A Bit Of Latin: Apuleius - Metamorpheses 1.10
Because of a friend's grim read-through of a deeply terrible 'historical' romance set in Roman times, I ended up translating a bit of Apuleius. Or trying to translate it, in any case; without notes, it was darn rough going, as I started in the middle of a sex scene, and it's all dramatic metaphor. Below the cut is...well, sex, I guess. Very metaphorical sex. Very rough translation. Starting and ending mid-sentences, as the page numbering got me. You have been warned on all points.
...[it] is stretched out. And [it] is repeatedly injured also by many [things], the wound has publicly become well-known, and the erect [member] was being punished, as you'd say in other words, most severely by thrown stones, and this intention set out in advance with the bravery of an incantation, and, like when that famous Medea in one short day burned the whole house and daughter along with the old man in crown-like flames because of the alliance made with Creo, thus this [woman] [burned] into the trench when the tomb-like self-sacrifices were attended to, as [someone] told me in the next drunken narrative, a divine power closed up the complete walls for itself in its own home with a silent fury, as if a lock had been shattered in two days' time, and the walls themselves were not able to be torn out from without, nor subsequently pierced, until they cried out with a mutual harmonious encouragement, vowing by the most holy thing possible that they would not bring themselves to it by hands, and if they thought anything otherwise, that the battle-line would salute them when lifted up: and thus that [holy thing], being propitious, frees the whole community. And indeed that coitus conveyed its author in the dead of night to the whole house, it was from the walls and itself alone and the whole foundation, as it were, from the enclosure toward the hundredth stone situated in another community at the highest peak of a rough mountain, and on account of this out to the barren waters. And since the buildings crowded with inhabitants were not offering a place for a new host, in front of the gate of the outjutting house...
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...[it] is stretched out. And [it] is repeatedly injured also by many [things], the wound has publicly become well-known, and the erect [member] was being punished, as you'd say in other words, most severely by thrown stones, and this intention set out in advance with the bravery of an incantation, and, like when that famous Medea in one short day burned the whole house and daughter along with the old man in crown-like flames because of the alliance made with Creo, thus this [woman] [burned] into the trench when the tomb-like self-sacrifices were attended to, as [someone] told me in the next drunken narrative, a divine power closed up the complete walls for itself in its own home with a silent fury, as if a lock had been shattered in two days' time, and the walls themselves were not able to be torn out from without, nor subsequently pierced, until they cried out with a mutual harmonious encouragement, vowing by the most holy thing possible that they would not bring themselves to it by hands, and if they thought anything otherwise, that the battle-line would salute them when lifted up: and thus that [holy thing], being propitious, frees the whole community. And indeed that coitus conveyed its author in the dead of night to the whole house, it was from the walls and itself alone and the whole foundation, as it were, from the enclosure toward the hundredth stone situated in another community at the highest peak of a rough mountain, and on account of this out to the barren waters. And since the buildings crowded with inhabitants were not offering a place for a new host, in front of the gate of the outjutting house...
This entry was originally posted at http://fadeaccompli.dreamwidth.org/124122.html. Comment wherever you like.