Tag: latin

Echoes in the Forest: Fable Tradition and Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Phaedrus 1.12
Aug 5

Echoes in the Forest: Fable Tradition and Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Phaedrus 1.12

Echoes in the Forest: Fable Tradition and Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Phaedrus 1.12

By Alethea Lam

Phaedrus opens Book 1 of his fables with the phrase Aesopus auctor, anchoring his work in the animal fable tradition of the legendary Greek storyteller. With this phrase, the Latin poet credits Aesop as the pioneer of the genre itself as well as the original narrator of the fables he is about to retell (Phaedrus 1.1.1). Phaedrus’s poems exhibit the classic characteristics of animal fable, namely morals communicated in promythia and epimythia, instructive narratives to demonstrate these lessons, and recurring semi-anthropomorphized animal characters whose behavior reflects stereotypes of their species.

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Fables of Phaedrus, "The Dogs Sent Envoys to Jupiter"
Mar 10

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…

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Penelope’s Wait: A Translation of Ovid’s Heroides Book I Lines 1–50
Mar 3

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…

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The Thrill of Classical Languages
Oct 2

The Thrill of Classical Languages

The Thrill of Classical Languages
By Angela Nguyen

During the heat of the Florida summer, I find myself curled up in my air-conditioned bedroom, plunging into pages of Roman literature and unraveling a tedious but thrilling ancient language. Scanning the first sentence of Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus, I search for…

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Spoken Latin: Equus and What it Means to Live
Sep 4

Spoken Latin: Equus and What it Means to Live

Spoken Latin: Equus and What it Means to Live
By Alicia Lopez

In my senior year of high school, all seniors were required to take an English seminar, a one semester class that explored some “passion project” of a member of the English department. One teacher taught detective fiction, another taught…

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Beyond Translation: The Benefits and Drawbacks of English-to-Latin Composition
Feb 27

Beyond Translation: The Benefits and Drawbacks of English-to-Latin Composition

Beyond Translation: The Benefits and Drawbacks of English-to-Latin Composition
By Lily Nesvold

In an advanced Latin course my senior year of high school, my teacher gave the class an assignment that was deceptively simple: to compose four “correct” lines of dactylic hexameter, a quest which would result in an automatic “A” for the trimester. Naturally, we were all very excited about the grading scale for the task. What we failed to recognize was how difficult it would be…

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Everything Old Is New Again
May 12

Everything Old Is New Again

Everything Old Is New Again
Returning Translations to Their Original Meanings
By Olivia Wells

Have you ever wondered what’s lost in translation? Now, I could mean this literally or figuratively—here, I ask it literally, in a Classical sense. Is there a straight path from Ancient Greek or Latin to English? Does the context or background of a translator matter? How much faith should we put into a particular translator’s work…

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Graecia Capta: Sappho and Catullus
Jan 25

Graecia Capta: Sappho and Catullus

By Mati Davis
Sappho 31 and Catullus 51

These two poets focus on the same theme as the previous part of this series: love’s pains. Catullus’ poem 51 hovers somewhere between allusion and direct quotation of Sappho’s poem 31. These two are as interesting for their similarities as for their differences. Even though they follow nearly the same formula, Catullus deftly contrasts Sappho’s romantic euphoria with his own frenzied agony…

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The Hive
Sep 23

The Hive

The Hive
By Cate Simons

During quarantine, I’ve spent much of my time outdoors. Outside, surrounded by nature, I’m able to slow down and separate myself from some of the anxiety I’ve lately felt about the general state of the world. In the last few months, this passage from Vergil’s Georgics has been very much on my mind, and I’m especially drawn to Vergil’s efforts to portray bees in human terms…

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Bar the Dawn from My Bed
Sep 10

Bar the Dawn from My Bed

Bar the Dawn from My Bed
By Alicia Lopez

One of my favorite parts of studying Classics is stumbling across little nuggets of relatable content. While of course, there are always big themes that span most works of literature (heroics, sacrifice, love, loss, etc.), I treasure the little similarities, like wanting to stay in bed, that are still wildly relatable thousands of years later…

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