16
votes
Accepted
What is up with the oracle's prophecy in the story of Cupid and Psyche?
The text
This is a translation in verse, so don't set too much store on the exact wording. Some of the words may have been chosen for rhythm and rhyme rather than for precise meaning.
For reference, ...
14
votes
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Who first referred to Odysseus as Ulysses?
Ulysses is the Latin form of the Greek Odysseus, stemming from the Sicilian or alternate Latin form Ulixes. The first instance of these forms in literature that I can find is in the Odusia by Livius ...
- 4,412
11
votes
Accepted
Why was Hugues de Groot also called "Grotius"?
Because he was a Renaissance scholar and Latinising names was a thing they did....
The Latinisation of names in the vernacular was a procedure deemed necessary for the sake of conformity by scribes ...
- 18.6k
11
votes
Who first referred to Odysseus as Ulysses?
I am not a linguist, but I think it's worth mentioning that the Odysseus→Ulysses transformation is a special case of something called the "Sabine L": some words that had "d" sounds in Old Latin (or in ...
- 1,364
9
votes
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What are these letters in Unicode?
The first one is a common abbreviation: q; stands for que in this case. A screenshot from Cappelli:
The other one is a ligature: what you see is simply ct with a little arc connecting the letters.
I ...
- 216
9
votes
Accepted
Are these lines by Thomas Nuce a translation and/or taken from a longer poem?
It's not a poem: It is from Nuce's 1581 translation of a Latin play called Octavia. (Seneca's 9th tragedy) It's a monologue by the character Seneca that appears in the middle of Act 2, Scene 1.
So ...
- 1,835
6
votes
Accepted
How should we understand care and nature as laid out by Seneca?
The source of the difficulty is that the translation in the question is not quite right. From most important to least:
The translation has no equivalent for “bonum” meaning “the abstract idea of ...
- 53.5k
6
votes
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Who is the 'pale Titan-woman' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?
The general interpretation of this line is that it's an allusion to Baudelaire's poem La Géante (The Giantess).
From Walter Martin's translation in an omnibus edition:
When Mother Nature filled the ...
- 1,835
6
votes
What percentage of Latin texts from Antiquity constitute literature?
To give you a proper answer, we need to define a few more terms than simply "literature". Such as what is meant by "texts".
Defining "text", we need to understand whether ...
- 408
5
votes
Accepted
Did Isidore of Seville ever claim Roman god of wine, Bacchus, got his name from "baculus" (walking stick)?
The passage you are looking for is from book XX:
Baculus a Bacco repertore vitis fertur inventus, quo homines moti vino inniterentur. Sicut autem a Bacco baculus, ita a baculo bacillum per ...
- 53.5k
5
votes
What is up with the oracle's prophecy in the story of Cupid and Psyche?
Let Psyche’s body be clad in mourning wed,
And set on rock of yonder hill aloft:
Her husband is no being of human seed,
But serpent dire and fierce as might be thought.
Who flies with ...
- 4,178
5
votes
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A quote supposedly by Jean de La Fontaine
UPDATE:
I have figured out where they got the quote form. Googling the original quote in Croatian shows that the line
appears in the book Zlatna knjiga svjetske poezije za djecu by Zvonimir Balog, ...
- 11.6k
5
votes
What does Thomas More try to do with Greek puns in Utopia?
tl;dr More's wordplay both creates a world and undercuts it. It allows More to tell an entirely plausible story with a straight face while simultaneously signaling that the story is false. It forms ...
- 22.1k
5
votes
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Meaning of "The sin of thousands always goes unpunished"?
That the sins committed by the mass public are unpunished and ignored. Sometimes people don't even recognize the actions as crimes but as social norms (ie downloading music off the internet). Also, ...
- 74
5
votes
Accepted
Online Latin version of the "Crater Hermetis"
Yes, it is available on Archive.org. It is part of a volume printed in 1505 with this long title:
Contenta in hoc volumine. Pimander. Mercurij Trismegisti liber De sapiential et potestate dei. ...
- 22.1k
5
votes
What is the difference between the narration of the Fall of Troy in The Aeneid, The Iliad, and The Odyssey?
Summary
The sack of Troy was depicted in an ancient epic poem, the Iliupersis; this was probably used by Virgil as a source, but it has since been lost. From a surviving summary we can get an idea of ...
- 53.5k
5
votes
Who is the 'pale Titan-woman' in Swinburne's 'Ave atque Vale'?
Swinburne’s ‘Ave atque Value’ (1868) is subtitled “In Memory of Charles Baudelaire”, who died in 1867. The poem contains allusions to a number of Baudelaire’s poems, and when looking for a “pale Titan-...
- 53.5k
4
votes
Accepted
Vergil or Virgil?
Yes, there's a story, but not a very cohesive one.
Wikipedia cites Virgil in the Renaissance's chapter, Virgil with an i, which is a thorough examination of the name's orthographic history:
Vergil or ...
- 1,835
4
votes
How much of the original verse is lost in Fitzgerald's translation of The Aeneid?
As I said in my comment above, Latin and English poetry are very different. They both have multiple layers of depth and meaning, but in very different ways. Firstly, meter in Latin is not based on ...
- 4,412
4
votes
What are these letters in Unicode?
While the two previous answer gave an identification of the character, none seems to give the unicode codepoint of the first (the second is a ligature and not encoded, just an ordinary c and t ...
3
votes
What are these letters in Unicode?
The typeface appears similar to those by Nicolas Jenson, a 15th-century typographer.
The original typeface may not have a name (or the name may be lost to time), but there is a 21st-century ...
- 1,229
2
votes
In Cupid and Psyche, why does Cupid hide himself from Psyche?
In The Golden Ass, Cupid does not give any reason why explicitly. He simply forbid her:
But he gave her a further charge saying, Beware that ye covet not (being moved by the pernicious counsel of ...
- 5,957
2
votes
Accepted
What are the sources for these six ancient Roman rhetorical tools?
After I contacted Simon Lancaster, he was gracious enough to respond:
If you look at my own books, particularly Speechwriting: The Expert Guide, you'll find a ton of sources. Warm wishes, Simon
The ...
- 251
2
votes
Accepted
Where are the Rosicrucian Original Texts in Latin or German (online or offline)?
Fama Fraternitatis is available in German at:
Allgemeine und General-Reformation der ganzen weiten Welt beneben der Fama Fraternitatis on 12koerbe.de,
Fama Fraternitatis des löblichen Ordens des ...
- 44k
2
votes
Accepted
Full English or French online translation of "De pugna avium"
There is an English translation in the transcript of this podcast. The podcast translates the title, calling it The Battle of the Birds. The translated section starts:
There is a place at the very ...
- 11.6k
1
vote
Accepted
Is Ant-Man a Myrmidon?
I would not call Ant-Man a Myrmidon because he is not actually descended from ants, nor does he come from them in any way. He is able to command ants by using his ant-antennaed helmet.
1
vote
Does the Greek or Latin "Corpus Hermeticum" exist online anywhere in text format?
Online versions of the Greek text are available at:
Ἑρμου του Τρισμεγιστου - ΠΟΙΜΑΝΔΡΗΣ on w66.eu,
«ΕΡΜΗΣ Ο ΤΡΙΣΜΕΓΙΣΤΟΣ»: 240. – Ποιμάνδρης on Greek-Language.org,
HERMÈS TRISMÉGISTE - Greek and ...
- 44k
1
vote
Does this quote by Martial really exist?
Tacitus's Agricola says, at the end of XXX:
XXX. "... Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."
which is to say
To ravage, to ...
- 3,975
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