Caveat: volume of good, hard-to-find poems is filled with errors | Minor Latin Poets, Volume II: Florus....

book: Minor Latin Poets, Volume II: Florus. Hadrian. Nemesianus. Reposianus. Tiberianus. Dicta Catonis. Phoenix. ... | Minor Latin Poets, Avianus, ...

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	• Minor Latin Poets, Volume II: Florus. Hadrian. Nemesianus. Reposianus. Tiberianus. Dicta Catonis. Phoenix. ... Minor Latin Poets, Avianus, ... Loeb Classical Library, 1934 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Not So Minor Latin Poetry

The ambiguous title (Minor Latin Poets) heaped upon this motley caste of ancient writers deserves a short, specific definition. The appellation "minor" does not mean lesser, in the sense that these poems are of the poorest quality composed by classic hands. It is true that a handful of these poems lack high merit and their authorship is anonymous, questionable or spurious. Yet to counter this slight discrepancy, the reader will be graced with fourteen short poems by Florus that easily compare, and at times surpass, the beauty and profundity of his predecessors from the famed Augustan Age. Furthermore, the eclectic emperor Hadrian has left us a few clever compositions here to admire. The virtue laden proverbs of Publius Syrus, the urbane Dicta Catonis, and the charming poems attributed to a certain Tiberianus are--among others worthy of mention--what will be found in these two volumes. So "minor" is to be rendered as "various poets whose works are short", as these two volumes are an anthology of short poems, written at different eras by different hands. These works should not be overlooked by curious readers. Many treasures lie in wait for aspiring poets here as well.

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Caveat: volume of good, hard-to-find poems is filled with errors

This volume gathers Latin poems that are worthy but hard-to-find. It presents Latin text on the left page with an English translation on the facing page. It is difficult to find an inexpensive Latin text of these verses, and even more difficult to find twentieth-century or later English translations of them. From that standpoint, this is a volume to cherish.

Unfortunately, both the Latin text and the translations are riddled with mistakes.

Here are excerpts from a review by the great classicist and poet A.E. Housman when this volume first came out:

"This is a volume containing Grattius, Calpurnius, Nemesianus, Auianus, Rutilius, the sententiae of Publilius Syrus, the Aetna, the disticha Catonis, and a dozen shorter works, in all about 7400 verses. As I soon saw that it would invite more comment than its importance would justify I have read through only Syrus, who comes first, and the slenderer authors; from the bulkier I have taken samples of 50 lines or more apiece. Since translation is the chief feature of this series I will say nothing of the recension or any subsidiary matter, and in the [Latin] versions themselves I shall not notice a few places where words are omitted or where the reading translated is not that of the text, nor the rather more frequent cases where a sense has been invented for Latin which possesses none. Mistranslations proper will occupy me sufficiently; for not only are they numerous, but many of them are such as would not have been expected, and some are quite astounding."

"... A singular fatality by which the editors are pursued is an impulse to believe that sentences mean the opposite of what they do mean. ... Syrus is least adequately rendered, not so much because he is the best literature in the book as because of the difficulty inherent in rendering apophthegms."

Because the Latin originals are high-quality poetry, influential, and historically important, and because Latin or English texts of them are scarce, this is a worthwhile volume for any lover of classical poetry or classical history. But caveat emptor; its Latin texts are flawed, and its English translations are packed with errors and sins.

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This is the second volume of an anthology of Latin poetry. The two-volume anthology covers a period of four and a half centuries, beginning with the work of the mime-writer Publilius Syrus, who flourished ca. 45 BCE, and ending with the graphic and charming poem of Rutilius Namatianus recording a sea voyage from Rome to Gaul in 416 CE. A wide variety of theme gives interest to the poems: hunting in a poem of Grattius; an inquiry into the causes of volcanic activity by the author of Aetna; pastoral poems by Calpurnius Siculus and by Nemesianus; fables by Avianus; a collection of Dicta, moral sayings, as if by the elder Cato; eulogy in Laus Pisonis; and the legend of the Phoenix, a poem of the fourth century. Other poets complete the work.

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