Augustine, Confessions, Book 2, ch. 5

Latin Learning Latin
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Context: The Confessions is in form a prayer, nominally addressed to God, but intended to be read by anybody who gets a copy. Augustine has just confessed his wicked behavior as a teenage boy, in the incident of the plundered pears. Now he turns to the question of beauty, what it is, in relation to the senses. I believe he means the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell.

Etenim species est pulchris corporibus et auro et argento et omnibus, et in contactu carnis congruentia valet plurimum, ceterisque sensibus est sua cuique adcommodata modificatio corporum.

My effort:

To be sure, there is beauty in every lovely physical thing, in gold and silver, and in the touch of [human] bodies the accord [congruentia] is especially moving [valet plurimum], and as for the other senses, there is to each one its own special perception, adjusted to the physical objects [that it apprehends].

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I have never read any Augustine in Latin before.

I think that omnibus stands on its own in the list “et auro et argento et omnibus” rather than being taken with “corporibus”. So there is beauty in lovely physical objects/things, as in gold and silver and all things. Species seems difficult to translate because the idea of sight is clearly implicated.

et in contactu …

et is also here? valet plurimum “has much force”?

Presumably you have seen the commentary here by O’Donnell http://www.stoa.org/hippo/?

The preface to the current Loeb translated by Carolyn J. B. Hammond refers to William Watts (ca. 1590–1649) whose translation was printed in the original Loeb of 1912. (incidentally also a scholar like Hammond at at Gonville and Caius) she observes that:

“Watts called the act of translating Confessions “the hardest task that ever I yet undertook”: an evaluation with which I can heartily concur, as Rouse also did before me. There are so many translations already that a word explaining this one is unavoidable; of English versions readily available, the 1991 translation by Henry Chadwick helps by closely following the Latin and providing excellent notes; that of Maria Boulding OSB captures much of the rhetoric and lyricism of Augustine without sacrificing accuracy. As well as conveying the factual content of Augustine’s prose, the aim of this translation is twofold: to give the reader with no Latin a sense of its sound and structure, and at the same time to give the reader with some Latin enough help to make out the syntactical structures and rhetorical casting of the original.”

With that recommendation for Chadwick this is what he prints:

“There is beauty in lovely physical objects, as in gold and silver and all other such things. When the body touches such things, much significance attaches to the rapport of the object with the touch. Each of the other senses has its own appropriate mode of response to physical things.”

The Loeb has:

“Certainly beautiful objects have an attraction about them, whether made of gold or silver or the like. Also, the sense of what feels right in the physical act of touching has a powerful influence upon us, while the other senses are all proportionately adapted to particular material objects.”

I found this hard to translate but I suspect it’s less the syntax than understanding the context.

Good luck with this project.

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Hello Seneca2008:

Many thanks to for the critique of my translation effort, and especially for the link to James O’Donnell’s commentary. I knew about the books, but I didn’t know about the online edition.

What to do with omnibus was a difficult problem for me. I also had a lot of trouble with the syntax of ceterisque sensibus est sua cuique adcommodata modificatio corporum.

I agree that I should have limited the translation of species to visual beauty. That reveals more clearly the sequence of Augustine’s treatment of the senses, sight, touch, and the others.

A most helpful reply!