tibullus

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little flower
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tibullus

Post by little flower »

one more quotation from tibullus (via orberg).

Quis fuit horrendos primus qui protulit enses.?
Quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit.
Tum caedes hominum generi tum proelia nata,
tum brevior dirae mortis aperta via est.

Who was the first to produce the terrible swords.?
How really cruel was that wild beast.
Both the murder of human beings and the beginning
of war open the short way to an awful death.

Again thanks for your help.

Little flower.

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benissimus
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Re: tibullus

Post by benissimus »

I like the first half as a slightly stylized translation. Strictly speaking, ferus is adjectival and you did not translate et (in line 2) ... for all I know you did that on purpose.

You tripped up on the last two lines a bit:
nata (sunt) is a verb, taking caedes and proelia as its subjects.
(hominum) generi is dative of (dis)advantage, not genitive
aperta est is passive, and can only have a feminine singular subject (aperta est). you also incorrectly translated it as present, which it cannot be.
brevior is comparative
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae

Franmorar
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Re: tibullus

Post by Franmorar »

Franmorarius Flosculo salutem dicit plurimam:

Ecce alia paulo exactior anglicam ad linguam conversio:

Who was the first one to draw the terrible swords out?
How cruel and really fierce he was!
Then murders as well as wars were produced to human beings,
then, too, a shorter path to an awful death was open to them.

Spero eam tibi utilem fore.
Hominibus totam versandam constat esse bibliothecam, ut solam utilem scribere sententiam possint.

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