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The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations
This indispensable reference work contains over 1,500 Latin quotations presented in chronological order with English translations on facing pages as well as biographical notes on the authors. Selections range from Applus Claudius to St. Augustine and Boethius.
448 pages, Paperback
First published June 18, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 3, 2020
Though I took four years of HS Latin, had the great Latin translator Rolfe Humphries as my Freshman prof in college, took Latin as my Ph.D. minor (with great courses on Plautus, Ovid, and undergrad surveys with added readings to qualitfy for grad credit), few of the quotations here do I recognize, lifted from unfamiliar parts of familiar writers. For instance, Lucan lived under Nero, who saw him as a competitor, forbade him to publish. Lucan then joined a conspiracy, for which he was compelled to poison himself--at 26.
In his only remaining work, Pharsalia, he admires death, "Utinam ...virtus te sola daret," [IV.580](p.296) Would that you, Death, were given only to the brave! The gods conceal "felix esse mort" that death is a good thing, from those who live longer. Must remind myself how much shorter lives most Romans had than we do now.
Seneca the Younger's "Thyestes," which Rolfe Humphries loaned me his own, I enjoyed reading; I have even recommended that 2nd year Latin should focus on Seneca's neat, readable plays rather than Caesar. (The Brits included Caesar so their prep school graduates would join the military to foster the 19C British Empire.)
rex est qui posuit metus A king is he who puts aside fear (Thyestes 345)
Illi mors gravis incubat /..... Death falls heavy on
notus nimius omnibus /..... the known-to-all man
ignotus moritur sibi /...... who's to himself unkown (Ibid 345)
Next, a line from Hippolytus, a play I've not read, but one that touches me personally because my wife, a "fallen" Christian Scientist, wholeheartedly believes: "Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit," Much of health is the desire to be healed (p.256).
Humphries, teaching his own translation of the Aeneid, said he'd taken some liberties; I recall from book II, the famous "timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes" (II.48), "I fear the Greeks, even when bringing presents." Humphries keeps our colloquial contrast.
My book, "The Worlds of Giordano Bruno," notes he quoted Vergil on the Moon (my study of lunar mapping, its addendum, praised by my prof Archibald MacLeish):
Principio caelum ac terram camposque liquentis
lucentumque globum lunae Titania astra
spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
mens agitat molem et magno se copore miscet (XI, 724ff)
Bruno's own "De innumerabilibis, immenso... universo et mundis" (400 pp, 1590) builds on a similar Pythagorean spirit pervading matter in the universe. (Google "Giordano Bruno Harvard Video" for my talk on him at Harvard Astrophysics). His Book IV on Copernicus has a brilliant account of a sattelite view of Earth, and trip to the Moon--only erred in thinking the Moon, and uncountable other places, inhabited.
No fan of Cicero am I. In HS, tranlating his famous speech against Catiline I was not told Cicero failed to convince the Senate (Cato the elder did). Allow me to quote his mistrust of democracy: "Nihil est incertius vulgo, ...nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum" (Pro Morena, 36). Nothing is more unsure than the people, nothing more deceptive than the system of elections. (Boy, have we learned this since 2016, the presidency of the Idiot in Chief.) Then, the truism that nevertheless the US ignored in invading Iraq (and Hitler's Germany, the Sudetenland): "Illa iniusta bella sunt, quae sunt sine causa suscepta."(De Oratore, 35). Those wars are unjust, begun without provocation.
A couple centuries before Christ, the writer Ennius, born in the SE of Italy, also spent time south of Napoli, I recall from a post-doctoral seminar there. "Quem mettunt oderunt; quem quisque odit periise expetit"(p.22) Whom men fear, they hate; when a man hates, he wants them dead. Ennius found monkeys especially repulsive, but observes, "Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis!" (Saturae). Simians, most similar these disgusting beasts to us!
In his only remaining work, Pharsalia, he admires death, "Utinam ...virtus te sola daret," [IV.580](p.296) Would that you, Death, were given only to the brave! The gods conceal "felix esse mort" that death is a good thing, from those who live longer. Must remind myself how much shorter lives most Romans had than we do now.
Seneca the Younger's "Thyestes," which Rolfe Humphries loaned me his own, I enjoyed reading; I have even recommended that 2nd year Latin should focus on Seneca's neat, readable plays rather than Caesar. (The Brits included Caesar so their prep school graduates would join the military to foster the 19C British Empire.)
rex est qui posuit metus A king is he who puts aside fear (Thyestes 345)
Illi mors gravis incubat /..... Death falls heavy on
notus nimius omnibus /..... the known-to-all man
ignotus moritur sibi /...... who's to himself unkown (Ibid 345)
Next, a line from Hippolytus, a play I've not read, but one that touches me personally because my wife, a "fallen" Christian Scientist, wholeheartedly believes: "Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit," Much of health is the desire to be healed (p.256).
Humphries, teaching his own translation of the Aeneid, said he'd taken some liberties; I recall from book II, the famous "timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes" (II.48), "I fear the Greeks, even when bringing presents." Humphries keeps our colloquial contrast.
My book, "The Worlds of Giordano Bruno," notes he quoted Vergil on the Moon (my study of lunar mapping, its addendum, praised by my prof Archibald MacLeish):
Principio caelum ac terram camposque liquentis
lucentumque globum lunae Titania astra
spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
mens agitat molem et magno se copore miscet (XI, 724ff)
Bruno's own "De innumerabilibis, immenso... universo et mundis" (400 pp, 1590) builds on a similar Pythagorean spirit pervading matter in the universe. (Google "Giordano Bruno Harvard Video" for my talk on him at Harvard Astrophysics). His Book IV on Copernicus has a brilliant account of a sattelite view of Earth, and trip to the Moon--only erred in thinking the Moon, and uncountable other places, inhabited.
No fan of Cicero am I. In HS, tranlating his famous speech against Catiline I was not told Cicero failed to convince the Senate (Cato the elder did). Allow me to quote his mistrust of democracy: "Nihil est incertius vulgo, ...nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum" (Pro Morena, 36). Nothing is more unsure than the people, nothing more deceptive than the system of elections. (Boy, have we learned this since 2016, the presidency of the Idiot in Chief.) Then, the truism that nevertheless the US ignored in invading Iraq (and Hitler's Germany, the Sudetenland): "Illa iniusta bella sunt, quae sunt sine causa suscepta."(De Oratore, 35). Those wars are unjust, begun without provocation.
A couple centuries before Christ, the writer Ennius, born in the SE of Italy, also spent time south of Napoli, I recall from a post-doctoral seminar there. "Quem mettunt oderunt; quem quisque odit periise expetit"(p.22) Whom men fear, they hate; when a man hates, he wants them dead. Ennius found monkeys especially repulsive, but observes, "Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis!" (Saturae). Simians, most similar these disgusting beasts to us!
January 1, 2015
A collection of Latin quotations. Enough said.
April 25, 2015
Big Book o' Latin Quotations.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews