h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Seeing as this seems to be where Latin users are congregating, how about a bit of talk about Latin which doesn't involve translations for tattoos? I'm currently studying Propertius; what are other people doing? Any professors or the like here? Favourite writers? Anybody else who likes translating 'malum' as 'apple' rather than as 'evil'? et cetera.

Does that mean everyone prefers tattoos and mottoes then?

Tattoos aren't as hard work to read as Propertius.

OK. General Latin conversation: Answer me this. What does "Iuppiter" mean? I heard Stephen Fry once say it means "Sky Father", but how do you get "sky" from "iup". I have also read somewhere that it is "ius pater" which seems to me to mean "Law Father", or even better, "Soup Father".

From Jupiter, Encyclopeadia Britannica:

'also called Jove, Latin Iuppiter, Iovis, or Diespiter, the chief ancient Roman and Italian god. Like Zeus, the Greek god with whom he is etymologically identical (root diu, “bright”), Jupiter was a sky god. One of his most ancient epithets is Lucetius (“Light-Bringer”); and later literature has preserved the same idea in such phrases as sub Iove, “under the open sky.”'

I'm still not sure if it's 'dayfather', 'brightfather', or 'skyfather'. However, all scholars must agree that 'Soup Father' is by far the most satisfactory interpretation from a surrealist point of view.

This post was brought to you by the letter Z and the number 6.

I must go to polish off the last piece of lemon .

Poetry's rather more fun though, especially when you try to write some yourself... I tried to rework some Catullus poetry (second half of 70) and it's hard work! Why hadn't the Romans invented blank verse, that's what I want to know...

That's one area I have to do a lot of catching up on, the mythology... I used to just get by with what scant details I knew, but Propertius doesn't even do the standard Roman trick of referring to everyone by the patronymic of their Uncle's mistress, but he seems to do his best to make any mythological references as obscure as possible.

Porcellus Cthulhuo salutem

Why hadn't the Romans invented blank verse? I don't know what you mean. All Roman verse is blank because it doesn't rhyme. That's what blank means.

As for obscure references, thank the gods for hyperlinks.

This Cynthia chick; it sounds as if she died in a fire (IV:7), or is it just poetic imagery?

I'm reading book 2 of the Aeneid (the sack of Troy). Not as soppy as Propertius. Lots of killing. It's not as hard as I expected, although I'd be lost without an English translation to hand.

And keep in mind the words of Horace, remembering Aeneas's brave stand at Troy:

"Dulce et decorum est patre in umeris ab hostibus fugere ululantem sicut feminam."

Ave Porcellus

Ah, well there gets exposed my lack of knowledge of poetic language I meant poetry which doesn't have a metrical component, which I suppose you'll tell me is called 'prose'

Hyperlinks... I'm without the internet at home (for the moment) so hyperlinks are but a distant dream most of the time...

Many commentators believe that Cynthia herself is just poetic imagery, nevermind her death in a fire Or that Cynthia the person is interchangeable with (the process of writing) poetry. That's one thing I find difficult with Propertius - I tend to prefer to stay away from who the poet 'really was', or how much of their lives may be read from their work, and stick to the text itself, but it's not easy to do that with Propertius, it's all so heavily interweaved...

It's not exactly hard to find lots of killing in Roman literature I've only briefly looked at the Aeneid in Latin, mainly from 4 and 6 - it was only a few months ago that I even read it in English! :-o

Poor Aeneas, he's just a poor, misunderstood soul really

You don't need to be connected to the internet to use the hyperlinks in this:

Sextus Propertius: The Love Elegies. Books I-IV. A new, complete, English translation, with hyper-linked in-depth name index.


Download it from http://www.tonykline.co.uk/

Ooh, thanks, quite handy for essays that I think I'll wait until after I've finished my translation though - it feels like cheating otherwise And besides, sometimes you look at something like that and either try to fit your translation to what someone else has done, or think that your version is 'wrong' - only to realise later that your version is equally valid! Or, more often, it *is* just plain wrong, but at least you'll know why