Horace 2.7 Translation

Latin Learning Latin
1

O saepe mecum tempus in ultimum
deducte Bruto militiae duce,
quis te redonavit Quiritem
dis patriis Italoque caelo,

Pompei, meorum prime sodalium,
cum quo morantem saepe diem mero
fregi, coronatus nitentis
malobathro Syrio capillos?

Tecum Philippos et celerem fugam
sensi relicta non bene parmula,
cum fracta virtus et minaces
turpe solum tetigere mento.

Sed me per hostis Mercurius celer
denso paventem sustulit aere;
te rursus in bellum resorbens
unda fretis tulit aestuosis.

Ergo obligatam redde Iovi dapem,
longaque fessum militia latus
depone sub lauru mea nec
parce cadis tibi destinatis.

Oblivioso levia Massico
ciboria exple, funde capacibus
unguenta de conchis. Quis udo
deproperare apio coronas

curatve myrto? Quem Venus arbitrum
dicet bibendi? Non ego sanius
bacchabor Edonis; recepto
dulce mihi furere est amico.


O Brutus, having been lead down with me
into the last danger, with Brutus as leader of the military.
Who returned you, a Roman citizen, the first of all my friends,
with whom I often broke the lingering day with unmixed wine,
having crowned my shining hair with Syrian malobathrum,
to the ancestral gods and to the Italian sky?
I experienced with you the Phillipines and swift flight,
with my little shield not having been left,
when virtue was broken, and threatening men
with a shameful chin touched the ground.
But through the enemies swift Mercury raised me,
being frightened, with a dense air,
the wave in the very hot straits carried you,
sucking you (the direct object understood twice, a usage of ellepsis??) back into war again.
Therefore return the feast, dedicated to Juppiter,
and because of long military service, lay your tired side
under my laurel tree, and do not spare the flasks
determined for you. Fill the smooth drinking cups
with oblivious Massican wine, and pour the odors
from spacious shell fish. Who cares to hurry to complete
crowns with wet parsley or myrtle? Whom will Venus
call ‘the master of drinking?’ I will not celebrate the festival of Bacchus
more healthily than the Thracians: with a friend having been received to myself,
it is sweet to be wild.

I was wondering if anyone could offer any help to me in regards to my translation and point out any errors which I have made. I would also like to become better skilled at analyzing poetry, so if anyone could supply tips for analysis, this would also be great.
Mirabar utrum quis posset auxilium ullum translatione praebere nobis ac monstrare ullos errores quos feci. Velim quoque peritior fieri in analysibus poesium, ergo si quis possit nobis dare consilia ad poeses analyzandas bonum quoque sit.

Gratias vobis ago,
Codius, vel anglice scriptum “Cody”

2

What kind of translation is this? It’s not a translation, it’s the worst kind of translationese. You do realize that Horace’s Latin reads nothing remotely like your English? It looks as if you’re trying to render the Latin syntax as literally as you can in English. You don’t do a bad job of that, and maybe that’s what the National Latin Exam wants you to do, but the result is devastating. Nothing of Horace’s poetry survives such treatment. No wonder Latin is dying in schools, if this is how it’s taught.

Anyhow, just to note:
Your opening “O Brutus” should be Pompey (but not that Pompey). Perhaps just a typo?
Philippi is Philippi, not the Philippines,
and relicta non bene parmula means the opposite of “not having been left”: he did leave his shield behind (or so he claims)—non bene: it was a shameful thing for a soldier to do. But it was also a traditional thing for a solider poet to do: the archaic Greek poets Archilochus and Alcaeus claimed to have done the same, and Horace is falling into line. It’s a literary thing.

Your own Latin is excessively literal too, more English than Latin.
But never mind. As Horace says, “Pour the odors from spacious shell fish. Who cares?”


Sorry to sound so harsh, Cody. It’s not against you, it’s against your teachers.

3

I am sorry, I was just trying to render it into something. I do understand, my English isn’t in the same order as the Latin. The translation was supposed to say Pompey, not Brutus this was a typo. And the Philippi I did as Philipines. These were my mistakes, and I am sorry.

4

No please don’t apologize, you have nothing whatever to apologize for. I saw what you were aiming to do, and you did that pretty well. Much as I detest this kind of translation, I do recognize the need to disentangle the Latin, to sort out what goes with what and show that you understand the constructions. But it’s important to realize that that’s only a preliminary step, and should not be thought of as an end product, in fact it’s best if that procedure takes place only in your head rather than being committed to writing. Before putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, you should try to figure out what it’s all about, what’s really going on in the poem, and take account of rhetorical figures and metaphor and suchlike in arriving at the sense of the Latin, and observe the structure of the poem, how it moves from thought to thought and gets from beginning to end. You can’t be expected to produce a translation that reflects Horace’s style—that’s completely impossible—but you can begin to appreciate its poetic features, how Horace chooses and organizes his words as well as his thoughts. Quite apart from the artistry of the versification and the stanzaic arrangement. There’s so much more to it than literal translation that kills everything else that’s going on stone dead.

Philippi is a reference to the battle of Philippi (Philippi being the site of the battle), a crucial battle in the civil wars, in which Horace apparently fought on the losing side, led by Brutus. (See Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.) Perhaps you knew this.

5

Yes, this is what I was trying to do-- produce a literal translation which includes the Latin grammar and what the poem is actually saying. In the class I am taking, this is how we translate (as literally as possible, just to make sure we understand the underlying Latin grammar constructions which Horace/Catullus used), but we pay attention to the figures of speech (ellipsis, anaphora, synchesis, chiasmus) but we aren’t taught to translate by conserving these figures, and I agree they can be appreciated if they are seen in this way. Also I forgot to thank you on your corrections.

6

And are you taught to consider the function and effect of such figures, or simply to stick technical labels onto them?

(And btw the Latin grammatical constructions are not “underlying,” they’re right there on the surface. And even more btw it’s synchysis, συγχυσις, not synchesis; the terms are Greek.)

7

We are taught to be able to recognize these figures, and how it may play a role in what the author is saying.

8

You are doing a fine job and you can be proud of your accomplishments in Latin so far and of your magister/ra as well. Once you have worked through the “translationese” level, you want to ask yourself “what is the best way to express the Latin in English?” I try to do this on a daily basis with my AP and advanced students, asking for several different paraphrases once it’s clear that the student has a grasp of the “underlying Latin” (or Greek). Sometimes that leads to a translation which bears little resemblance to what we think of as the literal, which is also why intermediate and early advanced students often find published translations less than optimal to “help” them with their homework. Translation is done for more than one purpose, and what we produce in the classroom as a tool better to understand the Latin or the Greek is not what we would want to produce for public consumption.

Additionally, in response to mwh:

  1. The NLE does not ask the student to produce translations. It gives a series of 30 questions asking the student to give multiple choice responses to various short Latin sentences, identifying basic grammar and syntax (and at the lower levels, usually a few questions about mythology/history/culture). It then provides a reading appropriate to the level (intro through 5) and then provides 10 comprehension questions about the reading. The AP Latin exam does at one point during the exam ask a student to provide a translation which is as close as possible to the Latin, but still makes sense in English. BTW, when someone says “the underlying Latin” that usually means the what underlies an English translation.

  2. Who said Latin is dying? I’m a member of the Philadelphia Classical Society, which has more than 40 member schools, including several public schools with strong Latin programs. Remember also that the teachers you are berating are the ones who are feeding future classicists to colleges and universities. Perhaps we are only lowly grammatici, but we hope that our students will go on to be greater than we.

  3. Being able to identify a literary device, being able to do scansion at the mechanical level, and so forth are the essential skills necessary to discuss how these items are used in the overall purpose of the author and his text, just like being able to recite the alphabet and recognize letters is an essential skill for reading. It’s where we start, not where we end up. An advanced Latin class at the high school level is not going to be doing the same sorts of things as a graduate seminar at a university.

Perhaps due to your many accomplishments and decades of work you have forgotten what it’s like to be a beginning student and especially to have younger beginning students. We grammatici out in the trenches do not have that luxury.

9

There’s something in what you say, Barry. Far be it from me to disparage the work done by you grammatici out in the trenches, as you put it. But you must allow me to have reservations about its effects.

10

昔日你我曾一起受布鲁图斯的统领，
时常战至最后的险境，水尽山穷，
可是，谁为你恢复了公民身份、
祖先的神灵和意大利的天空？

庞佩乌，最早的伙伴，我们曾共同消磨
沉闷无趣的日子，喝着浓酒，戴着
花冠，头发抹了来自叙利亚的
桂树叶香油，闪烁着光泽。

腓立比的厮杀与迅速的溃败，我们一起
经历，羞耻地丢弃了各自的盾牌，当士气
轰然崩塌，叫阵的勇者也已经
倒下，脸贴屈辱的尘泥。

但浓云飞卷，墨丘利拯救了惊恐的我，
转瞬之间我已经从重重的敌阵逃脱，
你却不幸被大海肆虐的波浪
重新卷回战争的漩涡。

所以你应向朱庇特献上感恩的祭礼，
然后在我的月桂下休息疲惫的肢体，
漫长的军旅终于结束，我为你
预留的酒坛千万别吝惜。

在光滑锃亮的金属杯中斟满马西库，
它让人忘记一切，从宽绰的贝壳倒出
珍藏的香膏。谁愿采来新鲜的
西芹和桃金娘，还带着露珠，

赶制一顶叶冠？骰子的维纳斯将决定
谁掌管宴席？酩酊的我若论清醒，
绝不会超过埃东人，朋友归来，
我疯狂一次多么尽兴！

11

I approved this new post, since it is a Chinese translation of the text at hand, but as a new poster, please provide some description of your post in English/Latin rather than just the Chinese.

12

This is a fine translation! The gentleman who responded to you, mwh, was needlessly harsh in my opinion. You were aiming for a direct translation to understand the basics of the Latin, and well done! I know that you speak Latin fluently, Cody, and you should be proud of your continuous accomplishments as a Latin speaker! God knows I certainly still have a lot to learn about Latin. And as for translation, I have no skill or training whatsoever. :laughing: