Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 7.9: Accusativi geminatione facta amphibolia solvitur ablativo, ut illud “Lachetem audivi percussisse Demean” fiat “a Lachete percussum Demean”. Sed ablativo ipsi, ut in primo diximus, inest naturalis amphibolia: “cælo decurrit aperto”: utrum per apertum cælum an cum apertum esset. Ambiguity created by doubling an accusative is resolved with an ablative, so that […]
Tagged 1st century, ablative, ablativus, Quintilian, translationCato the Elder, De Agri Cultura: Stercus unde facias: stramenta, lupinum, paleas, fabalia, acus, frondem iligneam, querneam. You can make manure from straw, lupin, chaff, beanstalks, husks, and boughs of oak and holm-oak. The short glosses of palea and acus both tend to be ‘chaff.’ Here, however, they are distinguished. Pliny describes the difference: Acus […]
Tagged 2nd century BC, acus, Cato the Elder, goldsmithing, palea, translationLast week, Iustinus had posted an issue he had run across — a student had attempted to refer to ‘brown hair’ in Latin, but a mot juste in this case seemed to be lacking. I did a bit of searching through my handy corpus and found that among all the classical authors I had, color […]
Tagged 1st century BC, capillus, hairA short one — Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 24.1: Itaque Regio extemplo abscessum est. And so they left Reggio immediately. There are two cities in Italy called Reggio, or R(h)egium in Latin: Reggio nell’Emilia in the north and Reggio di Calabria in the south, at the toe of the Italian boot.  The latter is the one being referred […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Livy, translationCicero, Ad Atticum 2.16.1: Portoriis Italiæ sublatis, agro Campano diviso, quod vectigal superest domesticum præter vicensimam? With the Italian tariffs lifted and the field of Campania all parceled out, what domestic revenue is left besides the vicesima? I suppose the only thing I don’t like about this one is leaving vicensima untranslated.  But I think […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Cicero, translation, vicensima, vicesimaOvid, Ars Amatoria 1.331-2: FÄ«lÄă | pÅ«rpÅrÄ•|Ås NÄ«|sÅ fÅ«|rÄtă că|pÄ«llÅs pÅ«bÄ• prÄ•|mÄ«t răbÄ|dÅs || Ä«nguÄnÄ|bÅ«squÄ• că|nÄ“s. The daughter who stole the purple hair from Nisus now pushes down rabid dogs with her crotch and groin. This one’s a bit weird on its own.  The woman being spoken of is Scylla—or rather, two women named Scylla; […]
Tagged 1st century, 1st century BC, elegiac couplets, Nisus, Ovid, scansion, Scylla, translationPliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 37.10, on quartz crystals: Quæ vero sine vitio sint, pura esse malunt, acenteta appellantes, nec spumei coloris, sed limpidæ aquæ. Those which are in fact flawless are preferred uncut and are called acenteta; and they are not cloudy in color, but of the color of clear water. Acentetum is from the […]
Tagged 1st century, acentetum, Pliny, quartz, translationCicero, Ad Atticum 6.1: Illud quidem fatebitur Scaptius, me ius dicente sibi omnem pecuniam ex edicto meo auferendi potestatem fuisse. Scaptius will admit this at least—that when I was judge he had the opportunity to carry off all the money from my edict. I don’t think ‘when I was judge’ is exactly the best translation […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Cicero, potestas, translationCicero, Ad Atticum 16.6: Sed tamen perspice quo ista vergant mihique aut scribe aut, quod multo malim, adfer ipse. But anyway, look into which way things are leaning and either write me or, what I’d much prefer, let me know in person. Haven’t done one of these in a while. Will try to post more […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Cicero, translation, vergoSo I downloaded the page images of Collado‘s Dictionarium sive Thesauri Linguae Iaponicae Compendium the other day from the University of Tsukuba Library’s website. For those who haven’t heard of this, it’s a Latin-Spanish-Japanese dictionary published in 1632. This is partly an awesome thing in itself and partly something one could make an awesome modern […]
Tagged 17th century, dictionaries