Classics

Livy talks about an eclipse in book 22.

>Augebant metum prodigia ex pluribus simul locis nuntiata: in Sicilia militibus aliquot spicula, in Sardinia autem in muro circumeunti uigilias equiti scipionem quem manu tenuerit arsisse et litora crebris ignibus fulsisse et scuta duo sanguine sudasse, et milites quosdam ictos fulminibus et solis orbem minui uisum, et Praeneste ardentes lapides caelo cecidisse, et Arpis parmas in caelo uisas pugnantemque cum luna solem, et Capenae duas interdiu lunas ortas, et aquas Caeretes sanguine mixtas fluxisse fontemque ipsum Herculis cruentis manasse respersum maculis, et in Antiati metentibus cruentas in corbem spicas cecidisse, et Faleriis caelum findi uelut magno hiatu uisum quaque patuerit ingens lumen effulsisse; sortes sua sponte attenuatas unamque excidisse ita scriptam: "Mauors telum suum concutit", et per idem tempus Romae signum Martis Appia uia ac simulacra luporum sudasse, et Capuae speciem caeli ardentis fuisse lunaeque inter imbrem cadentis.

A very superstitious people. Can you imagine an augur having the ability to stop a war or break a legislature?

For all our founding fathers idealized it the Roman republic had more in common with some failed state in Africa than anything you'd want to live under.

>massive corruption, vote-buying
>disenfranchisement
>armed mobs representing different political parties
>someone could put your name on a list and you'd be legally murdered

Like Sallust said
>Sed ego adulescentulus initio, sicuti plerique, studio ad rem publicam latus sum ibique mihi multa advorsa fuere. Nam pro pudore, pro abstinentia, pro virtute audacia, largitio, avaritia vigebant. 4 Quae tametsi animus aspernabatur insolens malarum artium, tamen inter tanta vitia imbecilla aetas ambitione corrupta tenebatur; 5 ac me, cum ab reliquorum malis moribus dissentirem, nihilo minus honoris cupido eadem, qua ceteros, fama atque invidia vexabat.

The "fama" he alludes to was the fact that he was completely addicted to prostitutes and almost went bankrupt on them.

In Horace's day Jewish people were proverbial for their proselytism.

>hoc est mediocribus illis
>ex vitiis unum; cui si concedere nolis,
>multa poetarum veniat manus, auxilio quae
>sit mihi—nam multo plures sumus—, ac veluti te
>Iudaei cogemus in hanc concedere turbam.

Did the Romans write any drinking poems? I've never seen one. This one is rather beautiful. It reminds me of Li Bai.

ὅταν πίνω τὸν οἶνον,
εὕδουσιν αἱ μέριμναι.
τί μοι πόνων, τί μοι γόων,
τί μοι μέλει μεριμνῶν;
θανεῖν με δεῖ, kἂν μὴ θέλω·
τί τὸν βίον πλανῶμαι;
πίωμεν οὖν τὸν οἶνον
τὸν τοῦ kαλοῦ Λυαίου·
σὺν τῷ δὲ πίνειν ἡμᾶς
εὕδουσιν αἱ μέριμναι.

>When I drink wine, my worries go to sleep. What do I care about troubles, about sorrows, about worries? I must die, even if I do not wish to: why puzzle over life? Let's drink the wine of fair Lyaeus; for when we drink, our worries go to sleep.

>>9922452
https://www.jstor.org/stable/283893

>>9922483
>https://www.jstor.org/stable/283893

Thanks, I've still not read any of Horace's odes.

>>9922130
Are there any more of those charts? I'm learning Ancient Greek and it actually looks really helpful.

>>9922501

I don't have any charts but you might find this helpful.

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/GreekGrammar.html

The Greek verb is huge but once you have it down and have memorized a thousand words or so it's way easier to start reading Plato or Homer than someone in the same boat with Latin would find it to read Cicero or Ovid.

I got through ode 1.18, not exactly an unambiguous praise of alcohol.
Ac ne quis modici transiliat munera Liberi,
Centaurea monet cum Lapithis rixa super mero
debellata, monet Sithoniis non levis Euhius,
cum fas atque nefas exiguo fine libidinum
discernunt avidi.

Euhius = Liber, Sithonians are Thracians

A wonderful site for Horace is horatius.net, it has the ancient commentators as well as the text of the poems themselves.

I do like Horace but he what I've read of him so far is kind of domesticated. I prefer something completely wild and passionate like Catullus 63

Super alta vectus Attis celeri rate maria,
Phrygium ut nemus citato cupide pede tetigit,
adiitque opaca silvis redimita loca deae,
stimulatus ibi furenti rabie, vagus animis,
de volsit ili acuto sibi pondera silice

>I find that, so far as I am concerned, an Ode of Horace is the literary equivalent of a Chinese puzzle. With pains I can solve the puzzle or construe the text; but the result has neither beauty nor meaning. The whole thing leaves me weary and indifferent.

Some of these really are spectacularly difficult.

Here's an interesting one from Martial
Potor nobilis, Aule, lumine uno
luscus Phryx erat alteroque lippus.
Huic Heras medicus "Bibas caueto:
uinum si biberis, nihil uidebis."
Ridens Phryx oculo "Valebis" inquit.
Misceri sibi protinus deunces,
sed crebros iubet. Exitum requiris?
Vinum Phryx, oculus bibit uenenum.

Luscus = one-eyed, a deunx is a measure of wine 11/12 of a sextarius, about a pint.

>>9922452
Where is this from? The tone reminds of Li Bai indeed, only the imagery is not as evocative.

>>9922845

It's Anacreon

Keeping on the drinking theme I always loved this little pun in Plautus' Curculio

Lyc. Quis tu homo es?
Cvrc. Libertus illius, quem omnes Summanum vocant.
Lyc. Summane, salve. qui Summanu's? fac sciam.
Cvrc. Quia vestimenta, ubi obdormivi ebrius,
summano, ob eam rem me omnes Summanum vocant.

If I could reform classical education in any way I would have students read far more prose before they start reading the great poets, and also far more Plautus. It wasn't until I spent a summer on Plautus that Latin started clicking for me. Besides being a lot of fun his Latin is colloquial and you have to know how a language was really used to appreciate more artificial stuff. You wouldn't read Rabelais before knowing how to order a croque monsieur in a restaurant but we have students jump into Virgil when they've only just acquired the paradigms, and tons of them get discouraged and never go much further.

>>9922912
Yeah, in my school they started with historians like Aulus Gellius. Not a bad choice, starting out on Virgil with basic grammar easily takes the joy of poetry away.

>>9922940

Aulus Gellius is great. I've never sat down and read a volume through but i often read something at random online.

Macrobius' Saturnalia is also like that. Any random passage is interesting.

>Mirandum est huius poetae [s. Vergili] et circa nostra et circa externa sacra doctrinam. Neque enim de nihilo est quod, cum Delon venit Aeneas, nulla ab eo caesa est hostia, nisi, cum proficisceretur, Apollini et Neptuno res facta divina est. 2 Constat enim, sicut Cloatius Verus Ordinatorum libro secundo docet, esse Deli aram apud quem hostia non caeditur, sed tantum sollemni deum prece venerantur. Verba Cloatii haec sunt: Deli ara est Apollinis Γενέτορος in qua nullum animal sacrificatur, quam Pythagoram velut inviolatum adoravisse produnt.

I tried to get through Macrobius' commentary on the dream of Scipio but I felt like I was going to give myself an aneurysm trying to understand his astronomy so I gave up.

Classics is endlessly humiliating. No matter how long you study it you will still come across sentences you don't understand. Scholars from the past wrote and spoke in Latin, they were immersed in it. Now not even many professors can truly read at sight the way they can read a modern language.

Adde merum vinoque novos conpesce dolores,
occupet ut fessi lumina victa sopor,
neu quisquam multo percussum tempora baccho
excitet, infelix dum requiescit amor.

From Tibullus I

Bibit hera, bibit herus,
bibit miles, bibit clerus,
bibit ille, bibit illa,
bibit servus cum ancilla,
bibit velox, bibit piger,
bibit albus, bibit niger,
bibit constans, bibit vagus,
bibit rudis, bibit magus,

Bibit pauper et aegrotus,
bibit exul et ignotus,
bibit puer, bibit canus,
bibit praesul et decanus,
bibit soror, bibit frater,
bibit anus, bibit mater,
bibit ista, bibit ille,
bibunt centum, bibunt mille.

The prose style of Apuleius is like no one before him and I have to look words up all the time.

>Et "Heus tu, ubi es?" inquam; "valvas stabuli absolve, antelucio volo ire." Ianitor pone stabuli ostium humi cubitans etiam nunc semisomnus: "Quid? Tu" inquit "ignoras latronibus infestari vias, qui hoc noctis iter incipis? Nam etsi tu alicuius facinoris tibi conscius scilicet mori cupis, nos cucurbitae caput non habemus ut pro te moriamur."

stabulum here = shack, antelucio is an adv = before sunrise, pone = behind, cucurbita = gourd

>>9923305
Apuleius was a native Greek speaker. His mastery of Latin has been likened to that of Nabokov and English.

>>9923519

And yet it was imitated by native Latin speakers and grew into what I can only imagine is one of the most bizarre idioms of any language ever. In the middle ages it was called the hermaphroditic style. Take the opening of Fulgentius' Mithologiae:

Quamvis inefficacem petat studium res quae caret effectum et ubi emolumentum deest negotii causa cessat inquiri - hoc videlicet pacto, quia nostri temporis erumnosa miseria non dicendi petat studium, sed vivendi fleat ergastulum nec famae adsistendum poeticae, sed fami sit consulendum domesticae - cito itaque nunc aut quod amiseris fleas aut quod edas inquiras quam quod dicas invenias vacatque hoc tempore potentibus opprimere, prioribus rapere, privatis perdere, miseris flere - quia soles, domine, meas cachinnantes sepius nenias lepore satyrico litas libentius adfectari, dum ludicro Talia ventilans epigrammate comedica solita est vernulitate mulcere, additur quia et mihi nuper imperasse dinosceris ut feriatas affatim tuarum aurium sedes lepido quolibet susurro permulceam: parumper ego ausculta dum tibi rugosam sulcis anilibus ordior fabulam, quam nuper Attica saporante salsura, nocturna praesule lucerna commentus sum, ita somniali figmento delusam, quo non poetam furentum aspicias, sed onirocretam soporis nugas ariolantem advertas.

Or take this from Martianus Capella

Cum inter deos fierent sacro coniugia procreationesque undique numerosae, liberique praeclues ac nepotum dulcium aetherea multitudo inter se quodam coelicolarum complexu ac foedere potirentur, praesertimque potissimos connubialis bearet adiectio, idque debitum mundo loquax triviatim dissultaret humanitas, poetaeque praecipue Oeagrium citharistam secuti, caecutientisque Maeonii suaviloquam senectutum, epica vulgo lyricaque pagina consonarent, nec aliquid dulcius Jovi inter aethereas voluptates una coniuge loquerentur, hisque accedered promptior fides, quae suadente aruspicio grandaevos pontifices in testimonium convocat, cum quid Iupiter hominum votis trepita curarum ambage suspensis multa implacabilis hostia denegaret, exorata eius matrona provenire, et quidquid ille ex prompta sententia Parcarum pugillo asservante dictaverit, delinitum suadae coniugis amplexibus iussuque removere - nec solum superum regem attestabatur uxorium, idque etiam Diti propositum, idque Portuno, certumque esse Gradivum Nerienis Nerinae coniuges amore torreri, Aesculapio quoque non dispar affectio, similique persuasione transduci Ope coniuga Cybeleque permulsa moestissimum seniorem deorum - Ianusque Argionam utraque miratur effigie- nam reginam lacrimas tantum dicunt marito dependisse Memphiticam, ut obsita luctu perpetuo numquam eum contenta sit invenire - hac igitur fama, hisque deorum alternis amoribus commotus concitatusque Cyllenius, simulque quod cunctorum affectiones et thalamos, dum paret pluribus, conspicatur, uxorem ducere instituit.

Anyone reading the Aeneid ought to know James Henry's Aeneidea

https://archive.org/details/aeneideaorcritic00henruoft

It's the most entertaining commentary I've ever come across and among the most insightful and learned.

Salvete onmnes! Quis hic Latine mecum colloqui potest?

>>9926814
*omnes, sane