“Latin Will Kill You”
In his summer class, Vatican Latinist Reginald Foster not only teaches the language six hours a day, six days a week, to those able and willing to learn, he also assigns a weekly “Ludus Aestivus” — otherwise known as a homework sheet.
Once we had to translate this inscription from Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon:
“ILLE HIC EST RAPHAEL TIMUIT QUO SOPISTE VINCI
RERUM MAGNA PARENS ET MORIENTE MORI”
The first time I saw this, I thought it was excruciatingly hard. Then, when I realized the structure, I thought it was completely obvious, and that I was stupid for taking so long.
I think this is part of what Reggie is getting at when he says repeatedly to his class, “Be careful, friends, or Latin will kill you.”
A gold star to the person who translates this correctly–and literally!
“Here lies that (famous) Raphael. While he lived, mother nature feared to be surpassed; now dead, she fears she herself will die.”
Sorry to have missed the Pantheon rendezvous. But I see your time was well spent. Keep the Prosecco chilled!
It’s on ice! With your gold star on the glass!
As a former college Latin teacher, I felt stumped, stupid, and early-Alzheimer-struck by this epigraph, especially when I couldn’t find this word–SOPISTE (I’ve pasted it exactly as it appears in Prof. Kaveny’s post)–in my Lewis & Short dictionary.
Desperate, I Googled the first four words of the epigraph and discovered that the word is actually “sospite.” That’s the ablative singular of “sospes,” meaning “safe and sound,” or, as Prof. Imbelli has it, ‘While he lived.”
Once you realize that it’s “sospite,” not “sopiste,” you see that “sospite” is parallel to the other ablative “moriente” and that “sospite vinci’ is exactly parallel to “moriente mori.” Then the translation of the entire epigraph becomes a cinch.
Kudos to Prof. Imbelli for managing to translate the passage typo and all. Yes, Latin will kill you, and a Latin typographical error will drive a stake through your heart once you are dead.
I have just seen this for the first time and I was sure that “sopiste” was not a Latin word. Was it a typo or part of the test?
Sorry! I think the mistake was mine, not Reggie’s. The stone cold truth is that the typo was due to early morning, jet lag, and a struggle cutting and pasting with a recalcitrant internet explorer program on my home computer!
On the other hand. . . we were reading in his class pages from the Patrologia Latina that did have killer typos, so I suppose it COULD have been part of the test!
Question — who wrote the epitaph?
About the Patrologia Latina, were those horrendous typos or just reproducing the bad manuscripts that some of the older editions Migne plagiarized reproduced uncritically?
Since PL has come up, I might recommend a wonderful book on the guy that published it called God’s Plagiarist. Sort of by the way there’s a lot of very surprising information about 19th French Catholicism.
One attribution I have seen for the epitaph is to Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) renaissance humanist and Cardinal under Paul III.
As for the alleged “typo” in the original posting,
I had presumed it was a South Bend variant :).
This is an epigram of Hugo Grotius for a portrait of J. J. Scaliger, a classical scholar famous for his work in trying to establish ancient chronology on a scientific foundation. I offer the text as it was presented on a list serve a few years ago with invitations to translate. There is one minor corruption, easily corrected from the context. Anyone care to try?
Haec est Scaligeri mortem meditantis imago
Luminis heu tanti vespera talis erat.
In vultu macies et tortor corporis hydrops,
Sed tamen et magni conspiciuntur avi.
Levat tenet chartas Nabathaei munera coeli.
Armatur calamo nunc quoque dextra suo.
Haec es illa manus vitam cui tota vetustas
Debet, et a primo tempora ducta die.
Quod si Scaligero meritis par vita daretur
Non nisi cum mundo debuit ille mori.
Aren’t there two corruptions, levat for leva (i.e. laeva) in l. 5 and es for est in l. 7? And also a missing mark of punctuation after l. 1?
Gene:
You are right on all counts.
And I didn’t cheat either.
More seriously, I’m curious what the original poster thought of Foster’s presentation — I’ve had a rather poor opinion of the guy as a bit of a grandstander — should I reconsider?
By the way, no one should consider herself stupid for being slow with figuring this out — there’s a knack to reading (and writing) this kind of pointed, biting epigram that takes a lot of practice, and is completely different from the discipline of learning Latin. Harder for us because there are very analogies in the English we’re likely to have read — maybe sometimes in the final couplets of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
And while this is a wonderful illustration of the peculiarity of the whole concept of “literal” translation, there is one thing I would quibble with in Mr. (Fr.?) Imbelli’s translation — “mother nature” for rerum magna parens. I’d prefer “the great parent of the universe (gee, am I being literal?) because I take it as awesome and remote rather than intimate and nurturing like mother nature in current American English.
Here goes on the Grotius:
This is a portrait of Scaliger pondering death.
Alas, it was such a darkening of such a great light.
His face is emaciated, and dropsy torments his body,
Yet nonetheless his great breeding can also be seen.
His left hand holds gifts, maps of the Arabian sky.
His right hand, too, is armed with his pen.
This is that hand to which all our age owes
Its life-history, and the chronology of what has passed since the first day.
And if life were given to Scaliger in equal measure to his accomplishments,
Only at the world’s end did he deserve to die.
Actually, my second line is awfully inelegant:
Alas, it is such a dimming of such a great light.
Gene O’Grady asked what I thought of Reggie Foster.
I think he’s absolutely wonderful. I have done the full course (2 months) fully, six years ago. I have also gone back a couple of times, once for a month, once (this year ) for a week).
He gets about sixty students from all over — ranging from very secular Classics doctoral students at Harvard and Princeton and Oxofrd to young priests in full soutane. It’s not just kids. This year there was anothor law professor in the class, as well as a very distinguished lawyer from Switzerland, as well as professional musician from England.
Out of this disparate group, he creates a community around Latin–and love for the authors and the words themselves.
the range of material he exposes us to –apart from the homeork, it’s all sight reading — is astounding; from Horace to Piccolomini to B16.
In choosing translators, je knows exactly where you are, and gives you something that will make you stretch, but not break you.
From my perspective, the best part was the fact that he conducts most if not all of the class in Latin– what that did for me was to help me make the difficult shift in expectation of word order, to allow me to begin to expect the Latin pattern of word order, rather than impose my English pattern.
Anyone interested in preserving the Latin language should be so thankful he does what he does.
Charlotte:
You have most of it right. Your translation of the fourth line is good but I would prefer to render “avi” ancestors. Scaliger was convinced that the family was a branch of the Della Scala, Veronese nobility. I think the general view is that this was not true. The sense of the fifth line is “in his left hand he holds paper, the gift of the Nabataean clime”. Thus it is parallel to the sixth line. Grotius thought of paper as having come from the Arabs. In the seventh line I think “tota vetustas” means “all antiquity”. Grotius is referring to Scaliger’s brilliant reconstruction of the chronology of the ancient world from the fragments of the ancient chronographers.
Joseph:
Thanks for the corrections. I did wonder about the Arabian connection, since I had looked up Scaliger and noted that he had an interest in astronony (but why Arabia?). “Vetustas” meaning “antiquity” makes plenty of sense and is much better than what I have. I do think that “breeding” adequately conveys the “avi”–but “ancestors” is certainly more pointed, given, as you say, Scaliger’s connections to the nobility (of which I was unaware since, if truth be told, I had never heard of Scaliger before last night).
This is fun! I hope you’ll be posting many more intricately constructed Neo-Latin encomia in the future.
Glad to hear better things than I expected about Foster’s program.
I would take the second line a little differently — “Alas that such was the evening (i.e. old age) of so great a light.” Perhaps “genius” would better reflect the metaphorical usage of tanti.
Latin may kill you, but it should be fun on the way out.
Gene:
Another good reading–preserving Grotius’ figure of speech.
Charlotte
I agree that Gene’s turn of phrase is excellent. One reason why I prefer “avi” is that I think Grotius is hinting that there is a resemblance between Scaliger and some member(s) of the Della Scala. Scaliger would certainly have been pleased by such a suggestion. As to your request I am afraid that this is the only item of its kind I have.
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