aeneid 10.736

My project to "get weird with it" is now officially a project, in that it has a project tag to which I've added a handful of previous posts. I have also written myself a Python program to produce a random text from a corpus with a book and line number.[1] My idea is that I'll take the chunk of text around the line and try to produce (a) a translation that's interesting and (b) a short discussion of at least one point of interest in the text.

My first roll was for Vergil's Aeneid 10.736:

Aeneid 10.736–46

tum super abiectum posito pede nixus et hasta:
'pars belli haud temnenda, uiri, iacet altus Orodes.'
conclamant socii laetum paeana secuti;
ille autem exspirans: 'non me, quicumque es, inulto,
uictor, nec longum laetabere; te quoque fata
prospectant paria atque eadem mox arua tenebis.'
ad quem subridens mixta Mezentius ira:
'nunc morere. ast de me diuum pater atque hominum rex
uiderit.' hoc dicens eduxit corpore telum.
olli dura quies oculos et ferreus urget
somnus, in aeternam clauduntur lumina noctem.

Then, with foot and spear set upon the one laid low, he said: "A dog of war by no means to be scorned, gentlemen, the noble Orodes lies dead." His comrades called out together, following him in a hymn of joy; but he who was expiring said, "Whoever you may be, my conqueror, I will not be unavenged, nor will your men rejoice long; a commensurate end is looking for you as well, and soon you will reach the same fields." To which Mezentius, nearly laughing with stirred-up anger, replied, "Now you die. But as for me me, the father of gods and the king of men will see." Saying this, he withdrew his spear from the body. Unyielding rest pressed upon its eyes and iron sleep; its sight ended in everlasting night.

notes

inulto: This word is fabulous because it can refer to one for whom no revenge is taken or one upon whom no revenge is taken.

subridens: I was pretty unsatisfied with the offered definition of the word, which was simply "to smile". Rideo already means "to smile" or "to laugh"; I decided to go with "to nearly laugh", though I also considered "to laugh under one's breath"; this is entirely vibes-based.

olli: If you know a bit of Latin, you might wonder at this, but it's just an archaic spelling of illi (as in, a form of ille, illa, illud) which Vergil uses from time to time.

  1. Building the corpus is pretty slow, because there's no good way to access the count of lines per book of a text, but I've got a handful of texts in both Greek and Latin. So far, it's all poetry, because I have the random choices weighted by length in number of lines, and I haven't yet figured out how to account for prose.^