mwh and barry can give you a better appraisal, but for a literal translation it appears to be fine. I’d change the rendering of Haec to “she”, though, remembering that Fama is a personification of a goddess, in this case a “monstrum horrendum”, not just a concept or idea. BTW, I just realized that I indicated “Vergil prefaces this with vario sermone”. I should have written “Orberg”. Vergil uses ‘multiplici sermone’. As far as it being a “sin to read Vergil in anything but the original”, I fully agree. When you read an adapted version, or worse, a prose paraphrase, you don’t get to fully experience the artistry of the poet, you don’t get to appreciate his choice of words, his use of meter, rhythm, poetic devices-in a word, his poetry. All you get to enjoy is the story, which is just a reason for the show, but not the show itself. The problem arises that for a relatively new student of Latin, Vergil can be a bit daunting in the original, so yes, to retain the student’s interest and present the material at the student’s present knowledge level , adaptations are created. There are a bunch of discussions on this forum about this topic and you’ll find very informed arguments on both sides of the issue. As I say, personally, I’m in mwh’s camp on this one, having taken the long way round to learn my Latin.
Yes, that’s much better. What’s interesting is that by leaving out vera, you created a sentence that still makes sense, but changes the meaning of pariter ac.
And would this be a good translation for the original:
This then rejoicingly was filling up
The people with a changeable discourse,
And equally was singing facts and lies.I wrote it in iambic pentameter. Would that suit?
As the comment above, I think I would go with “she” to capture the personification. Not sure what to do with “rejoicingly,” but you’ve captured the sense, and iambic pentameter is cool.
No. Pariter ac falsa narrabat makes no more sense than “equally told and false tales” does. (That’s why it was easy to see that vera must have dropped out.)
That makes sense to translate haec as_she_. And I am in complete agreement with both you and mwh: I hate adaptions of the originals and it truly is a sin to have to read them and I would much rather prefer to just dwelve straight into the original text. Which is why I have been slacking off from reading Orberg’s book. I sometimes get the feeling that it won’t make me such a fluent reader and writer after I’m done with it. Do you or mwh have any other better suggestion as to how to learn Latin? I believe I already asked him this but he seems to have not noticed it. What would the long route be to learning Latin that you took? Would it happen to be reading through A&G’s grammar by any chance? You seem to be able to reference that book at the spur of the moment.
I know I translated gaudens (a present participle) as an adverb; because isn’t that what, in some strange way, present participles could be considered? Maybe? I even feel ambiguous as to my own inference on this. But how else would it have been translated?
In a rejoicing manner she then was filling up…
As she was rejoicing she then was filling up…
If she was doing something in a rejoicing manner (1st translation), wouldn’t that be an adverb? Or if she was rejoicing while doing the same thing (2nd translation), wouldn’t it also be the same? An adverb? I’m sure you all agree with me on this: the present participle is often hard to translate, if not always (this is the case with me at least). And I absolutely had to translate it as rejoicingly to be able to translate it to iambic pentameter. Which comes naturally to me being a poet (not published yet though). I also plan on translating The Aeneid in iambic pentameter one day too as soon as I’m able to fluently read it though.
Oh, I don’t know. Not worth spending a whole lot of time on, but “and equally also told false things,” i.e. “also told false things,” “at the same time told false things,” all fit the lexical in both the OLD and L&S. A quick look through the Perseus database texts shows pariter atque/ac used as a correlative in a number of contexts. But I think we’d both agree that Vergil’s original makes the best sense of all.
It’s just that “rejoicingly” really isn’t English. I think it would sound more poetic in English perhaps simply to use the present participle, or perhaps to use another equivalent “with joy” or “joyfully.”
Oh come off it Barry. Even with the Vergilian original in front of you failed to see that something was amiss with what the poster had miscopied, and thought that made sense when it quite clearly didn’t. Not any amount of your searching through the OLD and L&S and the Perseus database will show otherwise. Sometimes it’s best just to acknowledge your mistakes.
Sure, Michael, have it your way, “there are none so blind…” and all that. Admitting mistakes can be difficult when one is used to being the smartest one in the room. I’ll try to do better next time.
The only blanket advice I can give is Read as much Latin prose as you can. For simple Latin (and a thumbnail sketch of Roman history) Eutropius is often used as a springboard, though I would not bother with him. Caesar and Cicero are the standards for classical Latin. They have interestingly different styles of writing, and Cicero was highly influential. You could try his Brutus, which discusses Latin style and oratory. Livy and Tacitus are each more challenging, as is Seneca, and Apuleius, and others.
Ideally you won’t read Latin poetry until you’ve properly learnt Latin, but if you can’t resist (and who can?), Catullus is a perennial favorite, and if you want to get a taste of older and more colloquial Latin, try Plautus (not easy). I’d hold off on Vergil and Horace’s lyrics for as long as you can. Otherwise you’ll miss too much of their artistry.
Avoid translating as much as possible, especially with verse. Focus on understanding the Latin as Latin, without worrying about how to turn it into English, a secondary activity.
Use translations if you have to, but always try to figure out the Latin first. Otherwise you’ll never learn to read Latin. Don’t cheat. Commentaries can be useful, and you can always ask questions on this Textkit board (where you may or may not get good answers—some respondents are more reliable than others, and some are more tiresome—I’ll say no more).
You’ll need to make use of a reference grammar (it doesn’t too much matter which), but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that grammar is all there is to the language, or that everything has to be pigeon-holed in one sub-category or another. (For example, when you see complebat used with the ablative as well as an accusative, “she filled X with Y,” you shouldn’t feel a need to ask what kind of ablative it is.) And of course you’ll need a dictionary. The OLD is much the best, but a smaller one will usually be adequate until you get more advanced.
As for writing Latin, that’s quite a different thing, and you should use a composition book for that, unless and until you’re fluent in reading..
What a lot of commandments! But you did ask, twice. This is the longest post I’ve written in a long time. I know some of it runs counter to customary practice in schools and colleges, but it’s born of long experience learning and teaching at all levels.
Ørberg actually does a reasonably good job of building up to reading actual ancient authors, but is no substitute for reading those authors once you get to that point. There is nothing like seeing how people who habitually thought in the language as their birth language handle it. Here is a hint: primers are nearly always based on Caesar, Cicero and Vergil, and Caesar in particular was usually the intended author to be read at the intermediate level, so these should be your “go to” authors. Nepos is another good “introductory” author, a bit idiosyncratic in his Latin at times, but well within classical norms. Eutropius? Good if you like nourishment without a lot of taste. Then move on to poetry. I prefer Ovid as the introduction to poetry, mostly because you have fun stories like Pyramus and Thisbe or Baucis and Philemon, but also I have found him a bit more accessible in his use of the language. Recently there has been a mini-revival for the Ilias Latina, sort of the Eutropius of poetry… 
. After these, you can pretty much read any author you like, there’s really no wrong choice, as long as it’s ancient.
Use grammars for reference rather than reading, or if you are going to read through one, do so after reading a fair amount of Latin, so you can better read the actual examples that the grammar provides.
Accidental duplication
First off, I think mwh and Barry have pretty much addressed how to go about learning Latin and I can’t really add much to that, except to say that what I mean by learning “the long way round” really follows the progression mwh suggests. I had 3 years of High School Latin before I started Vergil. That was preceded by a year and half of grammar and syntax, then Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, then Cicero’s Orations & Letters, Sallust, Pliny Minor, even a little mediaeval Latin. That took 3 years. The fourth was devoted to Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorpheses. The fifth year (first at university level) started with Catullus & Horace in the first semester, followed by Plautus’ Menaechmi and Mostellaria in the second semester. At this level, we were given original texts and armed with Allen & Greenough and Casell’s Latin Dictionary (or OLD),we set about learning Latin Poetry and Comedy. That was in 1970. Fast forward to 2016. After a prosperous and blissfully uneventful career in the airlines, I hung up the wings and went back to my first love (s) - Latin and Ancient Greek. I started with a comprehensive review of Grammar & Vocabulary, then worked through Caesar, Cicero, and Livy. I am now rereading Vergil and wouldn’t you know it, I happen to be reading Book 4 right now! As far as being able to quote A&G, I certainly haven’t read it cover to cover, but I’ve learnt how to use it and I do my level best to make sure that what help I can give is backed up by an accepted authority. The only exception I make to that rule is I pretty much accept what mwh and Hylander say as gospel.
Thanks for your long response mwh. I actually have thought of just picking up Caesar and learning Latin like that; which I have done before (so far I’ve just read the first paragraph of the Gallic War; a shame, I know). But the reason why I don’t continue with that route is because I fear that I may come across something entirely unknown to me in terms of syntax. For example, just now I skimmed through the grammar that goes along with Orberg’s Roma Aeterna and I came across the Historical Infinitive. How would I know if an Infinitive was being used Historically if I ran into it while reading a real Latin writer as opposed to in Orberg’s book where it’s all revealed in a certain order of difficulty more or less. But I suppose I could ask here like you said if I were to come across something that I don’t recognize. And I was asking what kind of ablative that was because from what I understand not all ablatives use a preposition so I was going to use that knowledge for the future when I begin to write Latin myself so as to avoid using that ablative with a preposition. Doesn’t that make sense?
What’s wrong with rejoicingly? I just looked it up and it is a word. Sure, it may be a British word, but nonetheless, it’s still a real word. By the way, you didn’t answer my question. Would you agree with me that translating the present participle is kind of hard?
By the way Barry, I’ll just go ahead and reply to your other post here instead of having to make another post and causing more confusion on this thread. Just simply acknowledging that I read your post and I appreciate your response.
By airlines do you mean that you were a pilot for commercial airplanes? That’s really cool if you were. And that’s such a crazy coincidence that you just so happen to be reading book IV of the Aeneid right now when I so happened to ask that question that restarted this old thread. Thank you to you three for your identical advice. I think I’m just going to finish reading this chapter that I’m on in Orberg’s book, which is the last chapter on Vergil, and then pick up Caesar’s the Gallic War. Or do you all think that I should think just ditch Orberg already and pick up on Caesar already? What do you think mwh? I probably should, right? Why waste time with this adaption, right?
It’s not quite as much as fun when you do it for a living, but it’s still the best sit-down job I ever had.
I think I’m just going to finish reading this chapter that I’m on in Orberg’s book, which is the last chapter on Vergil, and then pick up Caesar’s the Gallic War. Or do you all think that I should think just ditch Orberg already and pick up on Caesar already? What do you think mwh?
Despite my post I really don’t like telling people what to do, beyond encouraging them to think for themselves. And not knowing Orberg I’m not in a good position to give advice on this particular question. But yes, you should definitely ditch the Vergil paraphrase (the very worst sort of preparation for reading Vergil), and yes it’s probably a good idea to read as much of the Gallic War as you can stand, if only for the sake of your Latin.
As to your fear of encountering unfamiliar syntax, don’t let that deter you. You have resources to deal with it (this board, failing all else). Aim high. Historical infinitives you can recognize when you come across infinitives which don’t make sense as infinitives and where you’d have expected an indicative. If a sentence in a past narrative seems not to have a main verb, maybe it’s in disguise as an infinitive. They tend to come in bunches, sometimes dozens of them. Livy is fond of them.
Again I urge you not to focus on translation, which inevitably distorts the Latin, especially in verse. You should aim to reach the point just as soon as possible where you don’t have to filter the Latin through English but can process the Latin unmediated. And when it comes to the Aeneid (which as I said you’d do well to hold off on for just as long as you can), remember that Vergil was steeped in Homer. So learn Greek first! (Well OK that may be a little excessive, but you will get much more out of Vergil if you do.)
Yes, translating the participle can be “kind of hard” at times, and a literal translation of it can be awkward, so one looks for equivalent constructions in English that capture the sense (and I’ve just described what translation in general should be). However, a previous poster is right – understanding the Latin in terms of Latin, without translating, should be the primary focus. That’s one of the great strengths of Ørberg, is that he uses as little English as possible for learning the language.
“I don’t speak English, I talk American.” American English, at least as I’ve learned it, avoids -ly forms for adverbs, preferring other expressions. Thinking back to my time in the UK, and the various episodes of East Enders, Downton Abbey, and Dr. Who that I’ve seen, I don’t recall hearing an adverbial participle in -ly, but that’s still limited exposure…
Thanks for your advice, mwh. By the way, I was so caught up as to what haec was referring to that I’m just realizing why it was used as opposed to illa which seems to make more sense since Fama had just been mentioned. So why was haec used instead of illa?
And another question apart from this. You said in an earlier post that you taught Latin. What material did you use to teach it? What books (obviously not Orberg’s since you said you’re not familiar with him)? What Latin reader series? Composition books? Grammar books?