The tortoise’s best-known appearance in fable might be as the embodiment of “slow and steady wins the race,” but in Phaedrus’s Aquila et cornix, “The Eagle and the Crow,” the shelled reptile meets a less happy end. The titular characters conspire to break open the tortoise’s natural armor via another tried-and-true principle: gravity.
Category: Translations
Al(l)ia Potestas: A Woman with a Different Authority
Al(l)ia Potestas: A Woman with a Different Authority
By Daniel Campos-Rojano
A strange funerary inscription dedicated to a certain Allia Potestas has puzzled philologists for its language, layout, and outlandish content. The epitaph, written primarily in dactylic hexameter, was found near the Salary-Pinciano burial ground in Rome, a site that was primarily in use from the decline of the Republic to the end of the Flavian Age. Although the dating is controversial, the inscription is generally dated to the early Imperial Age. The poet often alludes to or outright quotes Ovid as a source of literary inspiration which supports this dating…
Lucretia Moribunda: Honor and Suicide at the Hands of Sexual Assault in Livy’s Book One
Lucretia Moribunda: Honor and Suicide at the Hands of Sexual Assault in Livy’s Book One
By Dara Sánchez
After translating and analyzing a section of The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, I chose to translate a passage from the first book of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita because, like the early Christian martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, Lucretia was a martyr who died for her moral beliefs. Although these women had different religious creeds, they were both concerned with virtues like modesty and honor. Moreover, the horrible conditions that they endured because of a violent outside world, such as Tarquinius’ sexual assault of Lucretia and the bodily harm Perpetua experienced during the circus games, made these women sympathetic yet courageous personalities…
Plutarch, Life of Antony Chapters 4 and 24.6–7
Plutarch, Life of Antony Chapters 4 and 24.6–7
By Noah Apter
Of all the classical historians on offer to us, what appeal does Plutarch have? What, if anything, causes him to stand out amongst the likes of Tacitus, Suetonius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and others? I believe the allure of Plutarch’s writing is that he captures the humanity and psychology of his subjects with greater depth than any of his contemporaries or those before him. There is no greater example of this than his writing on Mark Antony. Plutarch remarks on his jests and camaraderie with fellow soldiers, his great generosity, and (briefly) his efforts to deliver justice to those who were wronged…
Vulpis et Ciconia
Vulpis et Ciconia
By Dara Sánchez
The poem “Vulpis et Ciconia” tells a tale in which the Fox’s cunning nature does not come to its advantage. In this fable, a Fox invites a Stork to dinner but gives her a plate with liquid broth, which restricts the Stork from eating while the Fox enjoys her meal.1 In response, the Stork invites the Fox to dinner and puts the food in a vase, disabling the Fox from enjoying her dinner as the Stork satisfies herself. The lesson readers are meant to get from this, as explained in the promythium and re-emphasized by the Stork as a dialogued epimythium, is that: harm must not be done, but when it is, the one who caused harm must endure the same punishment for there to be justice…
A Close Translation of Demosthenes’ Letter 1.5-7
A Close Translation of Demosthenes’ Letter 1.5-7
By Isaiah Weir
Around 324 BC, the city of Athens condemned Demosthenes, one of their greatest orators and statesmen, on charges of embezzlement and bribery. Forced into exile, he wrote several letters pleading his case but to no avail. However, after the death of Alexander the Great, Demosthenes, a lifelong enemy of Macedonian rule, wrote this letter, urging Athens toward political unity and a general uprising for the freedom of the Greeks…
Fables of Phaedrus, “The Dogs Sent Envoys to Jupiter”
Fables of Phaedrus, “The Dogs Sent Envoys to Jupiter”
By Dara Sánchez
Animal fables in ancient Rome were not viewed with high regard in comparison to other genres of literature. Yet Phaedrus, an alleged freeman of Augustus from the 1st century AD, does not allow these preconceived notions to deter his ambitions. In this feces-filled poem, Phaedrus describes to us an etiological myth that explains why dogs smell each other’s behinds. He mixes the sacred gods, Jupiter and Mercury, with the vulgarity of dogs and excrement, contrasting such different things, and playing on borderline absurdity…
Penelope’s Wait: A Translation of Ovid’s Heroides Book I Lines 1–50
Penelope’s Wait: A Translation of Ovid’s Heroides Book I Lines 1–50
By Erin Schott
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have endured for thousands of years because they tell stories still true to the human experience. The Iliad recounts the horrors of war and the egotism of those in power, while the Odyssey narrates an arduous homecoming to a place that is not the same as before…
Lucan’s Witch
Lucan’s Witch
By Erin Schott
From Morgan le Fay to Hermione Granger, witches captivate the imagination. Their motives and magical prowess enthrall the little child in all of us who yearns to cast a spell. And since there is no time of year when the witch receives more attention than Halloween, I thought this would be an appropriate moment to reflect upon the genesis of the contemporary witch by translating a passage of Lucan’s Bellum Civile. This “genesis” of the contemporary witch lies in Lucan’s Erictho, a frightening Thessalian sorceress whom Sextus Pompey has asked to reveal his father’s fate. Erictho has just told Sextus Pompey that she will use her dark arts to reanimate a corpse, which will then tell the fate of Pompey Magnus…
Perpetua in the Arena: A Translation and Literary Analysis
Perpetua in the Arena: A Translation and Literary Analysis
By Dara Sánchez
From a prison diary in Carthage, Perpetua gives a captivating account of martyrdom in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Passio Perpetuae). Amidst the foul conditions of the prison, her father’s pleas for her to reject Christianity, and her separation from her infant, Perpetua wondrously describes the visions that come to her in dreams…