porphyry: (Default)
2009-08-17 09:23 am
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Memorized verse

I don't have that much verse by heart since that kind of work was never done in school (what a waste of time!), so when I do quote something from memory it is always the most familiar. But it seems to cause the greatest confusion to my editors. Last year it was 'To take arms against a sea of troubles.' Today already it's 'Exegi monumentum aere perennius'--I put it in English, of course. This carried back queries of what translation it was from and, most oddly, the desire to associate it with a page number.
porphyry: (Mackensen)
2008-05-13 10:56 pm
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Meditation on the Ravages of Civil Strife

A snippet of Horace I translated to use elsewehre, but, finding the occasion to do so lacking, I place it here instead:

What does damned time not make worse?
The age of our fathers, worse than our grandfathers’, has born
Our more worthless selves, soon to bring forth
Offspring still more vicious. (Odes, 3.6.45-48)