time, i.e. life. We may rightly think of Creon's words to the guard,

καὶ ταῦτ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀργύρῳ γε τὴν ψυχὴν προδούς. (Antigone 322)

One indeed does sell one's life for money, for work is chosen as money, as means to end. One does not live to work, but works to attain leisure. Ebenezer Scrooge is the archetype, but there are many cheerful Scrooges in the world, not grumpy and miserly, but just as wasteful of life.

#5: Enslaved to Advancement

Cicero then writes of the blind ambition for political office and what a domineering a mistress she is. How people debase themselves climbing the ladder. I would more broadly cast this argument as the blind pursuit of improvement. Who does not see people who pursue more money, better jobs, more interesting friends, more attractive lovers, and so on ad infinitum? This is not in fact pursuit, but flight, flight from what one has and fears to love, and who in fear flees is not free.

#6: Enslaved to Guilt

Finally, we may consider the slavery of the guilty man. Cicero writes in consideration of a man who because of some crime he committed, is not free. This man fears the opinions of all, for he suspects them of knowing his guilt, and as such they are all his masters for he fears them all.

–

We see then that the waters of liberty are challenging to navigate, not only the political seas but the personal. It is one thing–a good and necessary thing–to free oneself from a political yoke, but it is another–a good and necessary thing too–not to be a slave to oneself. We ought not cast off the rule of the tyrant and declare liberty, for if we do so without regard for self-knowledge, self-mastery and the disciplined pursuit of virtue, then in the words of Cicero, we have simply changed masters.

A Modest Proposal: The Sortes Virgilianae

Now that the Times of London has made a small step toward civilization and erudition with the return of its weekly Latin crossword puzzle, I propose another section be edited proper across all newspapers: the horoscopes. They are preposterous, of course, but persist through the human nature to be titillated by a glimpse of the forbidden, and what is more forbidden than the future? Since the desire doesn't seem to be on the wane–and if Dante's depiction of the fortune tellers ambling about the underworld with their heads turned round in poetic justice doesn't discourage, nothing will–then we might as well get something valuable out of the experience.

What better to replace a ridiculous trend, then, with an older ridiculous one which is at least more august? I refer to the so-called Sortes Virgilianae, the practice of divining the future not by preposterous cards or observing cosmic alignments, but opening to a random page of Vergil. In fact I propose a widespread return of bibliomancy using a variety of texts. Perhaps the Post can use Vergil and the Daily News, Homer. Who wouldn't prefer Vergil to the artless, hazy prognostications of astrologers?

Besides, how bad could your fortune be? It's Vergil. Go ahead, read your Vergilian fortune.

vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus,
et super incumbens cum puppis parte revulsa
cumque gubernaclo liquidas proiecit in undas
praecipitem ac socios nequiquam saepe vocantem; Aen. 5.857ff [Trans]

Oh, wait. That's... Let's try again:

Tum caput ipsi aufert domino truncumque relinquit
sanguine singultantem; atro tepefacta cruore
terra torique madent. 9.332ff [Trans]

Alright, well...But it worked so well for Charles I:

At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis
finibus extorris, complexu avulsus Iuli
auxilium implored videatque indigna suorum
funera; nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae
tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur,
sed cadat ante diem mediaque inhumatus harena. Aen. 4.615ff [Trans]

You know what. Never mind. 

Figures of Rhetoric and Syntax

This list of Latin and Greek rhetorical devices was born slowly and out of frustration with existing reference materials, which failed students insofar as they variously:

1. Were incomplete, leaving out significant figures.
2. Did not cite examples in Latin.
3. Did not give the references for the examples.
4. Provided no explanation.
5. Gave confusing explanations.
6. Had contradictory entries.
7. Did not give alternative names and Greek names.

While there are many books and websites of great use and which have served me well, it is my hope that this list somehow rectifies these common errors and makes useful improvements. I add a few caveats.

1. It is not exhastive, and there are some figures known to me for which I cannot presently offer any good Latin examples. 
2. Some of the definitions are textbook, others I adapted for clarity, and others I took the liberty of writing myself.
3. Some examples are common or famous, the classica exempla of the figure, others more obscure.
4. I have refrained from explanation where I thought the defninition, example, or annotation (boldfacing, italicizing, et cetera) sufficient.
5. For authors with only one work to their name or only one extant work, such as Valerius Flaccus and Lucan, the works are not listed in the entries.
6. I have risked cluttering the page refrained from abbreviations for the benefit of those less familiar or unfamiliar with the authors of the Latin canon.

Finally, regarding both the selections and definitions, I make no pretensions of originality. I reiterate what Cicero said of his philosophy, verba tantum adfero, I only supply the words, (Epistulares Ad Atticum, 12.52) and while I have not so copius a supply as he, I hope this list is of some use.

–

Accumulatio: Latin, “heaping, piling up,” in Gk. ἀνακεφαλαιωσις, “summary of an argument,” also Latin Recapitulatio, “restatement of points, summing up,” and Enumeratio, “listing,” the return to points made previously, this time in a compact, forceful manner. It is often used with climax to present the summation of a speech.

Suae pudicitiae proditor est, insidiator alienae; cupidus intemperans, petulans superbus; impius in parentes, ingratus in amicos, infestus cognatis; in superiores contumax, in aequos et pares fastidiosus, in inferiores crudelis; denique in omnes intolerabilis. (Pseudo Cicero. De ratione dicendi ad C. Herennium 4.52)

Adunaton: Gk. ἀδύνατον, “impossible,” extreme hyperbole to suggest an impossibility. It is especially common of lovers’ oaths.

cum Paris Oenone poterit spirare relicta,
  ad fontem Xanthi versa recurret aqua.

(Ovid. Heroides. 5. 29f)

When Paris will breathe with Oeneone abandoned, / turned to the source, the waters of the Scamander will return.

From the choral ode in Euripides' Medea: ἄνω ποταμῶν ἱερῶν χωροῦσι παγαί (410)

Allegory:  Gk. ἀλληγορία, “veiled language, figurative,” an extended metaphor in which abstract ideas figure as circumstances or persons.

The personification of rumor in Vergil. Aeneid. 4.173-197.

Alliteration: Latin, littera, “letter,” the repetition of the same sound beginning several words in sequence.

Viri validis cum viribus luctant. (Ennius. Annales. 307)

timidae tellus tutissima matri (Statius. Achilleis. 1.211)

Anacoluthon: Gk. ἀνακόλουθον, “not following,” a lack of grammatical sequence; a change in the grammatical construction within the same sentence.

Si, ut dicunt, omnes Graios esse. (Cicero. De Re Publica. 1.58)

Here, the si expects a parallel omnes graii sunt, but instead we have an indirect statement dependent on dicunt. 

Anadiplosis: Gk. ἀναδίπλωσις, "doubling back," the repetition of a word that ends one clause at the beginning of the next.

Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? (Cicero. In Catilinam. 1.2)

Anaphora: Gk. ἀναφορά, “carrying back” the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.

Nihil agis, nihil moliris, nihil cogitas, quod non ego non modo audiam, sed etiam videam planeque sentiam. (Cicero. In Catilinam. 1.8)

da nomina rebus, da loca; da vocem qua mecum fata loquantur. (Lucan. 6.773-4) 

nec, quid Hymen, quid Amor, quid sint conubia curat. (Ovid. Metamorphoses. 1.480)

Anastrophe: Gk. ἀναστροφή, “a turning up,” the transposition of normal word order; most often found in Latin in the case of prepositions and the words they control. Anastrophe is a form of Hyperbaton.

errabant acti fatis maria omnia circum.  (Vergil. Aeneid. 1.32) 

cur ulla puer iam tempora ducit te sine? (Statius. Achilleis. 1.129)

Antimetabole: Gk. ἀντιμεταβολή: from ἀντί, "against, opposite" and μεταβολή, "turning about, change, "the repetition of words in successive clauses in changed order.

Miser ex potente fiat ex misero potens. (Seneca. Thyestes. 1.35)

Antistrophe: Gk. ἀντιστροφή, “a turning back,” the repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses. Also called Epiphora, Gk. επιφορά and Epistrophe, Gk. ἐπιστροφή.

Laelius homo novus erat, ingeniosus erat, doctus erat. (Pseudo Cicero. De ratione dicendi ad C. Herennium 4.19)

Click "Read More" below for the rest of the list.

Where Was I? Part II: Because Latin

When at the conclusion of Latin IV last year I asked my students to reflect on the experience, one remarked that our inability to procure a text book changed the class. I didn't know it at the time I was frantically copying pages, but my student would prove correct. Quite by chance we happy few of Latin IV found ourselves liberated from the constraints of curiously culled collections and before us had the entire Latin canon. Now that may sound exciting, but to a teacher it sounds a logistical nightmare. Indeed it was both a risk and a burden to adapt the curriculum, but it seemed timid to suffer through the compromises of an anthology for mere convenience. The result was an immensely successful and satisfying year about which I'll write later.

The result was also the desire to refine those selections, add the necessary vocabulary and notes, and then compile additional resources–maps, charts, timelines, images of works of art, fun marginalia– into a proper anthology, which I have done. I'm excited to use it through this coming year, but it was quite a labor.

Instead of the senior slog through Vergil–a terrible thing to do to teachers, students, and Vergil–I selected several topics which we explore philosophically through lecture, discussion, and articles, and which we follow up with Latin texts.

1. Warm-Up: Aesop's Fables in Latin
2. Cosmology: The beginning of Ovid's Metamorphoses
3. Mythology: The tales of Echo and Narcissus from the Metamorphoses and Orpheus and Eurydice from Georgic IV.
4. Courage: Nisus and Euryalus from Aeneid IX
5. Elegy & Leisure: Tibullus I 
6. Leisure: Selections from Horace, Martial, Catullus, and Ovid
7. Beauty: Selections from Horace's Odes
8. History and Philosophy of History: Livy I: Ch. 1-16
9. Stoicism and Moral Philosophy: Marcus Aurelius in Latin

Reading Ovid we compare science and mythology, and we let Aristotle guide us through the story of Nisus and Euryalus, focusing on the question of courage. I introduce the topic of leisure with Josef Pieper and that of Beauty with Roger Scruton.  It was quite a blast, I must say. (And it was no small thrill to fill full the selections of Ovid and Vergil which the anthology had sliced down to thin morsels.)

What took even longer than the anthology, though, was the next major revision, 3.0, of the Latin Grammar on which I've been working for some time. Some time ago I grew tired of bouncing back and forth between incomplete modern grammars and stuffy, confusing old ones. The result is now a few hundred pages of an intellegible, organized, comprehensive Latin grammar. It was as much a task of organization and formatting as it was of clear explication. 

At any rate: it's done, and I'm back blogging.

App Review: Three More Classics Apps

I. Latin Scansion

Latin Scansion is a perfect companion for the student learning to parse the Latin hexameter or for old pros looking. . . to scan Latin hexameters for fun. As small as either group might be, this app is a boon to both, foremost because it provides feedback to your work. One of the common struggles for practicing students is the inability to find correctly scanned lines against which to check their work. This lacuna is also a product of the teacher's difficulty not only of distributing a large quantity of such material, but also of ensuring students don't simply copy the correct answers. Latin Scansion helps fill the gap.

Set up as a game, you tap either the "long" or "short" button to indicate the length of the next syllable, scanning the hexameter from left to right.

The simple interface makes rather addictive the task of scansion, and if the thrill of metrical pyrotechnics is simply not enough for you, the game spurs you on with motivations like achievements, timed games and a record of your winning streak. The game is good fun and practice, but there's room for improvement which would make a stellar app.

First, the selections are limited to Vergil, specifically to Aeneid I, II, IV, and VI. They are predictably the selections scattered throughout the AP Test and total about 800 lines. Some longer, and more importantly contiguous selections, would encourage everyone to read as he scans, and to read Vergil not to pass a test, but for the value of the literature. Second, it would be helpful to include the option of marking the caesura, diaeresis, and feet, as well as toggling the natural long marks. Third, students would benefit from the ability to choose lines matching particular criteria, such as those with a spondaic fifth foot, elisions, hiatus, and so on. Fourth, independent students would likely welcome a summary of scansion rules. Finally and most obviously, it seems a gap for an app called Latin Scansion to leave out meters besides the hexameter.

Overall, although these are suggestions for major additions, they're but minor complaints about an app which gives a fun, digital twist to an ancient tradition.

$1.99 

II. Logeion

Who doesn't want a slick Greek and Latin lexicon? Beyond the convenience of having a combined reference for both languages, Logeion offers two features which I think commend it to students. First, it offers entries in multiple references. For Greek it offers the LSJ, DGE, Autenrieth, Middle Liddell, and Slater entries, and for Latin the BWL, Lewis and Short, Lewis' Elementary, and DuCange. Second, it does not allow the entry of inflected forms, which comes as a relief to teachers who recommend online resources like Whitaker's Words and The Perseus Project with reservations, finding them often all too helpful.

One feature beyond the entries which I like is the inclusion of extended examples from the corpus, which allows you to look at a word used in fuller context, not just surrounded by the bare minimum required for sense.

The most useful feature which recommends it to educators in particular is the section of each entry that tells you in which chapter the word is introduced in the most common text books. Every teacher who has juggled multiple books, years of students, and curricula, has struggled to remember which students have been taught which words at which point. Logeion contains such data for Hansen and Quinn, Reading Greek, Learn to Read Greek, Learn to Read Latin, Mastronarde, and Wheelock.

A a most useful, but not too useful, tool.

Free


III. Barrington Atlas

Alas, the app for which I was most excited and which is the most expensive, fails to deliver. To start with the good, the maps are quite fine. In particular, the relief of the topography is crystal clear, a detail is often lacking in maps of the classical world. Too the shading of the landscape, indicating desert, sea, and so forth, is subtle. The ancient Latin names are also retained, as are the Greek, although the latter are transliterated. Speaking of text, the authors very kindly drew the black text with a thin white border around it, making it exceptionally legible and easy on the eyes.

Beyond the minutiae, there are 102 maps of more specific places and eras of antiquity than you're likely to find in general interest atlases and they are of a higher quality than the skimpy black and white versions which we're accustomed to find thrown into texts.

The downside is that you can't zoom in nearly as far as you would hope, that is, as far as we've come to expect when looking at high resolution files. You can zoom in rather far, but the zoom won't lock at the deepest level, making viewing at that level a chore. Besides this disappointment, and other minor ones like the fact that opening the key covers most of the map, there is a nearly-debilitating bug in which zooming back out to the highest level whites out the screen. You can only recover by exiting the app or swiping left or right to the next map.

I can forgive a bug, though, more than the fact that the app, in 2015, seems a mere passable digitization rather than a program designed from the ground up. As such, it's neither the definitive classics atlas everyone wants nor a fine presentation of the Barrington Atlas. Still, I'm glad I have these maps.

$19

–

If you liked this list, please take a look at our first Classics App Roundup.

Vitae Praecepta Beatae

In the last decades before the birth of Christ, as the Roman people learned to embrace the yoke of an ostensibly reluctant autocrat, the historian Titus Livy began the history of his people from their founding up to the final crisis of their ordered liberty. If St. Jerome is correct in setting Livy's birth in the year 59 BC, then it was a propitious date on which to inaugurate the birth of Rome's patriotic, moralist-historian, for such was the year of Caesar's consulship. A nominal consulship for a nominal republic, the year also marked the year when the First Triumvirate–the cadre of Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar–began blazingly to run roughshod over the remnant of the old order.

Yet this beginning of the republican end, with its wars foreign and domestic, its sullied politics–oh poor beshitted Bibulus!–and its civil strife were not foremost what fascinated Livy, though he knew these years, the most infamous in Roman history then and now, would attract readers, festinantes ad haec hova, more than timeworn tales about the past, hoary retellings of Horatius at the Bridge. The Old History, Livy confesses, is a happy diversion from debates about the contentious years through which his people had navigated.

It is more from that spirit less than that of history proper that I would consider the virtues which animated Livy's history. I do not wish to dwell on comparisons–instructive but dolorous and already complete–to nations long powerful making their own demise, nor will not conjecture whether, paraphrasing Charles Cochrane, mere republicanism can save a republic or mere religiosity religion. Whether traditional republican virtues could be broadly revitalized today and if they could, what effect they would have on the American polity, is beyond my scope here.

It is not now my goal to consider history, furnishing examples by which a republic may prosper or decline, yet, labente disciplina, I would look at those virtues which carried the Romans, and which they carried, so far. My approach will be to systematize and rationalize in the Aristotelian fashion of setting means between excess and deficiency, but recall that these virtues were for the Roman traditional, religious, and instinctive. My modest hope is that their presentation might prove salubrious to the individual, not condemnation but encouragement to their prudent consideration and application.

Virtues: Lack, Moderation, Excess

Religio is of course the concept with which to start and what today will either offend people or send them scurrying toward some other virtue they hope to practice without any obligation. The essence of religio is not the definition common today, a system of beliefs, but rather constraint of human endeavor in the face of divine force. Religio vetuit, religion forbids. In Gaul after his consulship Caesar, as he slaughtered the Gauls, wrote as praise that they were dedita religionibus, (De bello Gallico, 6.16.1) dedicated to religion, and thus undertook certain rituals for administering to the dead. Underneath the ritual, though, is the recognition of a divine realm with which one must be in accord. Roger Scruton writes, "[Man] confronts in [worldly things] not objects only, but the eyes of the gods, who remind him of his duties and offer comforting socially endorsed instructions."  [Scruton, 33] The religious impulse then requires first discrimination, namely between sacred and vulgar, between things of utility and the divine which is for its own sake. Second it requires tradition, accepted practices of propitiation, for those on the rock radices non habent, οὗτοι ῥίζαν οὐκ ἔχοθσιν (John, 8.13) they have no root, and cannot cultivate the seed.

When religio reaches extremes we are left either with superstition or materialism, both sharing the common failure to distinguish between the sacred and vulgar. In removing the agency of man, superstition removes his burden of responsibility to discern and act upon the good, enervating both intellectual and moral virtues. In contrast, materialism, in denying any realm which man does not dominate, elevates man to the role of measurer of all things. Nothing escapes his judgment, which is ultimate and which meddles in all affairs sacred and profane, public and private, and through past, present, and future. There exists a balance between the prudential governance of the material world, “a healthy secularism of the State, by virtue of which temporal realities are governed according to their own norms," as Benedict XVI called it, and the acknowledgment that, ipse fecit nos, et non ipsi nos, God mad us, not we ourselves (Psalm 99, 1-2), and therefore we do not dictate all. Laws which are beyond our right to change make claims on us.

The virtue of pietas, then, is the acknowledgement and fulfillment of such claims. Piety is the fulfillment not of contract, but duty, the making of vows, not promises, and the consecration of life not by technology or human will, but by sacrament, action given power by the word of God.

Lack of piety may stem of course from a lack of religiosity, an indifference to the mystery of the passing generations in which one partakes, but it may also stem from a conscious rejection of tradition. Such rejection begins when one finds tradition onerous instead of ennobling and the rejection takes flight when a tradition is first broken and no one sounds the alarm. It is not without reason that Aristotle wrote that a man's crime is worse if he is the first to commit it (1375a,) for once the chain is broken and the world does not promptly end, the chain is thought to have been perfunctory, stuffy, tradition.

Now it would be easy to propose piety and religious obligation as a panacea for modern woes. Recoiling from this extremity I would consider religiosity and piety as balances upon worldliness. Besides its obligations, religiosity is an inducement to eschew the world of utility, of gaining and spending, and to set something aside as not for meddling. Likewise piety encourages us to consider in our actions and reactions not what we are owed by law, but what we owe by nature.

Similarly, and in contrast to the exacting of one's will and the extraction of one's pound of flesh under pain of law, we find clementia, the willingness to forego what is owed.

In the modern world, or rather transition from the ancient to the modern, the Enlightenment, we find clemency at the heart of each mature Mozart opera: In Die Entführung Pasha Selim permits the escaping lovers to depart, the Countess pardons her cheating husband in Figaro, the men forgive their wayward fiancees in Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte's Sarastro tutors the inconstant acolytes, and Titus forgives the conspirators. Among the forgivers, there is no compensation for damages, no quid pro quo, just deference to the love which is greater than the penitent transgression. (We see now that virtue begets virtue, clemency implying penitence.) With the exception of Così, which ends philosophical in confusion, we can feel the great-souledness magnifying Selim and the sacred grandeur of forgiveness permeating Sarastro and Countess Almaviva. We feel them grow large in their glad pardoning–the hilaris clementia of Martial 12.5–and we feel the joy of magnanimity with them as Mozart's music brings to us the "consoling vision which religion grants to all its supplicants." [Scruton, 42]

The only exception is Don Giovanni, who thrice unrepentant and bending no knee is dragged to Hell.

Of clementia we can see its defect in both the polity and individual, in excessive grievance. When an individual is only sated when he gets what he feels owed, when he must have his pound of flesh regardless of details which out to modify his expectations–such as past kindness, good reputation, virtues which balance vices, intent, misjudgment, misfortune, and human weakness–he is a small man. This man prefers to sue than settle, and as his way is imitated, private reconciliation by equity is replaced by public adjudication.

The excess of clementia seems easy to imagine: the insolent or downright criminal run rampant over the good. This is surely a possibility, but I would suggest that an excess of desire to seem forgiving is the more observable and pernicious phenomenon, for transgressing a virtue weakens the individual, but its meretricious application weakens perception of the virtue itself. Such application is present, though I would not argue that it constitutes, the impulse behind plea-bargaining. From a desire to appear magnanimous, forgiving, and liberal, offering a plea-bargain confuses admittance with repentance and in doing so confuses a commuted sentence with forgiveness. Moreover, and even worse than the obvious inducing of the accused to expect lessened punishment, the attempted institutionalization of a virtue which can only be practiced by the offended party, not a judge, confuses law and equity. Worst of all, plea-bargaining debases the virtues–in this respect unwritten laws which are not exacted by force–by extending them unasked to those who broke written laws which are backed up by force, and he who would break a written law would certainly break an unwritten, and thus unenforced, one. [Aristotle, 1374] The bargaining process also admits great corruption against the accused. Dr. Dalrymple writes,

...plea-bargaining is intrinsically unjust because it may induce the innocent to plead guilty and the guilty to hold out for a lesser punishment than they deserve. It encourages prosecutors to intimidate defendants by multiplying and exaggerating charges on the great Hitlerian principle that if you sling enough mud, some of it sticks. It undermines the principle that the prosecutor’s purpose is not to secure a conviction at any price, but to secure justice. [Link]

A judge may adjudicate only according to objective legislation and policy of administration. Law is therefore a more harsh and less flexible standard than equity, which may moderate disputes with less severity.

After religio, it is likely gravitas which is the most neglected of Roman virtues. After all, who wants to be the stiff rather than the wit, the killjoy than the life of the party? Yet to the Roman mind, man and his life were predominately serious. The disposal of life, literally the putting down of it, that is, the doing of it, is not a trivial business. To carry oneself with gravitas is not to be a pompous, officiating Polonius, but to walk as if your existence has purpose and consequence. Gravitas does not imply seeking attention or conceit, adrogantia, but simply being counted in the reckoning.

That hard edge of gravitas is burnished by the good humor of comitas, which bids us be responsible and serious, but not stiff. While gravitas urges us to value our dignity, comitas urges courtesy, an ease which does not assert but attends. If gravitas cautions us not to be timid, comitas reminds us to note the humor of life. Still, as Cicero says, however useful it might be, leve enim est totum hoc risum movere. (De Oratore, 2.218) Humor is a relief, not a mainstay, and comitas should never degenerate into levitas, being lighthearted when we ought to be serious.

Pliny the Younger, writing to the orator Arrianus, (Epistulae 8.21.1), advices moderation:

Ut in vita sic in studiis pulcherrimum et humanissimum existimo severitatem comitatemque miscere, ne illa in tristitiam, haec in petulantiam excedat.

Mix, Pliny urges, the light and the severe, so that we do not gravitate toward the extremes of gloom or frivolity.

Again, the false appearance of a virtue is the most damaging. Livy again, writing about Appius Claudius–most famous for the construction of the Via Appia and Aqua Appia under the tenure of his censorship–points to a noteworthy contrast when he observes Appius' fraternizing and canvassing: profecto haud gratuitam in tanta superbia comitatem fore. (Ab urbe condita, 3.35.6) That is to say, the arrogant man may use graciousness to further his ends, therefore in him it is conspicuous.

We join the twin virtues of firmitas and constantia, the latter the origin of a most lovely name. It is easy to caricature constancy of character as obtuseness, but apart from Cicero's philosophizing connection of it to Stoic εὐπάθεια, the Old Roman was not a thinker, let alone one of subtlety. He did not value sophistical refutations and live at the cutting edge of philosophical trends. Caesar, less praising now, writes of the inconstancy of the Gauls, consiliis capiendis mobiles (De bello Gallico, 4.5.1), and how they take new plans easily and must retreat from their errors of their foolish fickleness. In amusing imitation of a self-made Roman, Petronius' Trimalchio, the freedman who made it big, wanted written on his tomb: nec umquam philosophum audivit. (Satyricon, 71) He never listened to a philosopher. Roman virtue was a process less of intellect than tradition, and the Roman did not consider a lot of subtle thinking in choosing the right path.

It is of course worth exploring the philosophical tack in Tusculan 4.12, in which Cicero, summarizing the Stoic position, observes that man naturally seeks what is good and thus what seems good, but in seeking his desire is twofold: either founded in prudence, called volition, or founded in violent desire, lust, which is found in fools (in omnibus stultis invenitur.) Therefore incitement of the former is joyful, whereas excitement of the latter is immoderate elation away from the control of reason. Thinking from the Stoic position, then, we can view inconstantia as an immoderate, immature response to the appearance of the good. It is appropriately associated with youth, who seeing the various goods cannot choose among them but move from one to the other.

One extreme of constantia is of course obtuseness, literally dullness to other observations. This stubbornness can manifest itself as A. pride, for example an intelligent man ignoring reasoning which contradict him, B. anti-intellectualism, an irrational distrust of thinking subtler or finer than our own, or C. traditionalism, distrust of the new. The other extreme is fickleness, in which we find A. an irrational distrust of our own judgment, B. the excessive worship of reason, which trusts what is argued more than what is demonstrated, and C. faddism, which prefers the new simply because it is new. The obtuse persist in error and the fickle wander from error to error.

Constantia then requires disciplina, the learning by which one chooses the good, for he cannot attain the good if he does not aim at it, and who can aim who does not see his target. Let us commend, though, the discussion of humanistic and Christian education to elsewhere, and discuss frugalitas, satisfaction in economy. Of frugalitas Marcus Aurelius spoke best, recalling what he learned from his adopted father: enjoy the luxuries which fortune may furnish, but do not miss them when absent. (Meditations 1.16) Live neither as a pauper nor helluo, poor man or squanderer.

All of these virtues require two more: severitas, the strictness to moderate oneself, and virtus, one's manly essence and full worth. Of all we have mentioned these virtues are perhaps naturally twin, for the exuberance and outward exertion of the virtus implies a need for severitas, a restraint. The virtus must be cultivated, surely with the good allowed to grow and the bad pruned, but even with the good pruned moderate, lest even one good grow at the expense of choking some other virtue.

The excess of these virtues are the most gross, and their defects the most pitiful. Untutored and unmoderated, severitas mistakes self-debasement for self-mastery. Severitas degenerates into excessive fault-finding and doubt. Excess severity is paralyzing, not ennobling as severitas should be. In detriment of severity we find excuse-making, as inimical toward manliness today as it was ever.

In immoderate virtus in excess becomes hubris, arrogance, and insolence run riot. Again we find Don Juan, in the words of David Cairns:

There is no protection against his fundamentally destructive energies... He is the logical consequence of the Enlightenment's cult of individualism and unrestrained liberty. 

In detriment the manly spirit is timid, weak, and enervated. It is cowed when it should be assertive, sluggish when it should soar, and reluctant when it should be ready. Reason fusts in him unused and he plods, but sleeping and feeding.

The modern idioms of looking at oneself in the mirror with pleasure and waking up in the morning with gusto might have pleased a Roman. Wake up neither with regret nor ready for mischief, the extremes of severity, but prepared for a prudent and disciplined day, and seek in the mirror neither the prideful nor pitiable, the extremes of virtus, but the cultivated self.

Auream quisquis mediocritatem
diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
sordibus tecti, caret invidenda
     sobrius aula.

–

Barrow, R. H. The Romans. Penguin Books. Middlesex. 1949.

Cairns, David. Mozart and His Operas. University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2006.

Cochrane, Charles Norris. Christianity and Classical Culture. Oxford University Press. 1968. (Reprint from Clarendon Press, 1940)

Duff, J. Wight & Duff, A. M. A Literary History of Rome. Barnes and Noble. New York. 1960.

Scruton, Roger. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture. St. Augustine's Press. South Bend Indiana. 2000.

Sub Corde

Inset of Mercury exhorting Aeneas
Tiepolo, 1757

Of all the wisdom in antiquity which we find in science and philosophy, of all the treatises and speeches, sometimes the most potent lies in the simplest expressions. Latin in particular, with its literal and visceral expressions, seems to cut to the heart of meanings which are in English buried in metaphor and, especially today, analysis. A recent occasion brought reminiscence of Vergil.

As every man in every dispute, I sat certain of my rightness. On the throne of moral superiority–it is a crown hard won and easily ceded–I was poised to let lose a torrent of self-righteous complaint. Why should I not? One reason is that while man's desire for justice may have deep roots in indignation, a sense of righteous reaction to the undeserved has probably toppled more friendships than empires. How often, even when there is indeed injustice, is our displeasure at being aggrieved stronger than any sense of inequity? Any honest man would admit his pride is more easily wounded than his sense of social justice, else he would be up in arms all the time and not just most of it. In fact Aristotle writes that the worst evils–of injustice and folly–are the least felt since their presence causes no pain. Worse than the self-deception, though, is how quickly indignation gives way to anger, if there was any honest indignation in the first place.

Most among the emotions does anger affect man's judgment. I can feel its creeping presence like a shadow shading over my mind as my control recedes. There is to the experience of growing enraged truly a sense of encroaching otherness, as if one is being forced from one's mind. Greek and Latin have ἔκφρων, exanima, and insania, which all convey the sense of being out of oneself, out of one's wits or out of one's mind as we sometimes in English say. Yet the advancing darkness of anger is never new and alone, it seems, but bringing with it every other slight you have ever experienced, as if anger itself has a memory. Too we once had commonly in English the phrase cherish wrath, a reminder like μῆνιν and memorem iram that we cultivate our anger lest it grow soft. We don't really want to forget.

Yet when we put down our desire, the feeling is equally physical. On this one occasion of my frequent displeasure I managed silence. Something in the eyes and voice of my interlocutor brought upon me an instantaneous wave of pity and with a gulp I kept an uncharacteristic silence over my tongue. The immediate effect was a feeling deep in my chest and I thought of my Vergil: curam sub corde premebat. In Book IV of the Aeneid, Aeneas suppresses his desire to stay with Dido and pushes his care under his heart. It's so literal and clear, so Latin, and Roman. There is no obfuscating explanation or psychologizing. It is not a metaphor for overcoming one's emotion but a description of what it feels like to do it. We often think ourselves superior to the ancients, but it is no small bit of wisdom to call a thing what it is.

Of course in subsequent days I fell back to mortal stature, indulging my inclinations as do we all when uninhibited. When I do so indulge, though, there is a faint sense of defeat and a reminder of how heroic it felt to swallow my pride, however miniature was my success. We are not encouraged today to look at the ancient heroes as role models. The literature in which they reside is to be admired and their world studied and remembered, of course. Praised even. Too their deeds should, scholars admit, provoke discussions and debate, but I do not recall anyone ever suggesting their lessons should inspire action. Maybe we are reluctant to apply the lessons of their grand stories to our small lives, or perhaps heroes wait to be invoked and emulated until dark times.

Vergil's contemporary in his troubled time, Titus Livy said the purpose of his history was to furnish examples for imitation and avoidance. He added that he hoped to show

by what kind of men, and by what sort of conduct, in peace and war, the empire has been both acquired and extended: then, as discipline gradually declined, let him follow in his thoughts the structure of ancient morals, at first, as it were, leaning aside, then sinking farther and farther, then beginning to fall precipitate, until he arrives at the present times, when our vices have attained to such a height of enormity, that we can no longer endure either the burden of them, or the sharpness of the necessary remedies.

Perhaps in an age when the word self is appended with approbation to every activity, discipline, and occasion, and when the marketplace and government seem set to satisfy every whim, Aeneas of all the heroes should be welcome.

Lost in Translation #1: Vergil

Perhaps the most difficult tasks for the teacher of foreign languages is to persuade students of the need to read a work in its native language. In an era not only of plentiful translations but of numerous good translations, why turn to the original? The difficulty of this task of persuasion is compounded by the fact that it's nearly impossible to make this point clear and attractive at the introductory level when students are performing the thankless work of basic mechanics. Yet if the student does not grasp this notion at some early point, he risks wandering astray from the appreciation of his acquired language as a conveyance of literature. It's a terrible fate that the first utility of Latin, for example, is so often said to be its ability to improve one's English vocabulary.

Toward the end of showing Latin as a language of literature I would like to take a look at some passages of choicest Latin and compare them not merely to good translations, but to fine ones. I hope to demonstrate in this Coleridge's dictum that, "one criterion of style is that it shall not be translateable without injury to the meaning." (Lecture 14 on Shakespeare) I don't mean in any instance to denigrate the translator, moreover in studying the Latin and English in parallel one's appreciation for the task and success of these translators can only grow. Still, that task is in the end impossible to fulfill to perfection, at least for any work which maximizes the possibilities unique to its native language.

It seems prudent to start with one of the best and best known passages of Latin's most famous work, the Roman Classic, the Unclassical Classic, the Homeric reincarnation, the Augustan renaissance, Vergil's Aeneid. The translation is by Robert Fagles, published 2006.

We enter in Book IV, where a seething Dido rages at Aeneas, whom she caught stealing away.

–

365 'nec tibi diva parens generis nec Dardanus auctor,
366 perfide, sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens
367 Caucasus Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres.

/ "No goddess was your mother!
No Dardanus sired your line, you traitor, liar, no
Mount Caucasus fathered you on its flinty, rugged flanks
and the tigers of Hyrcania gave you their dugs to suck!

English eschews both leading with the dative form and the dative of possession (it is to you, vs of you, or the possessive adjective your), so Fagles presents us first with goddess (diva) and the possessive adjective your. The logic of the sentence is preserved, but the effect of leading with Aeneas (tibi: to you) and concluding with Aeneas (perfide: you traitorous one) enjambed onto the next line is lost, and the effects are that of 1) amplifying the accusatory tone of the line and 2) linking the two lines.

An understood linking verb (est: was) links diva to parens and Dardanus to auctor, a gapping which produces a line of stark juxtapositions. In the English, Dardanus auctor spills into a whole clause just for the need to use as a stand-in for auctor (founder, originator, progenitor), English's sired (forefathered), whose noun form sire is both deprecated and tied up with associations of its use as a salutation. Now sired is probably the best substitute, but its use results in a circumlocution which comes at the price of brevity and thus potency. Likewise perfide (faithless, traitorous, deceitful, false) becomes traitor, liar, which still doesn't quite capture the sense of scandal and outrage of perfide.

Fagles truly does a superb job with 366, so much that the layer of translation fades to an invisibility which would do Coleridge proud, but again there's no way to mimic the word order permitted by inflection, and thus the ensuing effects. Here, after in 365 declaring from whom Aeneas was not born, Dido describes who were his parents, according to her insult. The whole line is a preparation though, which isn't fulfilled until Caucasus enjambed into the beginning of 367 tells us just who was his father. Likewise lost is Vergil's sandwiching of te (you, i.e. Aeneas) between duris and cautibis (on hard crags.) Too, while flinty is a brilliant substitute for duris, conveying both physical and emotional hardness, rugged doesn't capture the sense of dread in horrens. Finally, in English we lose the emphasis of the parallel placement of Aeneas (perfide) at the beginning of the line and horrens at the end.

Again, though, Fagles' 367 captures the meaning of the line, but the style and imagery is in rerouting, lost. First, the English is cluttered with and, the, of, you, their, and to, a volume which dilutes the potency of the idea. Next, the stark back-to-back placement of Caucacus and Hyrcanae is an exotic splash which is lost in separation. What the Latin says obliquely or subtly in image, admorunt ubera tigres, the tigers drew up/near their teats, with "for suckling" implicit, Fagles says literally with "gave you their dugs to suck." This is quite a subtle difference, but the phrase "drawing up the breast" typifies the action as associated with nursing, whereas Fagles English spells it all out. Also lost is tigres' emphatic separation from its adjective Hyrcanae and placement at the line's end.

Finally, ubera tigres in Latin is a tight-knit pair of noun and direct object, linked by their constituting the hexameter's famous zippidy-do-dah final feet. Though they are in different cases and thus function differently, Latin can place them together and produce a non-grammatical, purely visual-aural relationship between the two. Here, the two words simply by their proximity produce a clear image: tiger nipples. It may sound silly, but that's a very bestial image which perfectly concludes Dido's scurrilous contention that Aeneas is not born from the soft goddess of love and a son of Zeus, but hard crags and animals. He's inhuman, to her, and this is the perfect image for that sentiment.

In contrast, Fagles' English shows the same images in a different series with different connections for a different effect. Compare the following and try to visualize each image as it comes:

Latin: Hyrcanian gave nipples tigers
English: tigers of Hyrcania gave you their dugs to suck!

More processing is required by the Latin to supply the understood information, but the brevity and word placement produce a more compact, more vivid image, compared to which the English seems rather literal, as if the image is being explained to you rather than presented. The potential of this cascade of images and associations is one of the chief powers and pleasures of the Latin language.

Book Review: How to Read A Latin Poem

How To Read A Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet. 
by William Fitzgerald. 2013.

Figurative language, subtle connotation, obscure references, shifts in word order, omissions–there are plenty of barriers to comprehending poetry. There are more obtuse impediments to enjoying poetry–O mores!–but those are wailings and failings for another day. How do you enjoy a poem though, if you don't know the language in which it is written? More importantly, why would you bother trying to learn? It's not so hard to pick up even a tough book written in your native tongue because the risk is so low: if you don't like it you can put it down with no inconvenience. Yet how do you judge, other than by its hoary reputation, whether you should learn a language just to read its literature?

The last word of William Fitzgerald's How To Read a Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet, suggests confidence in the reader and the literature. At least half of that faith is justified, as is Fitzgerald's implied faith in his powers of persuasion and demonstration. First off, don't let its soft Pre-Raphaelite cover deceive you: this isn't prettified Latin translation dressed up with florid explanations. In fact, the case is the opposite. Fitzgerald strips the Latin of as many barriers as he can so readers can get enough of a sense of the poetry that, hopefully, the Latinless will be inspired to pick up the poems on their own.

Chief among these barriers which Fitzgerald helps the reader sidestep is the system of inflection. He spends some time at the beginning outlining the basics of morphology and case usage, but wisely doesn't explicate the entire system. If you get the idea that the endings change the meaning and can imagine the resulting possibilities for word placement, then Fitzgerald's explanations will carry you through. Despite this apparent evasion, the greatest strength of the book is Fitzgerald's ability to demonstrate the beauty and significance of the Latin word order. Liberated from the need to give full grammatical explanations, Fitzgerald is able simply to point to word relationships and thereby paint a lucid picture without jargon and caveats. Take this selection from his explanation of Horace Ode 2.10:

All the lines in this stanza are enjambed, and the sense tumbles from one line to the next in unpredictable ways. the main verb, 'loves' (diliget), comes, as usual, at the end of its clause, but it is emphatically emjambed to underline the oxymoron of loving middleness, and Horace's word order places love and lack into close proximity (diliget, loves; caret, lacks). (Fitzgerald, 105.)

Clear and precise, but not narrowly grammatical. For this reason in particular Latin students and classical neophytes alike will enjoy Fitzgerald's demonstration that there are dimensions to reading and writing poetry besides mechanics. In this respect How To Read A Latin Poem is a foretaste of the fun parts of reading Latin for those still champing the basics. May he inspire beginners to endure the latter for the former. Toward that end I think Fitzgerald's translations, which are literal but not so obtusely so that they obscure more than they reveal, encourage the reader to work through Latin, if only to match up the parts which Fitzgerald mentions. Likewise the brevity of the selections encourages readers to dive into the Latin rather than gloss over the foreign passages, resigned just to read the book as analysis. Leaning on his translation and with such descriptions, readers can begin to see the cascade of images and constellation of relations.

Yes, he discusses vocabulary, and I'm not sure if there's any more tedious part of teaching classics than running through the endless cognates and derivatives. Fitzgerald is prudent about this, choosing to prop up little umbrellas of meaning over choice words only when needed to explain puns, subtle suggestions, and the many words which fade in facile translation.

The highlight of How to Read a Latin Poem for advanced students and proficient readers, though, will be the commentary. It's rich and varied, with summaries of the basics neatly woven to frame more sophisticated discussions. From Chapter 4 on Vergil:

Yes, Furor is restrained, but he is not pacified, and the restraining power must exercise a savagery worthy of the victim himself. As the culmination of a speech forecasting the glorious future of Rome and the extent of its domination abroad, this picture of barely contained violence 'within' is disturbing to say the least. Is this Furor to be held in reserve, ready to be unleashed on the recalcitrant? (Fitzgerald, 167)

Fitzgerald is at his best, though, on the less famous authors, especially discussing the political science behind the psychologies of Lucan's Pompey, Caesar, and Cato and the furious Atreus of Seneca's Thyestes. On the latter:

...Atreus drives on to complete the second line with a command that expresses the final, impossible aspiration of power: quod nolunt velint. English cannot achieve the compression of the two juxtaposed Latin verbs, nolo (I do not want) and volo (I want); nor can it imitate the elegant chiasmus with which Atreus delivers his devastating theory of power: true praise (A) even falls to the lowly man (B) only to the powerful (B) false (A). (Fitzgerald, 209)

Finally he brings some just attention and affection for perhaps the most overlooked masterpiece, Lucretius' De rerum natura:

The sights and sounds of everyday Roman life have as vivid a presence in Lucretius' epic as the sublime expanses of the universe, but here both come together in a single image. Between the paving stones of a Roman road a vision opens up that reaches both down into the earth and up to the heaven in dizzying succession. (Fitzgerald, 238)

Moderate measures of grammar, history, psychology, comparative literature, and rhetoric make for a handy little book very much like advanced program notes for the opera. It has a lot of rich details to bring out the best of the texts, and just enough crib to carry you through the tough parts. Like a great opera, too this book features a cross-section of life: invective, satire, love, tragedy, myth, and epic.

Hopefully, though, students will approach it less like a cheat than as an invitation to a language and authors which Fitzgerald demonstrates are vital and exciting. How To Read a Latin Poem makes a great companion for high school classes and a valuable supplement to classes whose curriculum or teacher eschews discussions of style. It's an outright boon for independent students of any caliber. For teachers and experts it's a brisk and lively day's read with a colleague of diverse interests, learning, and insight. The presentation is perhaps a bit too consistent and its abrupt conclusion doesn't live up to the diverse and engaging opening which ranged from Catullus to Pope to Kipling to David Niven (in Separate Tables), but this is a great read. Mr. Fitzgerald's students are most fortunate.