Let’s kick things off…
Salvete omnes! Hey everyone! I’ve come to a decision about where I want to start with Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia. I’ll be starting with Book V, which is about Africa. If you’re unaware, Naturalis Historia is an encyclopedia/chronicle of sorts. Pliny the Elder documented a lot of the world around him, and, biased as it is, it means we have a large collection of Roman life and geography. So, why start at Book V I hear you say? That’s because I spent my summer in Morocco, learning Arabic, and I thought it would be a cool way to combine two of my interests and find out what Ancient Rome had to say about Al-Maghrib. For this translation, I’m using Perseus Tufts Digital Library for the Latin, and when I need a little help, I’ll be looking at a translation by H. Rackham, W. H. S. Jones and D. E. Eichholz. For vocab help, I’m using William Whitaker’s Words. And don’t worry, this translation will be in my own words. There’s no fun in just knowing what it says, the puzzle is the best part!
This is the chunk I’m looking at today: (starting small because technically my course hasn’t started yet)
Africam graeci libyam appellavere et mare ante eam libycum; aegyptio finitur, nec alia pars terrarum pauciores recipit sinus, longe ab occidente litorum obliquo spatio. populorum eius oppidorumque nomina vel maxime sunt ineffabilia praeterquam ipsorum linguis, et alias castella ferme inhabitant.
Literally:
The Greeks had called Africa Libya, and the sea before it Libyan; it is bordered by Egypt, and not another part of the earth accepts as few curves, a long way from the west of the shores by a slanting space. The names of its towns and peoples are indeed unpronounceable except in their own languages, and elsewhere they mostly live in fortresses.
For clarity:
The Greeks had called Africa Libya, and the part of the sea in front of it the Libyan Sea; it is bordered by Egypt. This part of the Earth has almost no coves on the coast, and the length of it slants away from the western shores of the continent. The names of its towns and peoples are almost impossible to pronounce except by the people themselves, and others living there live in their own fortresses.
So now we take a peek at the syntax! I think I’ll just do a written summary of my notes, but maybe in the future I’ll upload a picture if they’re not too messy.
Starting off, we have a contracted verb in the very first sentence! Appellavere may look like an infinitive with the telltale -ere ending, but the word itself is appello, appellare, appelavi, appellatus. The infinitive is first conjugation, not third. This means that it is a contraction of a pluperfect verb: appellaverunt. We see this a lot in poetry, especially when the poet has to make a line a certain amount of syllables, but I wonder what compelled Pliny to do it here? In any case, the rest of the sentence becomes clear with that mental adjustment. Graeci is the plural subject, Africam and Libyam are direct objects, and then with et mare ante eam Libycum I think there might be some sort of form of ‘to be’ implied, with eam as its direct object and mare as its subject.
The next sentence stays fairly simple until the last clause, longe ab occidente litorum obliquo spatio. I was initially confused because there isn’t a verb, but maybe I’ll have to get used to Pliny just omitting forms of ‘to be’ because there is a looooot of ablative in that clause right there. It’s alright, it can pretty much be read in the order it’s written in which is nice. Longe is an adverb meaning ‘a long way from’ or some variation of that, and then we have a prepositional phrase, ab occidente litorum, the ab meaning from, occidente being ablative because of the ab, and then litorum, which is genitive plural. Put it together, and you get ‘from the west of the shores.’ Following that, obliquo spatio means from/by/with a slanting space, and when you put the whole clause together you get something in English that feels wrong because that’s not really how you would say it in English, but makes enough sense; ‘a long way from the west of the shores by a slanting space.’ Meaning, of course, that the shores are mostly flat and are a long way from the west of the continent.
The last bit that I’ll talk about is the very last clause of the selection: et alias castella ferme inhabitant. I’ll admit that it confused me quite a bit, because I didn’t realize alias was an adverb meaning ‘elsewhere,’ I took it to mean ‘others.’ But, once that was sorted, it seemed to fall into place with a bit of a stretched translation of the adverb ferme.
So that’s that! It was a quick passage with a long breakdown to sort of acquaint you with how I think about this sort of thing, and I’m super excited to start in earnest once we hit September!
Valete,
Isadora
