News of Composition Board

Ok, I'll have a shot at this. It is a translation - any comments welcome: on grammar, word choice, style etc. Thanks :)


fabula de filia regia et cicere

Quondam filius regis erat; filiam regiam cupiebat, sed filiam regiam uere esse oportebat. tum in orbi terrarum universo peregrinationes sucepi, ut illam inuenisset. at ubique uitia habebant; cum filiae regiae superessent, filias regias uere fuisse non persuasus erat. ...

An invective distich addressed to Alexander G Bell from Ambrose Bierce.


w) fi/le, sou= de kako/j kerdw=n do/loj a)/tta kaqai=rei
w(/j a(/ katei=kon e)kei= touj adi/kouj fle/donaj.

As is so often the case, the idea behind the poem has been translated rather than each word in isolation.

Aquilae
saxo unguibus haerent;
ad solum incomitatae stant,
sudo circumiuntur axeque.

subter, marmora spumant;
ex altis speculantur, ast
nunc, fulmen similis, necant male.
per The Eagle: Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Each stanza comprises a pherecretean, followed by a glyconic, followed by a glyconic increased by an iamb (which may or may not be a classically attested ...

Will's caveat in an earlier thread against getting stuck in an iambic or dactylic rut could be neatly balanced by this pair of translations of Catullus, the English by Sir William Marris , and the Greek by yours truly

At non effugies meos iambos

You shan’t evade
These rhymes I’ve made

e)mon g' i)ambon ou)damwj sbeseij


But I do agree with Will's sentiment, our metrical pencils should be shoved as far afield as ...

Some thoughts on how to improve at composition.


Ecphrasis. While most of us probably do want to make verses of at least a little artistic merit, purely technical work is good practice. It occured to me a few days ago that ecphrasis - a verse description of some random thing, often a work of visual art originally - kills two birds with one stone. First, you'll learn a lot of vocabulary related to the subject ...

cum graviter noctu quatient in turribus aeres
tum misero prisco vir rubicundus ero

AEH

... which gets around the ~~e before prisco. But I wonder whether the plethora of o's makes it sound like a jingle for car insurance on independent telly.

Has anybody had any luck in getting
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?D ... NUMM-73779
link to work? All I manage is one page of a .pdf with a bit of scribble.

There is a very old one for sale on 'that' internet auction site somewhere, I noticed yesterday.

I'm convinced that with a clever bit of searching the Perseus 'search English defs in L&S, LSJ' should act as a GaP, but lack the ...

A letter appeared in The Times. London yesterday with this title. I wonder if it could have been written by Pericles, Kleon perhaps more likely...


parh|nei men o( e)moj pappoj w(j kallwj kai eu)tuxwj diacwn e)xrhn a)ei dexqai seauton w(j ton qeon se pepoihkenai, to genoj te kai touj gerontaj timan, kai swfrwj exein.
e)pi e)mou de memarturhka metaballomena tauta i)atrikh| peritth|, au)cw| teknwn a)patrwn, u(brismati oi)keiw|, daneizomania| kai u(po daneistwn.
ou)k exw noein ...

On reading Scribes and Scholars.

e)lla/mpei to\ ma/qhm' e)re/bei skoti/h| te mi/nunqa:
  h)\n mhdei\j ai)/qh|, pu=r a)xlu/ei fqinu/qon.

h)/n: o(mhriko\n e)a/n

some compositions i have to hand, i.e. in digital form:

'The London Eye' (Horatian alcaics):

uides ut alti per nitidas means
caeli, palumbes albide, semitas
cursusque praecelsos quietus
pectoribus uolitam serenis?

hic in cubili conspicuo super
urbem uirorum Londiniensium
plenam nec in pennis columbae
nec merulae sedeo coruscis,

sed ferrei me palma uolubilis
tutum gigantis certaque sustinet.
dum Phoebus intonsus pererrat
aetherium radiansque cursum,

labor gregem inter, candide auis, tuam,
nec Noctiluca desuper omnia
crescente ...