Here is a fun passage from Plutarch that recounts an earlier testimony from Dercyllus. Any help is very much appreciated. I haven’t found much about ol’ Dercyllus–apparently “very ancient” but I’m not sure where to list him in my catalog. Currently in the section covering the 5th to 4th century.
DERCYLLUS, Uncertain dates
Ἀχ 50. Acheloios produces a forbidden plant that can cause blindness when mixed with water.
Fr. 5.2 (ed. Müller)
ΑΙΤΩΛΙΚΑ. E LIBRO TERTIO. Plutarch. De fluv. 22, 5:
In him (Achelous) grows the forbidden plant called myops, which if someone puts into water and washes their face with it, it takes away their vision, but Artemis redeems, restoring the light, as Dercyllus recounts in Book 3 of the Aitolians.
I’m especially hesitant about Ἄρτεμιν δ’ ἐξιλασάμενος ἀνακτᾶται τὸ φῶς. I could also use “Born in him (Acheloios) is the forbidden plant…” for the first line.
Aitolians–though I always see it written as Aetolians,.
The vast majority of the passages in the corpus are translated already in other sources and I am using those. I could leave these others untranslated. Happy to pay you (or anyone) to help me, if I can afford it. I can pay in ancient Greek coinage too (seriously). Or it could be a fun side project for someone.
Born in it (Achelous) is the plant called myops, which if someone puts into water and washes their face with it, it takes away their vision, but Artemis, (having been placated restores the light?), as Dercyllus recounts in Book 3 of the Aitolians.
Great. I have hundreds (thousands?) of charming Greek bronzes, many Romans coins too, and I don’t collect slugs (very worn coins). I buy large dealer lots from Europe to identify but I never get around to selling the duplicates. I’ll DM later so we can talk some specifics.
We don’t need to make it anything specific. I’m a hobbyist, and I have a couple of ideas about how classical translation might be refreshed a bit from the current drab that I wouldn’t mind trying out on a more technical project before pointing it at something literary. If at some point a goodwill gift is in order, anything that I could use to teach kids about the world and coinage of the Greeks and Romans would be perfect. But nothing more needs to be said about that.
If you’re determined to go ahead with this, you’ll need all the help from Joel that you can get, and I wish you all joy of it.
But as to ἐν γʹ Αἰτωλικῶν, the title was Αιτωλικα, neuter plural (not “the Aitolians”), which I guess Joel could undrably translate as “Aitolic stuff.”
Aitolika is Greeklish, unfortunately, and the title does communicate something about the book. Writing for myself, I’d say third book of Aetoliana. But Aetolian Things is probably more communicative. If we want to have fun with it though, there are plenty of options:
Aetolia, a survey of its people, history, and geography
Oh, I like them all! This is so exciting–for me at least, there’s nothing quite like new discoveries about Acheloios, so being able to read these previously untranslated ancient passages is going to be a real treat!
Wouldn’t you rather read them in Greek? It seems like this project would be a lot easier and more enjoyable if you dedicated some time to learning the language first. The supposed translations you have posted so far (which if I understand correctly are the work of translation software) are terrible, and you don’t seem able at present to improve on them.
Yes, and that is a goal I hope to some day achieve, but the present project is for a reference book on Acheloios–a corpus of all the ancient literature, inscriptions, and iconography featuring Acheloios (happy to share sections if you’re interested in taking a look).
I could just list all the Greek and Latin excerpts, but I want the translations, too, so it is a useful tool for people interested in the study of Acheloios (including myself!). The vast majority of the important passages on Acheloios have already been translated many times, and I’m very familiar with those, but for a tool like this, I want everything included, down to the most obscure facts–like blinding plants!
And, as terrible as the Davinci-Molinari translation is, we’re still talking about a plant that grows in the Acheloios that can blind people, and Artemis somehow reverses that.
It seems pointless to me to produce an inaccurate, unreliable translation which has to be rewritten by someone else anyway. Surely the best option would be to hire a professional translator if you can afford it.
I think it is a lot of fun, actually, and I would never publish my translations unless they were reviewed by an expert. If at some point I have to hire a translator it will only be for the passages that absolutely must be translated. I will also have a lot of fees for image reproduction. For the remaining I can just leave the original text along with the general themes. But it sounds like Joel is going to help me, which is really terrific news.