Lexitechnia

Cicero on rigged elections in Sicily (In Verrem Secunda 2.52):

Herodotus cum Roma revertitur, diebus, ut ipse putabat, XV ante comitia, offendit eum mensem qui consequitur mensem comitialem, comitiis iam abhinc XXX diebus factis.

When Herodotus returns from Rome, on what he was thinking was fifteen days before the comitia, he’s shocked to find it’s the month which comes after their month of assembly, the comitia already having been held thirty days before.

Verres, who had taken a bribe from Climachias, a candidate for high priest, took his opportunity while Herodotus (the shoo-in candidate) was out of town. Since he couldn’t change the date of the election, which was traditionally held in this month, he simply abused the local calendar so that the entire preceding month and a half was dropped from it.

The calendar then in use at Cephalaedium in Sicily ran fast, as ours runs slow, so instead of leap days being added, it was customary to remove a day or two when necessary; the dropped days were called ἐξαιρέσιμοι (exaeresimoe, ‘removables’). Of course removing forty-five days was both quite unorthodox and disruptive, but before the people could move to have the days reinstated, the comitia had been held, still technically on on their traditional date, but a month and a half early, and Herodotus, who could not be elected in absentia, had missed out, entirely unaware of the situation until the day he arrived.

[For abhinc.]

Pliny on kinds of oak trees (Naturalis Historia 16.6):

Distinguemus ergo proprietate naturaque et, ubi res coget, etiam Graecis nominibus.

Therefore we will distinguish them by their properties, their natures, and, when the occasion requires, also by their Greek names.

Well, I’m not too happy with this rendition; it’s clunky. Not sure how to tidy it up offhand. I’ve been using ‘distinctive property’ to render proprietas lately, but that is redundant sitting next to ‘distinguish’. And natura is one of those ungainly words I have yet to get a good handle on.

Ubi res coget (where circumstances compel) is one of those things where you’d expect to have a good, set counterpart in English, but I couldn’t produce one offhand.

One interesting thing about this line is that it shows not everyone was willing to rush to Greek for vocabulary; Pliny is reluctant to unless absolutely necessary. Or at least, so he says.

[For proprietas.]

Pliny on dangerous water (Naturalis Historia 31.19):

Et haec insidiosa condicio est, quod quaedam etiam blandiuntur aspectu, ut ad Nonacrim Arcadiae, omnino nulla deterrent qualitate.

There is also this treacherous circumstance, that some [poisonous waters] may even be enticing in appearance, as at Nonacris in Arcadia; they do not deter with any distinctive quality at all.

There is a waterfall called Styx in that area, which in Modern Greek is also called Μαυρονέρι (Mavroneri ‘Blackwater’), which was at one time the tallest waterfall in Greece. The ancients believed its water was not only poisonous, but could hardly be collected because it would break or dissolve just about any material, save for the hooves of horses. They also relate that Alexander the Great was perhaps poisoned by this water. Apparently superstitions still remain about it; I couldn’t determine how poisonous or corrosive the waters are known to be, but I did find a couple of pictures on Flickr:

• Mavroneri waterfall
• Another view of the Styx

[For qualitas.]

Cicero on Caesar (Ad Atticum 10.8):

Duarum rerum simulationem tam cito amiserit, mansuetudinis in Metello, divitiarum in aerario.

He had lost, so quickly, his claim to two things—to gentleness because of Metellus, and to riches because of the treasury.

Julius Caesar, on returning to Rome in 49 BC, had promised large amounts of money to the people—three hundred sesterces to each citizen—and couldn’t deliver on that promise. He tried to get access to the Roman treasury in the Temple of Saturn, but Metellus the tribune stood in his way, stating that the money was supposed to be devoted to protection from Gaulish invasion. Caesar, who had already defeated the Gauls, declared himself to have the right to the money, and threatened Metellus with death—which, according to Plutarch, he said was a task δυσκολώτερον ἦν εἰπεῖν á¼¢ πρᾶξαι “harder said than done”.

The difficulty in this line came from rendering simulatio, the basic meaning of which (or so I understand so far) is ‘pretense’ or ‘pretending’, neither of which fit easily into a sentence with ‘losing X of two things’. The translation I was using for reference at Perseus uses ‘two of his assumptions’, which only works in 1913 English. I had to spend a while learning history at Google to realize Caesar was not pretending Metellus was clement or that the treasury had money, but that he was pretending to show kindness and richness before he resorted to threatening tribunes and stealing from temples.

[For cito.]

Pliny on alexanders (Naturalis Historia 27.109):

Odor murrae habet qualitatem, unde et nomen.

The smell has a myrrhy quality, whence also its name.

The name of the plant is smyrnion ‘alexanders‘, which is a Greek diminutive from σμύρνα smyrna ‘myrrh’. The scientific name of the plant is the same (Smyrnium). The English name appears to correspond to a name petroselinum Alexandrinum ‘Alexandrine parsley’ now no longer in use.

The translation was difficult to retain close to the original. In my last post with qualitas I mentioned that there it could be replaced by ‘sort’ or ‘kind’ with little difficulty. In this passage that is no longer the case, though it could, in a looser style than I’d prefer, be rendered with ‘same kind’:

Its smell is of the same sort as myrrh…

For the purpose of translation for the dictionary I’ve been trying to keep the input corresponding to the output, so with the notion of ‘same’ not being in the original—or at least, not in my understanding of it—I decided not to go with it. It didn’t help that habet would have to be rendered with ‘is’—one thing I’ve been learning, and try to keep an eye on, is that Latin idioms usually have something corresponding in English. (Latin’s tendency to drop pronouns not being one of them.) If Pliny can say habet, I’d want to find a way to say ‘has’. Of course I can do this:

Its smell has a similarity to myrrh…

But that would be silly.

[For qualitas.]