Someone asked me to translate this poem. But I am inconfident with my translation.
The person who asked me to translate it read Robert Louis Stevenson’s (19th century poet?) English translation of this poem, and found Latin counterpart to it, and now wants to know its original meaning.
Hic festinata requiescit Erotion umbra,
(Here Erotion is sleeping who hastened to the land of shadow,) crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems.
(The fatal sixth winter killed her, what a crime!) quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli,
(Whoever you are that will become the lord of our small land after me,) manibus exiguis annua iusta dato:
(please give annual funeral offering to her small hands.) sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite solus
(By so doing the fire of the house would last, and the panic (that a child died) would be soothed,) flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua.
(and the pitiful tombtstone would be no more than one in your land.)
Robert Louis Stevenson’s translation is this.
Epitaphium Erotii
Here lies Erotion, whom at six years old
Fate pilfered. Stranger (when I too am cold,
Who shall succeed me in my rural field),
To this small spirit annual honours yield!
Bright be thy hearth, hale be thy babes, I crave
And this, in thy green farm, the only grave.
Concerning “crimen”, my dictionaries don’t have a meaning that would apply here. Twist of fate, it seems a good translation. Can you explain how you decided to render “crimen” as “twist”?
But where I am confused is the last two lines. I always get puzzled when I face “sic”. There is no good meaning and explanation of it in dictionaries.
Well, because the Latin word “crimen” means “judgement” as much as “crime”. (You’ve always got L&S online, remember.) And “twist of fate” seems to fit the bill as a “judgement of fate” and as appropriate to the context.
Quia sensus “crimen” dictionis simul scelus (vel vitium) et disceptatio complectunt. (Memento, hic semper dictionarium L&S habes: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin ) Disceptationis sensum elegi ut hoc in contextu aptum. Et “disceptatio fati” anglicè “twist of fate” versari potest.
The last two lines are a plaintive wish using ablative of time and place, I think (with “So” = “Thus” = “By so doing” = “Sic”, as you say):
“So where your home is ever and your clan free from harm, may that then be the only pitiful tombstone upon your land.”
Martial is not wishing that no-one ever dies (by such offerings to the Gods), I believe, but that no one ever again dies so pitifully. That’s a lovely poem.
The person who asked me to translate this says he read somewhere that the speaker of this Martialis’ poem is a Greek slave. What do you think?
Without that information I first thought the speaker was Martialis himself, and he was the lord of the land which is mentioned in the poem, and was begging someone who will take over his lordship to give some offering to his daughter Erotion’s tomb. And I thought that next lord might be chosen from Martialis’ kin, not a stranger, who shared the same land with him. And the next lord’s land was also the land Martialis lives even from now on, and he wished that such a pitiful tomb may not increase in his and the next lord’s land.
By the way / obiter, “umbrâ festinatâ” = “in premature shadow or night – or death, of course”.
I’m not so sure that a slave would have a gravestone for their own child (because of the effort and expense in erecting one, and not owning the land it marked). I think your story about the lord or land-owner as the father and narrator or poet is more likely, although there could be important and loved slaves who were exceptional and chroniclers.
Servum lapem sepulcralem pro filiâ suâ habere dubito. Lapis talis pretiosa et molesta erigere fuisset, praesertim alicui sine terrâ. Fabula tua de domino sicut patre et poetâ vel narratore verisimilis est, etiamsi certum est servos exceptionales fuisse honestos et honoratos et chronologos.
I have one more thing.
I am vague with the word “turba”.
sic lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite solus
(I translated this line as, By so doing the fire of the house would last, and the panic (that a child died) would be soothed,)
You translated it as “clan”.
So where your home is ever and your clan free from harm, may that then be the only pitiful tombstone upon your land
My dictionaries don’t have such a meaning. They have only “mob, crowd”-like words and “turmoil”-like words. (I now tried to access to Perseus but I couldn’t access it.) Clan is rather similar to mob, maybe, but clan has no such a bad meaning as mob has.
Hi, Junya. In English, you can use the word “crowd” (and the word “lot” similarly) in a tiny-bit jocular but altogether positive sense, as in “the in-crowd” or “my crowd” ("my friends’ or “my relatives” at a wedding, say). “Turba” in Latin has a similar sense, without being at all jocular (I think). L&S briefly describe this sense as “a band, train, troop, etc”. Here’s the start of the Oxford Latin Dictionary’s entry for this sense, which is followed by a third of a column of examples of usage:
I thought “clan” fitted the context, or “household” or “extended family” if you like, too. To use the English word “crowd” in the context would be too flippant. Robert Louis Stevenson says “babes” in the translation you gave.
Let me just add that, for the “turba” sense of “inhabitants or occupants of a place”, in English you could use the word “ones”, as in “the Belfast ones” or “those ones from Tokyo”. What little I’ve read of Martial (or Martialis) I think is absolutely wonderful for how he depicted some country elements, and maybe that comes across in his choice of language also. Not that the words aren’t classical, but possibly he chose some words to reflect rural sensibilities, in the same way that I feel “the Belfast ones” reflects more a rural attitude or way of talking about others and interacting (in a rich, nice sense). I come from a city, by the way, but I’m interested in those useful aspects of language we’re losing by not being close to the land. Even in the city, though, you do have tribalisms to do with coming from different streets or estates or areas that is reflected in the language. Now that I think about it, you could translate “turba” as “your ones” in your poem, with a nice sense of intimacy about its usage. In my opinion, it means just the same as “your loved ones”, but sounds better by not using the word “loved”.
[Since this is about English translation, I won’t bother trying this in Latin.]
Junya, I looked for more information on Erotion and found that Martial wrote three elegies to her. She was a little slave girl on his estate. So the poem’s speaker is Martial himself. Beyond that, nothing else is known about her (apparently). Here’s another.
Plus de Erotione, Junya, quaesivi. Inveni eam servulam in fundo Martialis fuisse, cui vel de qua poeta tres elegias scripsit. Quâ de re, Martialis tuo in poemate voce suâ loquitur. Ut videtur, de Erotione nihil praetereà scitur. Elegia alia ecce.
Hanc tibi, Fronto pater, genetrix Flaccilla, puellam
oscula commendo deliciasque meas,
parvola ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras
oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis.
inpletura fuit sextae modo frigora brumae,
vixisset totidem ni minus illa dies.
inter tam veteres ludat lasciva patronos
et nomen blaeso garriat ore meum.
mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi,
terra, gravis fueris: non fuit illa tibi. (v. xxxiv)
If I had bought OLD last month! It was sold for only 110 dollars at Amazon US. It was that price from December to January. Now it is 198 dollars. I don’t have a credit card, so I couldn’t buy it. In Amazon Japan, it is 40000 yen, over 400 dollars, too expensive.
Thank you Adrianus. You greatly helped me. In addition you are kind too.
Now I am grasping the outline of that poem.
And I’m glad you seem to have enjoyed reading and searching about Martial.
It is obvious that Robert Stevenson’s is the translation of that poem. But the person who asked me to translate that poem doesn’t believe it. What do you think?
And I want to know, if there is a way, for me who don’t have OLD, to gather (by internet) as much word information as a person who has OLD can.
I bought OLD secondhand from an English bookseller for £100 ($200, or 20000 yen --do you know the Latin for Yen?). Cheaper than new, but $110 was really cheap.
I did enjoy reading and studying your Martial poem very much indeed, by the way.
As for Stevenson, this site at least says he is the author: http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Robert_Louis_St.htm
Finally, I would say it’s impossible to find everything there is in OLD using the internet.
Dictionarium OLD redivivum de bibliopolâ anglicâ emi, Pretium erat libris centum, dollaris ducenti, yen viginti milia. Pretium vilius quam novum, at centum decem dollaris pro luto fuit.
Obiter, poema tuum Martialis legere et investigare mihi valdè quidem placuit.
Quo nomine Stevenson, ille situs suprà saltem eum poematis quod dedisti auctorem esse dicit.
Denique, ut opinor, impossibile est omnia quae libro OLD continentur interreti reperire.
I will if I can, Junya, no problem, but I ask for something in return. What if you put your questions in Latin as well as in English. Would you agree to that?
Id libenter faciam, Junya, si potero. Te autem gratias vices reddere quaeso, ut simul latinè et anglicè tuas quaestiones pones. Accedisne ad pactionem?
I started Latin 1 and 10 months ago, and I am now reading medieval philosophy texts which is my concern (or rather translating, because I can’t fluently read for the lack of vocabulary).
I have never tried a composition in Latin. My vocabulary is extremely poor that I am consulting dictionaries for almost every word. So could you allow me that I compose in Latin only one sentence per post? But when I can afford to, I will compose more sentences.
By the way, I couldn’t get the Latin word for Japanese “yen”.
I started Latin 1 and 10 months ago, and I am now reading medieval philosophy texts which is my concern (
While admiring your zaeal and effort, I am rather amazed that you are tackling such difficult texts after such a short period of study. I am wondering whether it would be unseemly to inquire about your interest in medieval philosophy. Isn’t that rather dry and tedious?
You may be interested to know that the moderator of the “grex latine loquentium” is gentleman named Hermann Gottschewski but who goes by the pseudonym “agricola japonensis”. He lives in Tokyo (is that where you live?) and teaches music and languages at a University there and I believe that he is also the leader of some sort of Latin speakers group for Japanese learners. He is also developing Japanese language materials for learning latin. He is an expert latinist and a proponent of learning to speak and write in latin. I only mention all this in case you might have an interest in trying to contact him …his skype id can be found at this site
Otherwise, if you join the Grex you could get his email that way (when people send messages their emails are automatically revealed). Well…this is just a thought…do with it what you will.
Thank you for informing me about the man. I try going to his site.
I seem to be making coherent translations of Aquinas and others. I began reading about medieval philosophy 3 or 4 years ago. So I know a bit of background of it, that helps in translation.
They are all written in Latin. I am not competent for those sites now, because, with this small vocabulary I have to read each sentence on them consulting dictionaries 10 times. But if I use those sites seriously, it would give me a good improvement of Latin. Thank you for giving me such a learning opportunity.
Hi, Junya. I only hoped it might give you pleasure to attempt to express yourself in Latin about matters that were of interest to you. I know it helps me to both improve my Latin (especially if others point out my mistakes), and it pleases me not to say anything without trying to express it in Latin. It also makes me consider how differently one expresses the “same” thing in one language than in another, and illustrates that translation is not a literal word-for-word exercise. I spend much time checking in dictionaries, too, but it’s getting less. I don’t mean to create work for you, so feel free to ask questions in whatever way you like. From the quality of your translations and your English I assumed you were very able to express yourself in Latin. You know best. Please forget about that bargain.
Adrianus, you are a very kind person.
I’m relieved to hear that.
I first translate literally. The translation is awkward and a hard-to- understand form of language to anyone who doesn’t have an experience in translating work. So after that I amend the translation into an understandable form of Japanese.
My vocabulary is extremely poor that I am consulting dictionaries for almost every word. So could you allow me that I compose in Latin only one sentence per post? But when I can afford to, I will compose more sentences.