Comments | tears_of_nienna: and if it starts to snow, well then it starts to snow

tears_of_nienna

and if it starts to snow, well then it starts to snow

Feb 09, 2010 01:47

Okay, I am tired of the snow thing. I can't get my car out of its parking spot, thanks to the plow that dumped two feet of packed-in snow behind my bumper, and we're supposed to get another six to nine inches tonight. Yes, that's what she said. I never felt boxed-in like this even when I didn't have a car, so this is supremely annoying ( Read more... )

weather, latin

Comments 10

sunnyskywalker February 9 2010, 16:40:19 UTC

Well, he was sailing, and then he went "OH SHIT WHO PUT THOSE CLIFFS THERE," and went to find another beach.

GPS was on the fritz again? XD

tears_of_nienna February 9 2010, 20:43:19 UTC

Apparently! Or he just decided that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line, and neglected to find out what was on the other side of that line. :D

sunnyskywalker February 9 2010, 20:50:39 UTC

Geography: screwing up your Platonic ideal of logically geometrical travel routes since 55 BC.

sineala February 9 2010, 20:36:05 UTC

Yay Caesar and Catullus! Actually, Catullus 16 has a very nice theme of the importance of the author, and references the love poems. In addition to the obscenity. As I recall. (My girlfriend is really trying to get me to learn enough Latin to read everything she likes.)

(I am reading Suetonius, and Caesar hasn't even left for Britain yet. He has currently gotten himself into a lot of debt to try to get elected pontifex maximus and has told his mommy that he isn't coming back tonight if he doesn't win. Those bribes, apparently they ain't cheap. Ah, Rome.)

tears_of_nienna February 9 2010, 20:49:11 UTC

Oooh, I haven't read Suetonius. How bad is he, grammar-wise? Caesar is very very fond of ablative absolutes and deponent verbs. And everything is written in the third person, which makes him sound super-pretentious.

I am so taking note of Catullus 16--it's not in our reader, which is a shame, but I'll find the Latin somewhere and drive myself batty in translating it. :)

PS: Sorry if I spoiled you for the Great Invasion of Britain. :D

sineala February 9 2010, 22:50:25 UTC

OMG SPOILERS. :P Next you're going to be telling me he dies at the end of the book I'm reading.

I have concluded that pretty much any Latin prose is going to be chock-full of ablative absolutes, because apparently that's just good style, so, yeah, no help there. I'm not sure if there are more deponents than usual in Suetonius. I'm finding him easier to read than Cicero or Livy (Livy was making me cry), and apparently Suetonius does fewer of those clever tricks with parallelism that make for "good" Latin, which I appreciate.

(lysimache says that Caesar has more ablative absolutes than Suetonius, and if you really hate ablative absolutes you should never ever read Juvenal or Tacitus, because she says they have enough of 'em to make it impossible to understand ( ... )

tears_of_nienna February 9 2010, 23:14:32 UTC

with noun having been verbed

YES! And that is a delightful rumor to hear...I may have to pick up Suetonius on my own at some point. It does sound rather entertaining!

I liked Cicero's oratory just because it was so badass, but some of his fancy rhetorical devices give me headaches at the mere memory. No matter how many times people explain chiasmus to me, I will never, ever understand it. :)

Oh, Perseus. How did lazy Latin students like me get by before your click-through readings? And OH WOW, it starts with "irrumabo," and the definition I've heard for that one is...a bit more straightforward than the Lewis and Short definition.

And of course I know what "cinaede" means, since I recall having seen the word somewhere before... ;)

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