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...oh, hey, I meant to post this on Wednesday. So. Uh. I guess I will just keep on translating, and put the whole thing up at once!
Right, then.
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Aaaaaand back to Latin. Today’s class was interesting! I misidentified a basic deponent verb (which, in my defense, was one of many vocab words not listed in my ginormous dictionary), and put relative clauses where they didn’t need to exist, and ended up getting the meaning of a sentence entirely backwards, but otherwise did pretty well on the one sentence of translation I did in the class. And the prof was very kind about things, and some grad students made some errors, so I don’t feel terrible about it.
More to the point, I discovered that 1) that terrifying spread of Cato that I thought was due today was, in fact, due on Friday--it was our assignment for the week--and we didn’t even get through all of what I had prepared for class. Mind, we’ve been warned that we won’t be covering everything in class, and that we’ll be speeding up as we go along, but still. Quite a relief. Also, 2) my enormous dictionary is very much designed for Cicero And His Peers And Imitators, and is therefore just about the worst possible enormous dictionary I could be using for this class... but the little free Latin dictionary app on my phone, which pulls from an OOC dictionary of way back when, actually has all the vocabulary and references I need.
So between those two things, I expect that this course will become--if certainly not easy--a bit less terrifying and soul-crushing. Which is nice! I want a challenge, not a brutalization of all my tiny linguistic hopes and dreams. (That’s what grad school is for.)
De Agricultura, Section 3
It is proper that the father of a family should study [how] to plant a field in his earliest youth. After a while it is proper that he think about [how] to build, and it is not proper to think on planting, but it is proper to act. When he has reached the age of 36 years, then it’s appropriate for him to build, if you have a planted field. Thus you should build neither with a villa lacking a farm or a farm lacking a villa.
It frees a father of a family to have a well-built rustic villa, a store-room for wine and oil, plenty of wine-jars, so that it pleases* him to await a high price; and it will be for profit and honor and glory. It’s proper to have good tools*, so that the work can be done well. And where the olives are harvested, let the oil continue, lest it be ruined. Know that every year huge storms arrive and are accustomed to destroy the oil.
If you bear up quickly and the vessels are ready, there will be no damage from the storm and the oil will be fresh and sweet. If the olives are on the ground or the floor for too long, they’ll go bad, and the oil will be foul; but the oil from each olive can be sweet and fresh if you in time you make...
Section 4
...good stalls for oxen, good latticed mangers for the stable, it is proper for there to be bars set at the feet; if you will have made it thus, the cows won’t toss their fodder out. You should build a city villa according to your resources. If you build well on a good farm, and set yourself up well, if you reside properly in the country, then you will come more freely and more often,** the farm will be better, fewer mistakes will be made, you will take in more rewards; the forehead comes before the back of the head.***
You should be good to your neighbors, and don’t let your family^ make mistakes. If your neighborhood sees you freely, you will sell your stuff easily, you will arrange your works easily, you will assemble workers easily; if you will build, they will assist your growing works with lumber; if any need should come upon you (god forbid!), they will kindly look after you.
Section 5
These are the duties of a steward. He should use good management. The holidays are reserved. He should keep his hands off what belongs to another man, and diligently preserve his own possessions.^^ He should refrain from quarrels with the family. If anyone should fail at anything, he should punish the harm in the proper manner. He should not act poorly to the family, nor be cold to them, nor desire them eagerly.^^^ He should keep busy with good work, and he will more easily keep out bad men and strange men.
If the steward does not wish to act wickedly [to the family], he will not do so. If he should allow it, the master should not allow him to be unpunished. He should be generous in exchange for good work [by the slaves], so that it will please the others to act rightly.% The steward should not be a wanderer, he should always be sober, and he should not go to dinner. He should busy himself with the family; he should be attentive so that what the master has ordered will occur. He should not consider himself to know better than the master.
The friends of the master, he should have them as his friends. He should listen attentively to what he’s ordered. He should not go to the crossroads or to the hearth on holy days without the orders of the master, except for the Compitalia.% He should make loans to no one; what the master has loaned out, he should compel repayment of. He ought to give seed, grain, spelt, wine, borrowed oil, to no one doing sowing. He should have two or three families from whom he will ask things for using and to whom he should give, and beyond this no one. He will consider the plan with the master repeatedly.
He should not keep the same hired laborer longer than a day for the works. He should not wish to pay anyone without the master knowing, nor wish the master to be ignorant of anything. He should not have anyone as a parasite.%% He should not wish to consult any augurs, haruspices, soothsayers, Chaldaei. He should not cheat%%% the cornfield, for this is unlucky.
He should take care with the whole rustic work so that he knows how to do it, and he should do it often, so that he doesn’t become tired. If he does it, he will know in his mind what it is for the family, and these things will make that soul more calm. If he will do this, he will wish to wander less and he will thrive rightly and he will sleep freely. First he will rise from his bed, later he will go to his bed. He should first look over the villa, and how the stables are, and how each [animal] is in its own place, and how the animal feed is held...
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* I have no idea what “lubeat” actually means. Ditto with “torcularia”. Guessing from context! It’s a thing! -- that’s what I said the first time, but then I realized that probably just meant “libeat” with another spelling: it is pleasing to.
** It’s assumed that a landowner’s primary residence isn’t actually on the farm.
*** A proverb that is snappier in Latin, and means something like “Keep a sharp eye out.”
^ The word I’ve been translating as “family” properly includes all the people under the authority of the pater familias: thus, it covers his wife and children (and any other dependent relatives or wards), but also his household slaves, and--I am fuzzy on this part--possibly employees who live on his property too.
^^ In Latin, this entire sentence is only six words. Oh, English.
^^^ ...or possibly he shouldn’t be treated badly, or go cold, or go hungry. I’m a little unsure with these verbs.
% I think this means it’s assumed that the steward/overseer is also a slave, which I had not initially realized, but which would follow my vague understanding of how these things worked. That said, the following sentence implies a free man--or at least a slave with an awful lot of freedom, if these are things that have to be specifically prohibited.
% A festival celebrated mostly by slaves, with extra wine rations, because it was a rural thing and most masters didn’t live on the farms anymore.
%% In the original Greek sense of someone who hangs around having dinner at your expense, rather than in the biological sense.
%%% According to the notes, the field is “cheated” if it’s not given enough seed. But my dictionary translates the verb in question as “to rob of corn,” so damned if I know.
Right, then.
---
Aaaaaand back to Latin. Today’s class was interesting! I misidentified a basic deponent verb (which, in my defense, was one of many vocab words not listed in my ginormous dictionary), and put relative clauses where they didn’t need to exist, and ended up getting the meaning of a sentence entirely backwards, but otherwise did pretty well on the one sentence of translation I did in the class. And the prof was very kind about things, and some grad students made some errors, so I don’t feel terrible about it.
More to the point, I discovered that 1) that terrifying spread of Cato that I thought was due today was, in fact, due on Friday--it was our assignment for the week--and we didn’t even get through all of what I had prepared for class. Mind, we’ve been warned that we won’t be covering everything in class, and that we’ll be speeding up as we go along, but still. Quite a relief. Also, 2) my enormous dictionary is very much designed for Cicero And His Peers And Imitators, and is therefore just about the worst possible enormous dictionary I could be using for this class... but the little free Latin dictionary app on my phone, which pulls from an OOC dictionary of way back when, actually has all the vocabulary and references I need.
So between those two things, I expect that this course will become--if certainly not easy--a bit less terrifying and soul-crushing. Which is nice! I want a challenge, not a brutalization of all my tiny linguistic hopes and dreams. (That’s what grad school is for.)
De Agricultura, Section 3
It is proper that the father of a family should study [how] to plant a field in his earliest youth. After a while it is proper that he think about [how] to build, and it is not proper to think on planting, but it is proper to act. When he has reached the age of 36 years, then it’s appropriate for him to build, if you have a planted field. Thus you should build neither with a villa lacking a farm or a farm lacking a villa.
It frees a father of a family to have a well-built rustic villa, a store-room for wine and oil, plenty of wine-jars, so that it pleases* him to await a high price; and it will be for profit and honor and glory. It’s proper to have good tools*, so that the work can be done well. And where the olives are harvested, let the oil continue, lest it be ruined. Know that every year huge storms arrive and are accustomed to destroy the oil.
If you bear up quickly and the vessels are ready, there will be no damage from the storm and the oil will be fresh and sweet. If the olives are on the ground or the floor for too long, they’ll go bad, and the oil will be foul; but the oil from each olive can be sweet and fresh if you in time you make...
Section 4
...good stalls for oxen, good latticed mangers for the stable, it is proper for there to be bars set at the feet; if you will have made it thus, the cows won’t toss their fodder out. You should build a city villa according to your resources. If you build well on a good farm, and set yourself up well, if you reside properly in the country, then you will come more freely and more often,** the farm will be better, fewer mistakes will be made, you will take in more rewards; the forehead comes before the back of the head.***
You should be good to your neighbors, and don’t let your family^ make mistakes. If your neighborhood sees you freely, you will sell your stuff easily, you will arrange your works easily, you will assemble workers easily; if you will build, they will assist your growing works with lumber; if any need should come upon you (god forbid!), they will kindly look after you.
Section 5
These are the duties of a steward. He should use good management. The holidays are reserved. He should keep his hands off what belongs to another man, and diligently preserve his own possessions.^^ He should refrain from quarrels with the family. If anyone should fail at anything, he should punish the harm in the proper manner. He should not act poorly to the family, nor be cold to them, nor desire them eagerly.^^^ He should keep busy with good work, and he will more easily keep out bad men and strange men.
If the steward does not wish to act wickedly [to the family], he will not do so. If he should allow it, the master should not allow him to be unpunished. He should be generous in exchange for good work [by the slaves], so that it will please the others to act rightly.% The steward should not be a wanderer, he should always be sober, and he should not go to dinner. He should busy himself with the family; he should be attentive so that what the master has ordered will occur. He should not consider himself to know better than the master.
The friends of the master, he should have them as his friends. He should listen attentively to what he’s ordered. He should not go to the crossroads or to the hearth on holy days without the orders of the master, except for the Compitalia.% He should make loans to no one; what the master has loaned out, he should compel repayment of. He ought to give seed, grain, spelt, wine, borrowed oil, to no one doing sowing. He should have two or three families from whom he will ask things for using and to whom he should give, and beyond this no one. He will consider the plan with the master repeatedly.
He should not keep the same hired laborer longer than a day for the works. He should not wish to pay anyone without the master knowing, nor wish the master to be ignorant of anything. He should not have anyone as a parasite.%% He should not wish to consult any augurs, haruspices, soothsayers, Chaldaei. He should not cheat%%% the cornfield, for this is unlucky.
He should take care with the whole rustic work so that he knows how to do it, and he should do it often, so that he doesn’t become tired. If he does it, he will know in his mind what it is for the family, and these things will make that soul more calm. If he will do this, he will wish to wander less and he will thrive rightly and he will sleep freely. First he will rise from his bed, later he will go to his bed. He should first look over the villa, and how the stables are, and how each [animal] is in its own place, and how the animal feed is held...
---
* I have no idea what “lubeat” actually means. Ditto with “torcularia”. Guessing from context! It’s a thing! -- that’s what I said the first time, but then I realized that probably just meant “libeat” with another spelling: it is pleasing to.
** It’s assumed that a landowner’s primary residence isn’t actually on the farm.
*** A proverb that is snappier in Latin, and means something like “Keep a sharp eye out.”
^ The word I’ve been translating as “family” properly includes all the people under the authority of the pater familias: thus, it covers his wife and children (and any other dependent relatives or wards), but also his household slaves, and--I am fuzzy on this part--possibly employees who live on his property too.
^^ In Latin, this entire sentence is only six words. Oh, English.
^^^ ...or possibly he shouldn’t be treated badly, or go cold, or go hungry. I’m a little unsure with these verbs.
% I think this means it’s assumed that the steward/overseer is also a slave, which I had not initially realized, but which would follow my vague understanding of how these things worked. That said, the following sentence implies a free man--or at least a slave with an awful lot of freedom, if these are things that have to be specifically prohibited.
% A festival celebrated mostly by slaves, with extra wine rations, because it was a rural thing and most masters didn’t live on the farms anymore.
%% In the original Greek sense of someone who hangs around having dinner at your expense, rather than in the biological sense.
%%% According to the notes, the field is “cheated” if it’s not given enough seed. But my dictionary translates the verb in question as “to rob of corn,” so damned if I know.
From:
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"Desiring eagerly" sounds a bit like King James-speak for "ordering them around."
I wonder if robbing a field of corn means you keep some back to sell or plant on your own, maybe. Or eat! Unless corn was a kind of grain reserved for cows, or something.
What's the free little Latin app you have? I want one too!
From:
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The app I use is Lexidium; at least when I got it, the non-parsing version was free, and then there was a $2 upgrade to get the parser. The price may have gone up since then, but it's really a very nice little app. Drawing from all those OOC dictionaries, so not exactly the latest scholarship, but much cheaper and much handier than hauling those dictionaries around physically.
From:
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