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ricardienneCourtesy of Cicero's second Catilinarian: "How can these men endure the Apennines and that hoar-frost and snow? Unless they think perhaps that they will bear winter more easily because they have learnt to dance naked at banquets!" (In the original: "Quo autem pacto illi Apenninum atque illas pruinas ac nivis perferent? Nisi iddcirco se facilius hiemem toleraturos putant, quod nudi in conviviis salter didicerunt!")
So I found that NAXOS has the Globe cd set in their catalog -- my day is made.
And now more Latin-y things. I was poking around Pliny's letters this afternoon, and I found this one, which seems really neat. But I can't find an English translation of Book VII on-line, and I am too lazy to go to the library to check one out. Thereofore, I must translate for myself (oh the horror!):
C. PLINIUS TACITO SUO S.
1 Librum tuum legi et, quam diligentissime potui, adnotavi quae commutanda, quae eximenda arbitrarer. Nam et ego verum dicere assuevi, et tu libenter audire. Neque enim ulli patientius reprehenduntur, quam qui maxime laudari merentur. 2 Nunc a te librum meum cum adnotationibus tuis exspecto. O iucundas, o pulchras vices! Quam me delectat quod, si qua posteris cura nostri, usquequaque narrabitur, qua concordia simplicitate fide vixerimus! 3 Erit rarum et insigne, duos homines aetate dignitate propemodum aequales, non nullius in litteris nominis — cogor enim de te quoque parcius dicere, quia de me simul dico -, alterum alterius studia fovisse. 4 Equidem adulescentulus, cum iam tu fama gloriaque floreres, te sequi, tibi 'longo sed proximus intervallo' et esse et haberi concupiscebam. Et erant multa clarissima ingenia; sed tu mihi — ita similitudo naturae ferebat — maxime imitabilis, maxime imitandus videbaris. 5 Quo magis gaudeo, quod si quis de studiis sermo, una nominamur, quod de te loquentibus statim occurro. Nec desunt qui utrique nostrum praeferantur. 6 Sed nos, nihil interest mea quo loco, iungimur; nam mihi primus, qui a te proximus. Quin etiam in testamentis debes adnotasse: nisi quis forte alterutri nostrum amicissimus, eadem legata et quidem pariter accipimus. 7 Quae omnia huc spectant, ut invicem ardentius diligamus, cum tot vinculis nos studia mores fama, suprema denique hominum iudicia constringant. Vale.
Gaius Plinius to his friend Tacitus
1. I have read your book, and, as diligently as I was able, I have noted which things I judged should be changed and which removed. For I am accustomed to speak truly, and you to freely listen. For none who deserve to be praised to the utmost bear reproofs patiently. 2. Now I expect my book from you with your notes. O happy, O beautiful exchanges [of books]! How it delights me that in whatever way it will be related, if our descedents have any concern for us, with what harmonious simplicity we will have lived faithfully! 3. It will be a rare and notable thing that two men more or less equal in age and rank, both renowned not a little in letters -- for I am driven to speak sparingly about you also, because I speak at the same time about my self -- each tended each other's studies. 4. As a young man, for my part, as you already were distinguished with glory and report, I desired to follow you, to be "at a long distance, but most near" to you, and to be held so by you. And there were many greatly renowned talents; but you seemed to me -- thus the likeness was true to nature -- to be most imitatable, and most to be imitated. 5. For which I rejoice the more that if I speak on any studies, we are named together, because I am thought of at once by those speaking of you. There are those who are preferred for each ot us. 6. But we, we are joined, it does not matter to me in what way; for he is first to me who is nearest to you. Indeed, you ought to have observed it in wills: unless someone is by chance a most-loved friend to one of us, the same things are bequeathed to each, and truly, we accept equally. 7. All which things tend to this: that we should ardently cherish one another, when zeals, customs, report, and finally the highest judgements of men bind us [together] with so many chains. Farewell.
Tomorrow I may have to go and find a good translation; I am very uncertain about a bunch of places, and, well, I am generally sloppy. (If any of you want to correct my mistakes, I'll
"bear reproofs patiently" (and gratefully!))
As I said, I was browsing, and the first couple of sentences caught my eye. I love the idea of Pliny and Tacitus "peer-reviewing" so to speak, each other's work, for one thing. But it's also the friendship that comes through here (and in the other letters I've read (in English) from Pliny to Tacitus). Yes, it is a little overwrought, and perhaps I am a bit too sentimental, but I was getting a fuzzy, happy feeling the entire time I was working on it. I've been thinking a lot about letters, recently, too, and friendship, and whether or not I'm a "good" friend and so on, so it struck a chord there.
Of course this is a letter meant to be read for posterity, and so it doesn't probably reflect reality completely, but it seems to me such a perfect declaration of friendship. Although they do seem to have been close friends, and they were certainly colleagues. I think that's part of it. I really like Tacitus, and I rather like Pliny, and the idea that two writers whom I tend to think of as abstract authors were interacting regularly and in a friendly way is wonderful and amazing. I wish more of the Histories were extant, so I could see how Tacitus incorporated the account Pliny the Elder's death that Pliny gave him, and see whether he included Pliny's smackdown of Bæbius Massa. Damn it -- WHY did the library at Alexandria have to burn?
So I found that NAXOS has the Globe cd set in their catalog -- my day is made.
And now more Latin-y things. I was poking around Pliny's letters this afternoon, and I found this one, which seems really neat. But I can't find an English translation of Book VII on-line, and I am too lazy to go to the library to check one out. Thereofore, I must translate for myself (oh the horror!):
C. PLINIUS TACITO SUO S.
1 Librum tuum legi et, quam diligentissime potui, adnotavi quae commutanda, quae eximenda arbitrarer. Nam et ego verum dicere assuevi, et tu libenter audire. Neque enim ulli patientius reprehenduntur, quam qui maxime laudari merentur. 2 Nunc a te librum meum cum adnotationibus tuis exspecto. O iucundas, o pulchras vices! Quam me delectat quod, si qua posteris cura nostri, usquequaque narrabitur, qua concordia simplicitate fide vixerimus! 3 Erit rarum et insigne, duos homines aetate dignitate propemodum aequales, non nullius in litteris nominis — cogor enim de te quoque parcius dicere, quia de me simul dico -, alterum alterius studia fovisse. 4 Equidem adulescentulus, cum iam tu fama gloriaque floreres, te sequi, tibi 'longo sed proximus intervallo' et esse et haberi concupiscebam. Et erant multa clarissima ingenia; sed tu mihi — ita similitudo naturae ferebat — maxime imitabilis, maxime imitandus videbaris. 5 Quo magis gaudeo, quod si quis de studiis sermo, una nominamur, quod de te loquentibus statim occurro. Nec desunt qui utrique nostrum praeferantur. 6 Sed nos, nihil interest mea quo loco, iungimur; nam mihi primus, qui a te proximus. Quin etiam in testamentis debes adnotasse: nisi quis forte alterutri nostrum amicissimus, eadem legata et quidem pariter accipimus. 7 Quae omnia huc spectant, ut invicem ardentius diligamus, cum tot vinculis nos studia mores fama, suprema denique hominum iudicia constringant. Vale.
Gaius Plinius to his friend Tacitus
1. I have read your book, and, as diligently as I was able, I have noted which things I judged should be changed and which removed. For I am accustomed to speak truly, and you to freely listen. For none who deserve to be praised to the utmost bear reproofs patiently. 2. Now I expect my book from you with your notes. O happy, O beautiful exchanges [of books]! How it delights me that in whatever way it will be related, if our descedents have any concern for us, with what harmonious simplicity we will have lived faithfully! 3. It will be a rare and notable thing that two men more or less equal in age and rank, both renowned not a little in letters -- for I am driven to speak sparingly about you also, because I speak at the same time about my self -- each tended each other's studies. 4. As a young man, for my part, as you already were distinguished with glory and report, I desired to follow you, to be "at a long distance, but most near" to you, and to be held so by you. And there were many greatly renowned talents; but you seemed to me -- thus the likeness was true to nature -- to be most imitatable, and most to be imitated. 5. For which I rejoice the more that if I speak on any studies, we are named together, because I am thought of at once by those speaking of you. There are those who are preferred for each ot us. 6. But we, we are joined, it does not matter to me in what way; for he is first to me who is nearest to you. Indeed, you ought to have observed it in wills: unless someone is by chance a most-loved friend to one of us, the same things are bequeathed to each, and truly, we accept equally. 7. All which things tend to this: that we should ardently cherish one another, when zeals, customs, report, and finally the highest judgements of men bind us [together] with so many chains. Farewell.
Tomorrow I may have to go and find a good translation; I am very uncertain about a bunch of places, and, well, I am generally sloppy. (If any of you want to correct my mistakes, I'll
"bear reproofs patiently" (and gratefully!))
As I said, I was browsing, and the first couple of sentences caught my eye. I love the idea of Pliny and Tacitus "peer-reviewing" so to speak, each other's work, for one thing. But it's also the friendship that comes through here (and in the other letters I've read (in English) from Pliny to Tacitus). Yes, it is a little overwrought, and perhaps I am a bit too sentimental, but I was getting a fuzzy, happy feeling the entire time I was working on it. I've been thinking a lot about letters, recently, too, and friendship, and whether or not I'm a "good" friend and so on, so it struck a chord there.
Of course this is a letter meant to be read for posterity, and so it doesn't probably reflect reality completely, but it seems to me such a perfect declaration of friendship. Although they do seem to have been close friends, and they were certainly colleagues. I think that's part of it. I really like Tacitus, and I rather like Pliny, and the idea that two writers whom I tend to think of as abstract authors were interacting regularly and in a friendly way is wonderful and amazing. I wish more of the Histories were extant, so I could see how Tacitus incorporated the account Pliny the Elder's death that Pliny gave him, and see whether he included Pliny's smackdown of Bæbius Massa. Damn it -- WHY did the library at Alexandria have to burn?
