Juvenal on smart women
Nowadays I spend a lot of time reading Latin stuff so that someday I'll be able to make the big bucks. I just read a few lines of Juvenal's Satires (6.434-56), in which he rants about educated women. (My book is about women in ancient Rome). Apparently he was a Roman poet of the second century A.D. I found the lines so interesting that I decided to try my hand at translating them in colloquial prose (I couldn't imagine trying to translate them as poetry). In a few parts I've added contextual information, such as the words "during an eclipse to scare off evil spirits," without which parts wouldn't make sense to the modern reader. I find his tirade particularly amusing in light of the fact that I am married to such a woman.
Worse than the women I've criticized previously is the woman who, when she reclines at dinner, begins to praise Virgil, pardon Dido for what she did when she was about to die, and pit the poets against each other and compare them, then, in another part, measure Maro and Homer on the scales. Literature teachers yield, public speakers are conquered, the whole crowd is speechless, and neither an advocate nor an auctioneer will speak, nor another woman. Such an abundance of words descends, like when you tell so many basins and bells to be banged during an eclipse to scare off evil spirits. No one should wear out the trumpets or cymbals now: for she could help the laboring moon reappear all by herself! A philosopher imposes a limit even on virtuous things. The woman who wants to be excessively learned and appear eloquent should hike her tunic halfway up her leg like a man, sacrifice a pig to Silvanus, and go bathe in the men's bathroom. A mother -- your wife who sleeps with you -- shouldn't have style of speech or twist arguments around with speech like a weapon, nor know all the histories. Rather, she should be ignorant of everything learned from books. I hate this woman classicist, who tries to recover and recite the skill of Palaemon, always protected by the law and the fact that she never makes a mistake in grammar, and knows by heart verses unknown to me, which men don't give a damn about. She corrects the words of her stupid girlfriends. A husband should be allowed to make a grammatical mistake!
x-posted: latin (for translation suggestions)
Worse than the women I've criticized previously is the woman who, when she reclines at dinner, begins to praise Virgil, pardon Dido for what she did when she was about to die, and pit the poets against each other and compare them, then, in another part, measure Maro and Homer on the scales. Literature teachers yield, public speakers are conquered, the whole crowd is speechless, and neither an advocate nor an auctioneer will speak, nor another woman. Such an abundance of words descends, like when you tell so many basins and bells to be banged during an eclipse to scare off evil spirits. No one should wear out the trumpets or cymbals now: for she could help the laboring moon reappear all by herself! A philosopher imposes a limit even on virtuous things. The woman who wants to be excessively learned and appear eloquent should hike her tunic halfway up her leg like a man, sacrifice a pig to Silvanus, and go bathe in the men's bathroom. A mother -- your wife who sleeps with you -- shouldn't have style of speech or twist arguments around with speech like a weapon, nor know all the histories. Rather, she should be ignorant of everything learned from books. I hate this woman classicist, who tries to recover and recite the skill of Palaemon, always protected by the law and the fact that she never makes a mistake in grammar, and knows by heart verses unknown to me, which men don't give a damn about. She corrects the words of her stupid girlfriends. A husband should be allowed to make a grammatical mistake!
x-posted: latin (for translation suggestions)