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Man, one of the teachers who has made the most significant impact upon me was my middle school Latin teacher back in Providence (we translated Homer from Latin)

Man, one of the teachers who has made the most significant impact upon me was my middle school Latin teacher back in Providence (we translated Homer from Latin). She had such a passion for the language, and for idioms like this, that it was infectious, even to a bunch of shithead middle schoolers. I still get a little pang of excitement when I read this phrase, such was the drama of translating the Iliad. Word-for-word it was an adventure.

DFHippie 7y ago
> we translated Homer from Latin Maybe you mean Horace? Homer wrote in Greek. It seems like if you were going to translate a Latin epic you'd go for the Aeneid.
- tony_cannistra 7y ago
  Yeah, I realize. Perhaps we just read Homer in English. Either way, translating epics like the Aeneid was thrilling.
twic 7y ago
I have similar memories of translating the Odyssey and the Anabasis from Greek at school! There's a lovely line in the Anabasis about seeing an enemy army approaching from afar which describes "the flash of bronze". I always found that image so powerful; you can barely see these guys in the distance, just a smudge on the horizon, and then there's this flash of light as they lower their spears and the sun glints off them, and you know you're about to have a bad day. There is a line in the Odyssey where someone (Telemachus?) puts an arrow on a table for the suitors to try and shoot from Odysseus's bow. The arrow is described as "naked", which i think is a poetic way of saying it was alone and conspicuous. This is the arrow with which Odysseus will soon begin his execution of the suitors, and you know that's coming, so this is a moment of real foreboding. The line ends "... γυμνός", and the feel of those syllables in my mouth is somehow incredibly heavy, like a gavel falling in judgment, or a tomb being sealed. I read that twenty years ago and the feeling is still with me.

DFHippie 7y ago

> we translated Homer from Latin Maybe you mean Horace? Homer wrote in Greek. It seems like if you were going to translate a Latin epic you'd go for the Aeneid.

tony_cannistra 7y ago
Yeah, I realize. Perhaps we just read Homer in English. Either way, translating epics like the Aeneid was thrilling.

twic 7y ago

I have similar memories of translating the Odyssey and the Anabasis from Greek at school! There's a lovely line in the Anabasis about seeing an enemy army approaching from afar which describes "the flash of bronze". I always found that image so powerful; you can barely see these guys in the distance, just a smudge on the horizon, and then there's this flash of light as they lower their spears and the sun glints off them, and you know you're about to have a bad day. There is a line in the Odyssey where someone (Telemachus?) puts an arrow on a table for the suitors to try and shoot from Odysseus's bow. The arrow is described as "naked", which i think is a poetic way of saying it was alone and conspicuous. This is the arrow with which Odysseus will soon begin his execution of the suitors, and you know that's coming, so this is a moment of real foreboding. The line ends "... γυμνός", and the feel of those syllables in my mouth is somehow incredibly heavy, like a gavel falling in judgment, or a tomb being sealed. I read that twenty years ago and the feeling is still with me.