Monday, May 26, 2008

Tiberinus


This is how I imagine Tiberinus would have looked. I'm not sure who the actual statue is meant to be (it was taken in the gardens out the front of a castle built by the mad king Ludwig on an island in the middle of a lake in Bavaria), but it has the kind of wild sollemnity that Virgil describes in these lines from Aeneid VIII:


Huic deus ipse loci fluvio Tiberinus amoeno
populeas inter senior se attollere frondes
visus; eum tenuis glauco velabat amictu
carbasus, et crinis umbrosa tegebat harundo.
tum sic adfari et curas his demere dictis:
'O sate gente deum, Troianam ex hostibus urbem
qui revehis nobis aeternaque Pergama servas,
exspectate solo Laurenti arvisque Latinis,
hic tibi certa domus, certi (ne absiste) penates.'


To this man [Aeneas] the god of that place, old Tiberinus himself, appeared, lifting himself up from his hallowed stream, between the poplar leaves; a thin linen garment cloaked him with its grey-green mantle, and a clump of shady reeds hid his hair. Then the god spoke to him, and took away his worries with these words: 'O seed of the race of the gods, you who brings back to us the Trojan city, and who preserves eternal Pergumum, long-awaited on Laurentine soil, and in the Latin fields, here is a fixed home for you, here (fear not) are your fixed gods.'
[Aeneid VIII.31-39]

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What the heck, Joel. That is not the translation you gave us! Ours was all in present tense, and the end said "here is a fixed home for you, fixed gods (do not shrink back". What is the dealio?
PS: When do you have your year twelve class? I need to return Rebecca Stockbridge's book :$.

Anonymous said...

By the way, I think that guy looks like Tiberinus too.

Anonymous said...

sarah, you should know that translation is an art not a science- there are many different ways of translating this passage correctly.

i have year 12 every day, stop by some time and i'll pass on rebecca's book.

Anonymous said...

*waves* Rebecca is also at school everyday. Generally in the study. She practically lives at the school [[performing ensembles, and all that]]. You can pass it on to her directly, if you'd like...

...she's going to stop talking about herself in third person, and pretend she didn't totally embarrass her teacher at the lectures today. [[at least she didn't ask the Panel about the misogynistic tendencies in Livy I that she was GOING to.../was dared to by the Trinity boys...]]

Really, she only just stopped by for a link to William Whitaker's Words, so she can check before she corrects a poem someone posted. Srsly, people need to stop using online translators for English --> Latin. Dude, they fail.

Anonymous said...

hhhhhiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i am an old student of yours!!!!!!!
guess who??????
from year 7 2006...hmmm...
hint*im friends with someone hoos really smart in ur year 9 class.ur cool student actually....