✨Dysfunctional family✨

Believe me, Pasiphae screwed the Cretan bull:

we all saw it, the old tale came true.

No need to get excited, Caesar, by ancient history:

whatever is famous, the arena presents to you.

Caesar (De Bello Gallico)

This is a weird one because while his prose isn't extremely difficult, it was also the first unedited work I read, so for lil 15-year-old me, this was very difficult. But I learned a lot from Caesar (especially that he made it an art to making his sentences as long as possible. We read an entire 200 words, and IT WAS JUST ONE SENTENCE.), and the sense of nostalgia while rereading it is very pleasant, so I will give you a solid 6/10

Pliny the Younger (Epistulae)

Mixed feelings about this one again. This could also be just because I despise prose. I really do not like it at all. Pliny's epistulae were pretty okay. I liked them a little better than Caesar's because of their variety (for those that don't know, epistulae means letters). His letter about the Vesuvius was a lot of fun to translate, even with all the hyperbata, but his letters about or to his third wife were very uncomfortable. Like, I get things were different back then. BUT YOU WERE 45, PLINY. 45. SHE WAS WHAT? 14? 15 TOPS? MY GOD. THAT'S A BIGGER AGE DIFFERENCE THAN I HAVE WITH MY FATHER.

7/10

Ovid (Metamorphoses)

Ovid is life Ovid is love. He was the one who introduced me to Latin poetry, and I will always love him for it. He was an icon and a legend. The poems of his that we read (Daedalus & Icarus, Latona and the Lycian peasants, Diana and Actaeon) were all bangers, and I love them all to death. I never wanted to go back to reading prose after this (but unfortunately, I will have to next year. ew)

11/10 (I love you, Ovid)

Vergil (The Aeneid)

*deep sigh* Listen. I love his complex works, and I have great respect for this poem but by the GODS. Vergil's poetry is the most difficult I've had to translate by a long shot. He made me rethink my entire career in Latin. I have considered quitting so many times because of this man. I felt like a complete idiot most of the time. This is not a guy to fuck with. Luckily I got through it on my finals (barely.) but Christ alive this man made my life difficult.

5/10

Horatius (Satires and Odes)

Horatius will always have a special place in my heart. We read his poetry right after Vergil's, and it almost completely restored my faith in my abilities. He's just my little guy and I have fond memories of translating his works. We still know many Latin phrases that he wrote (Carpe Diem being the most famous. Hello, DPS fandom). Also, he and Vergil were most definitely in love. I don't make the rules. I have evidence if you want me to elaborate.

9/10

Catullus (love poems)

Ah, Catullus. Horny poet of the year. Had a wild affair with an older married woman. Nepotism baby. Sappho stan. Didn't know how to budget, but we aren't holding that against him. Just wanted to write poetry and dance (who doesn't, honestly). Gave fuck-all about education. Wrote nearly all of his poetry about the older woman he had an affair with. Might I add that this woman was married to one of his father's bestest buddies? Yeah. Icon. Here's a kid's choice award.

8/10

Martialis (Epigrams)

This dude had ZERO chill. Roasted everyone in the city. Literally, no one is safe. Wasn't afraid to call people out by their real names. Some people allegedly committed suicide after being roasted by this guy. Translating his epigrams gave me more joy than hearing we had seen the end of Vergil. His humour may be a little silly now, but I will not accept any Martialis slander on my blog.

10/10

If I had to choose only one piece of classic litterature, it wouldn't be the Iliad or the Odyssey, it wouldn't be any work of Cicero or Catullus. It would be Martialis' Epigrams V.34, a short poem who goes like this :

"Hanc tibi, Fronto pater, genetrix Flaccilla, puellam

oscula commendo deliciasque meas,

paruola ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras

oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis.

Impletura fuit sextae modo frigora brumae,

uixisset totidem ni minus illa dies.

Inter tam ueteres ludat lasciua patronos

et nomen blaeso garriat ore meum.

Mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi,

terra, grauis fueris : non fuit illa tibi."

and can be translated into :

"Fronto, father of mine, and Flaccilla, mother of mine,

I put in your care this little girl, my kisses, my bliss,

so that Erotion does not shiver when faced with the dark shadows

and the monstruous face of the hound of Tartarus.

She would have been just past her sixth winter

if she had lived six cold days more.

May she, between such ancient protectors, play joyfully,

and babble my name from her stuttering mouth.

May a soft grass cover her tender bones, and you,

earth, do not weight on her : she did not weight on you."

This is, to me, the most tender piece of poetry ever produced by a latin author. The child in this poem was not Martialis' daughter : she was a slave born in his household and thus worth almost nothing, according to Roman standards. As her master, he was not supposed to care about such a slave ; but he did, and fiercely.

He wrote two other poems about her death - Ep V.37 and X.61. both of them exude the same gut-grenching grief. A friend of his told him not to grieve a little slave so much : Martialis wrote an hymn to her, comparing her to pearls, to honey, to a phoenix, and then a plea for the next owner of the land she was burried in to take care of her tomb when he would not be able to do it himself anymore (he also teared his friend a new asshole through words, although that was more of a typical Martialis behavior).

Martialis was a satyrical author : he made a living mocking society as a whole and making crass (but extremely funny) jokes. His poems are about money, adultery, sex, prostitution, greed and general asshole-ish behavior. He himself was a first-grade asshole who fuckboyed his way through life while sucking it up to the emperor to get tax exemptions. He was not a love poet like Catullus or Ovid ; he did not write epics like Vergil, nor History like Livy or Suetonius. But he wrote about Erotion. He wrote about a little slave girl who had died before her sixth winter ; he wrote about grief. Not the grief of seeing Troy fall or being rejected by a woman he loved - no, he wrote about what was considered the smallest, most worthless form of life in this period, and he made it important.

Happy Late Halloween! 🎃

University has been sucking the life out of me lately (just like Ev does to Ren here, apparently). But I finally managed to finish this!

I'm working on another reference