I was in that... place, again, with those... people. Certainly a most worthy occupation, for a chap with my skill-set (the world's worst cook, and an excellent entertainer, not a bad piano player, guitarist and great singer, that holds a master's degree in Classical Latin, as well as being an epic national poet). Surely this is the occupation for me, optimised as a placement, or rather, surely this is not the Italian Renaissance, but Dark Age Britain. That's what you do with a master's in Latin Dark Age Britain: you scrub pots, like the village idiot. This is not France, or Germany, or another civilised nation. It is a nation of beggars, paupers and slaves. That, is a fact. Evidently.
Anyway, enough of me ranting about how I do the same job, now, at 43, as I did when I was 14 (as though nothing had changed in that time). As Richard Harris said in Man In the Wilderness, complaining never helped anybody. It is up to me to do something about it.
There is a curious line I translated in Apuleius' De deo Socratis (4.8-4.9 [Jones' Loeb ed. or 128-129 other eds.]) not so long ago, for my master's degree final dissertation (12,000 words) that reads:
He who had been raised on high by a gift of fortune’s wealth and is carried up all the way to the kingdom’s tottering platform and the pendent tribunal seat would be in a rare entrance way, passing time with judges in certain very remote inner sanctums of dignity: for association gives birth to being disdained, but rarity wins admiration.
Today, I translated a most curious section in Ammianus Marcellinus (14.11.25 - 14.11.26):
...There are innumerable certain examples of this kind, the avenging goddess of impious deeds Adrastia works, and she is sometimes a rewarder of good ones (and would that she always did!). We call her by a two-fold name, which is also Nemesis. The law is imposed from a certain height of divine power of human minds, by estimating the lunar cycle or as other men determine. She is a substantial guardian power presiding over individual fates that the ancient men who wrote of the gods formed: the daughter of Justitia (Justice), they handed down out of a certain secret place, in eternity, that looks down upon everything on Earth. This goddess as the queen of lawsuits, both a female witness and arbitrator of cases, governs the urn of drawing lots, the alternating changes of happenstances and our will, sometimes starting with another when they the two parties were disputing. Bringing the case to a close, she draws together the manifold depositions to be exchanged. And the same goddess, binding the day of the trial with an irremovable rope of necessity, of mortality, turns those puffed up with pride to nothing. And the changing weights of both compensation and damages being hung in the balance (as she knew), she now weakens and weighs down upon the necks of those which have been elevated, those of prominence, now she lifts good men up from the depths, she elevates those that live suitably well. Yet for that reason, fabled antiquity adapts its wings to the present circumstances so that one could been judged with the swiftness of a bird of prey. And she had given guidance that extends outwards, and had applied a wheel to it, so as to keep the universe on the straight and narrow through the elements, running to and fro. She would not have been ignorant of anything.
There are some curious bits which are basically untranslatable. For starters, the passage (not shown here) starts with the pronoun haec ('this' or 'these') which may be in the plural (as in Rolfe's translation - which I did not make reference to) and translated as 'these [events]', but it could just as likely refer to the ultrix ('avenging [goddess]') in the same line, which is also in the singular, Nominative case, feminine gender.
There are other problems with this passage too: 'individual fates' is not exactly a correct translation, but is as accurate as accurate can be, for the vernacular. It means more like 'by divisible dooms' (partilibus... fatis).
Then there is the 'urn of drawing lots', this is only the principle definition of sortes which means more like 'oracles, prophecies, divinations'.
Again, there are other problems when translating this, much lost in translation, hidden beneath the surface. The 'manifold depositions' is stretching it a bit, actus means more like 'recital(s), delivery(s)' and principally means 'acts' (as in players on a stage). This is just scratching the surface of many of the other various meanings in this passage.
Skipping over these nuances, the last line is particularly tricky. The ‘a bird of prey’ literally means ‘with a bloody quick bird’ (and even that is stretching it, for one word does not actually exist in even the most profound and rare Latin lexicons, I had to use its prefix to gauge its meaning, and identify the suffix according to Latin inflexion standards).
‘guidance that extends outwards’ literally means ‘a rudder which extends outwards’ so the 'wheel' (rota) in the next line is more like the wheel of a ship.
Then there is the ‘through the elements, running to and fro. She would not have been ignorant of anything.’ This sentence is problematic, as omnia is very likely an adjective which agrees in case, number and gender with elementa thus this probably means ‘through all the elements, running to and fro, she would not have been ignorant’.
Not bad, for an unskilled labourer in a kitchen, eh?
Max.
No comments:
Post a Comment