Curious about a Latin (?) Translation from a novel

[balloonhat]

I just finished a book in which the first chapter has two instances of Latin (?), one of which is never translated. I'm curious what it means, if anything. The novel is set in 640 AD.

"He begins by bemoaning your excessive sensationalism, and then writes, 'Ut turpiter atrum destinat in piscem mulier formosa superne---" (The character is

Comments

[jo_nzl]

They're quotes from Horace's Ars Poetica: Ut turpiter atrum destinat in piscem mulier formosa superne ("so that, in an ugly fashion, a beautiful woman might end in a black fish below"), comes right at the beginning of the poem (lines 3-4). The whole sentence reads

[balloonhat]

Ah, thank you! The book treated the Latin bits as if quoting a critical letter about one of the character's memoirs. Lots of the quoted stuff in the past has been bits of texts/poems, but I don't know why it didn't occur to me that it wasn't the case here.

Thank you for enlightening about this!

[catsidhe]

It seems to be a quote from Horace: The Art of Poetry: To the Pisos

... ut turpiter atrum desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne

“so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below”

[catsidhe]

Ha! Beaten to the punch!

[sollersuk]

You are so lucky that the Latin was a quotation from a classical author, and not from someone writing at the date of the story; most unfortunately, Latin was still a living language at the time, and dictionaries for classical Latin aren't always much help

(speaking as someone who has recently been struggling with Sidonius Apollinaris and Gregory of Tours)