Lexitechnia : Put down pain, pick up pain.

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{ 2008 02 13 }

Put down pain, pick up pain.

Cicero, Ad Atticum 11.21:

accepi VI Kal. Sept. litteras a te datas XII Kal. doloremque quem ex Quinti scelere iam pridem acceptum iam abieceram, lecta eius epistula gravissimum cepi.

On the 27th of August, I received a letter you sent on the 21st, and the pain I received from Quintus’ crime a long time ago, which I had by this time put behind me, I felt again most severely on reading his letter.

I don’t know of a good way offhand to naturally render the pairing of abicere ‘lay aside’ with capere ‘pick up’ in English. We have a lot of metaphors for casting off pains, but not many for assuming them; usually we describe them as being forced on us.

[From abicio.]

Posted by Muke on Wednesday, February 13, 2008, at 5:03 am. Filed under Latin. Tagged abicio, Cicero, translation. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. You can post a comment or trackback from your blog.

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