Aeneid Translation Practice

[Ursinus]

Every couple days or so I am going to post a couple lines of the Aeneid with my own translation. I am going to keep the translation mostly literal, and I'd love for you guys to correct me where I am wrong.

Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora -- Verg. A. 1.1-3.

I sing (about) arms and a man, who first from the coasts of Troy
Came, exiled by fate, to Italy and the Livinian shores.

[Ursinus]

multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; -- Verg. A. 1.3-4

Tossed much both on land and in the sea
By the power of the gods, because of the unforgetting anger of fierce Juno.

[bedwere]

remembering anger?

[mwh]

No “And”. Asyndeton (lack of connective) is important in a language that normally connects up its sentences. And actually iactatus is better understood as a simple participle rather than as iactatus (est). The editor puts a dash on account of the ille, which grammatically is not needed.

As bedwere points out, memorem is not “unforgettable” but “unforgetting.” Something like “unrelenting” or “unforgiving” anger might do. Of course it’s really Juno that’s memor, not her anger, but this is poetry!

[Ursinus]

Gratias vobis ago, omnes.

I made some of the corrections. Let me know how it is now.

[seneca2008]

I have a couple of suggestions. When you edit your post to take account of the comments which have been provided the comments then dont seem to make much sense and certainly would be difficult for anyone reading this thread in the future.

I am not sure of how much help this thread would actually be to you. Once one has understood the syntax there are many choices that can be made in translation however "literally" you want to follow the text. "saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram" is a particular crux. How can you literally translate memorem which logically belongs with Juno and grammatically with ira? In latin you can hold the two ideas in your head at the same time. A bit more difficult when you have translated and decided where the emphasis lies. I think this is why the Loeb chooses "unforgiving" Mwh has pointed this out but I wanted to expand it to suggest maybe its more helpful to ask about grammatical problems rather than specific translations.

Perhaps I have totally misunderstood what you are trying to achieve. I certainly wouldn't want to discourage your from posting whatever you find interesting.

[Lvpvs Silvae]

May i suggest we could also comment on the latin text and share opinions, experiences, etc? For example, from my personal experience when i tried to translate Aeneid for practice reasons, i got really confused with the word order!
For example, the line:

Troiae qui primus ab oris , i understand that it means
Of Troy who first from the coasts

So, does anyone get confused with this or is it just me ?

EDIT: the word "Italiam" is in locative i assume? i haven't fully learnt that yet but from the text it looks that way.

[seneca2008]

i got really confused with the word order

Naturally word order is a problem because this is more flexible in Latin than in English. But it seems that you have understood the syntactic unit Troiae ...ab oris, a genitive plus an ablative with a preposition. It's not always possible or desirable to stick to the Latin word order in translation. There have been many useful posts here in the past about approaches to translation which you might find helpful. Whilst rearranging the Latin to make more literal sense as Pharr often does has its place it's a method which many academics deprecate. Learning to work with word order as written might be more difficult at first but ultimately it pays dividends.

Italiam is an accusative without preposition following a verb of motion (venit). Austin says that there are few examples of this practice in prose before Tacitus.

I am sure you are not the first and won't be the last to be confused by any of this.

[Lvpvs Silvae]

Italiam is an accusative without preposition following a verb of motion (venit). Austin says that there are few examples of this practice in prose before Tacitus.

You are absolutely right! a look into my notes revealed that the locative is the same as the genitive singular but clearly the word italiam is in the accusative. Thanks!

Edit: also, from what i'm reading, the locative doesn't apply to country names so i should really start reading harder and stop making hasty assumptions