Ecloga V

[swtwentyman]

Line 4. Menalcas has proposed that he sing while Mopsus plays the pipes. Mopsus responds, and afterwards suggests they go get out of the sun:

Tu maior; tibi me est aecum parere, Menalca

"You are greater, Menalcas;" -- I get "tibi parere" in itself. I take it "aecum" is a variant of "aequum"? I want to see something like "I am your equal" which with "me" would be an ablative absolute with "aequo" or "me esse aequum" with something I'm missing introducing indirect discourse. But beyond all that it wouldn't go with "tibi parere" at all and of course the grammar is all wrong. I take it that "tu maior" suggests that singing is loftier than piping, and that Menalcas is the elder of the two. The following two lines move on from here.

Ed: A more grammatically-plausible reading but which doesn't make much sense given Mopsus' headstrong attitude: "You are greater, Menalcas; it is right for me to obey you", with "me" being the accusative subject of "parere" and "est aecum" meaning "is equal/just".

Line 11. I believe Mopsus suggests that they sing his own songs (immo (those other things) experiar; in cortice carmina descripsi). Earlier Menalcas has said that Amyntas is Mopsus' only rival in music (I'm not sure here, but the line is in the dictionary); in this line, feeling slighted, Mopsus turns it back on him:

Tu deinde iubeto certet Amyntas.

("Then/afterwards you command that Amyntas have a contest.")

I'm less sure on the context of this one but I take it that this is a jussive clause without "ut"?

[Qimmik]

Tu maior; tibi me est aecum parere, Menalca

"You are greater, Menalcas; it is right for me to obey you" -- that's right, except:

maior = maior natu.

I take it "aecum" is a variant of "aequum

"?

This is one of those older spellings that Coleman is convinced Vergil preferred.

Tu deinde iubeto certet Amyntas.

this is a jussive clause without "ut"?

Exactly.

[Qimmik]

Montibus in nostris solus tibi certat Amyntas.

"In our mountains, Amyntas is the only person who rivals you."

Quid, si idem certet Phoebum superare canendo?

This means something like "What of it? He's the sort who would also challenge Phoebus himself in singing. The fact that he rivals me is of no consquence." (Not a literal translation, of course.)

I think Mopsus doesn't feel slighted by Menalcas; he's just contemptuous of Amyntas' abilities and indignant that Amyntas would rival him.

Tu deinde iubeto certet Amyntas.

"Then tell Amyntas to challenge [me]."

[swtwentyman]

Ah, yes, thanks. I had meant to ask about line 9: I could get some of it, though I couldn't (and can't) quite get the "certet Phoebum superare canendo". I saw that "certare" is intransitive and can be used with the infinitive, though the meaning was a bit hard to get my head around. I'll look at it again when I get home. I missed the contemptuous subtext, taking what I could understand ("Phoebum superare canendo") as a statement of fact. Is Phoebus a stock-character?

In reading De Amicitia I was struck with how well I could do simply by putting the book aside for a little bit and then returning to troublesome passages with fresh eyes. The first line I asked about I thought had stumped me and I wouldn't get any further with it on my own, but immediately after posting I took a shower, when the correct sense came to me. I very much enjoyed De Amicitia, by the way. It's more interesting than De Senectute and the Bristol Classical Press (blue-cover) struck a good balance in being supportive in its notes without giving awya too much and leaving some challenge in it.

[Qimmik]

Is Phoebus a stock-character?

Phoebus is another name for (and sometimes conjoined with) Apollo.

In reading De Amicitia I was struck with how well I could do simply by putting the book aside for a little bit and then returning to troublesome passages with fresh eyes.

I sometimes have this experience, too.

I very much enjoyed De Amicitia, by the way. It's more interesting than De Senectute

Maybe I should read de Amicitia. I read de Senectute when you were reading it. I hoped to find some genuine wisdom in it, now that I'm over the threshold of old age myself, but I found most of it trite and sententious--and sometimes infuriating--so I didn't read de Amicitia. Cicero was apparently not old enough to know about arthritis when he wrote de Senectute, and Cato's clever evasion, by an irrelevant anecdote, of the argument that old age was easy for him because he was rich didn't sit well with me. Cato's praise of agriculture, without mentioning that slaves were doing the actual work, seemed hypocritical, too. The arguments against fearing death had some validity for me, except that nothing was said about the process of death, as if no one ever experiences death as a lengthy and painful wasting away by disease (although, in fairness, suicide was an option for Romans).

[swtwentyman]

De Amicitia isn't terribly profound but the material is more interesting and the arguments are a bit more sophisticated than the "they say that old age makes a man weak: well *this guy* was strong well into his eighties; so there!" kind of stuff that peppers De Senectute, and Laelius doesn't go on irrelevant asides or go on at length about agriculture.

Have you heard about this?

(I took down the link since it was more political than I'm comfortable posting, but if you search "Ovid Columbia" you should be able to find it. It involves "trigger warnings".)

[mwh]

In reading De Amicitia I was struck with how well I could do simply by putting the book aside for a little bit and then returning to troublesome passages with fresh eyes.

I sometimes have this experience, too.

Me too. It’s a good habit.

As to the de senectute: I’m not in the habit of recommending Philodemus as reading material, but his treatment of the fear of death in his treatise On Death I think is worth reading. Of course—something epicureans and stoics alike had a hard time recognizing—fear of death is not in practice something that is overcome by logical argument—who ever would be swayed by Lucretius on the subject?—and epicurean reasoning is not for everyone, but reading Ben Henry’s excellent edition (with translation) of the original Greek treatise made me appreciate Philodemus far more than I had previously done, and for lovers of rationality, or even of “wisdom” (which is of course a philosopher’s controlling concern), it’s a must-read. You may not like it any more than the Ciceronian treatise (poor driven Cicero), but at least it has real thought behind it.

As to triggering, that is life on the contemporary American campus. After a five-year absence, I was quite taken aback. It certainly takes the fun out of the Apollo-Daphne scene where the Daphne flees the love-struck Apollo and he begs her to take care to avoid injuring herself in her flight: “run more slowly, and I’ll follow more slowly.” "moderatius, oro, / curre fugamque inhibe, moderatius insequar ipse." No more LOL moments in Ovid; he’s an irredeemably offensive author, to be read, if at all, only for the sake of castigating his insensitivity to women. The whole of classical literature is deeply offensive, soaked in sexism as it is (which of course it is).

[Qimmik]

The irony is that Ovid is one of the few classical authors who, in my view at least, was deeply sympathetic, and rarely condescending, to women.

[swtwentyman]

Lines 24-26. Daphnis is mourned by his mother in the preceding lines, and by lions in the following lines.

Non ulli pastos illis egere diebus
frigida, Daphni, boues ad flumina, nulla neque amnem
libauit quadrupes nec graminis attigit herbam.

I think I can mostly get this one except for "pastos"; I can't find any word in the dictionary that makes sense to go with it but I take it as a nominative masculine plural to go with "ulli" and "egere" (perfect of "agere"): "nor did any (pastos) drive their cattle in those days, Daphnis, to the cool rivers, nor did the quadruped sip from the stream or graze upon the blades of grass."

Lines 32-34. Daphnis is memorialized as a kind of woodland or pastoral spirit in the lines preceding and following:

Uitis ut arboribus decori est, ut uitibus uuae,
ut gregibus tauri, segetes ut pinguibus aruis,
tu decus omne tuis.

("As splendid is the vine upon the trees; as splendid the grapes upon the vines; as splendid as the bulls in the herd; as splendid are the fields to the fat land: as are you to all that is glorious.")

"Segetes ut pinguibus aruis" trips me up. Literally it's "fatty fat" and "the fat of the land" is a guess.

[swtwentyman]

Oops -- I got so bogged down in the details that I didn't really notice that I didn't think the second one all the way through. I'm not at home right now but I'll get back onto it when I get home.

[swtwentyman]

Okay, I've looked it over more closely and "decori est" = "it is to splendour" = "it is splendid". I basically stick by my earlier translation.

I doubt "pastos" = "pastores" since shepherds don't have herds of cattle.

[Qimmik]

Non ulli pastos illis egere diebus
frigida, Daphni, boues ad flumina,

pastos modifies boues. "No one drove the fed cattle to the cool rivers during those days." The implication is not only that the cattle weren't being watered, they weren't being properly fed, either.

Uitis ut arboribus decori est, ut uitibus uuae,
ut gregibus tauri, segetes ut pinguibus aruis,
tu decus omne tuis.

"As the vine is an adornment to the trees, as grapes to the vine
as bulls to the flocks, as crops to the fertile fields,
you are the entire adornment to your people/followers [tuis]."

Note the complex patterns of chiasmus in the first two lines:

NOMINATIVE ut DATIVE, ut DATIVE NOMINATIVE
ut DATIVE NOMINATIVE, NOMINATIVE ut DATIVE

[swtwentyman]

Thanks. I had leaned towards "ornament" at first but it wouldn't have worked as well with the bulls in the herd and the crops in the fields, so I went looking for a more universal word figuring the sense in the one word not repeated is carried over. I should have thought of "decoration" (like "recondite"). (The thought was "is made splendid", which in a sense is something like "to ornament")

"Uitis ut arboribus decori est" -- "uitis decori est". Why dative? Dative of purpose ("the vine is as decoration")?

[Qimmik]

"Uitis ut arboribus decori est" -- "uitis decori est". Why dative? Dative of purpose ("the vine is as decoration")?

Yes.

[swtwentyman]

Never mind. I figured it out.

[swtwentyman]

I finished the eclogue this morning: it's a bit easier than the others so far and there's less unfamiliar vocabulary. I enjoyed it quite a bit; the beauty and artistry of the language is beginning to come out after a bit of practice and there are a few striking passages (ll.58-59 is an awful lot to govern with the one verb, if I'm reading it right) and in general I'm looking forward to the sixth; however I'm eager to get to trying my hand at Livy, since I got into Latin partly to read him. If I can get through book XXI I'll gladly read eclogues six and seven between that and book XXII. But I really am starting to enjoy poetry and I look to the time when I'm ready for the Aeneid.