/clg/ - Classical Languages General

Repost since other thread was ruined from the start
An exercise for /clg/. Post translations and compare with others.
This is an excerpt from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, Book 1, section 100. The main topic of the first book is whether death is evil and this passage encapsulates that theme quite well.
Cicero's daughter died before him and in his grief he retired to his villa to find consolation in writing. This work was written in that period and gives a good glimpse into the pain he was feeling and the steps he took to alleviate it.

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did you guys just brute force latin (read and look everything up)?
i was thinking of doing it but i'm burned out because of japanese

holy fuck this is the most boring chapter so far kill me now

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Athenaze mogs this and I'm tired of pretending it doesn't

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Bored shitposters shitting up the board

Literally dropped Latin because this book is such a fucking slog. Moved on to other languages. Will come back to Latin some time in the future.

Just read Livy's history of early Rome.
Feels like proto-marxism desu.
The whole thing was just "prolles/plebs want land; patricians/elites start a foreign war".

A lot of background is only related halfway through the book, which makes the significance of earlier parts easy to miss.
For instance the early Roman system of conscription isn't related early enough so someone with a background in late Roman history might easily misunderstand large parts of the book.
Similarly a background on early Roman tax structure is important to understand- if you just go in with pre-conceptions and modern views on say...income tax- you will (and I did) often miss the point.

Early on it's hard to separate the historical and mythical; this is just par for the course.
When the Romans refer rhetorically to Troy- at that point do they or do they not consider it to be history?
It's hard to know what people at the time believed.
Most of the religious change is also not mapped out despite frequently being referred to- so It's hard to know if religious events were normal and which were innovations or changes

I still believe the Aeneid is very accessible and would recommend reading it first because:
A. many later accounts will reference it implicitly, and it's important to know when it's being referenced
B. like the iliad it tainted later historical works- so you want to be suspicious where "history" seems to mirror it, often a later historian is just filling in blanks.

As long as you understand key terminology to avoid projection you will be OK.
The biggest trap for new players is ascribing modern understanding to terms that have been translated into English.

You read "love" but that's a modern word- you need to know which word was originally used and what it meant.
A good translator walks a fine line between writing an inaccessible work half in Latin; and ascribing poorly fitting English words where no direct translation will fit.

This is why the first year of study is basically memorizing terminology

>zoomer brain filtered by needing to concentrate for 16 minutes
Sad. To think the baby method is still not easy enough. Go watch TikToks for hours while Netflix plays in the background along with xQc

It's on ok chapter I don't get the problem. Like 12 was nicer imo but it isn't that bad.

I got only up to book III though I get what you're saying, but I still wouldn't go that far, at no point I felt the caste(not class even, let alone economic) of the patrician was questioned per se, more like a at times just struggle of the plebeians to get their just share in the booty and welfare of the state, I see it more as a pack of wolves where the big wolves do get to eat first but the other wolves don't just stand there timid and defeated but start growling when the big wolves bite too much.

it's not worth it

You make a very valid and interesting point. I'd like to point out nonetheless that if we are to trust the sources (which I believe is the case) we also have to remember that there's one key difference between standard Marxist dialectics and the history of Rome. The city, the state, its culture and ethos were completely, singlehandedly founded by the patricians as they were the very first inhabitants and initially shared, or so you could deduce, an equal condition within the community. In that respect you could closely compare it to, say, Sparta, with the key difference that Sparta does follow Hegelian/Marxist dialectics by subjugating the Messenians; this never happens in Rome as the plebeians are free citizens who just happened to join Rome later. Here's where Rome and Sparta part ways: if in Sparta the real dichotomy can be summarized as aristocrats and slaves (the Perioeci somehow elude the paradigm and seem to go about their business completely unaffected), it follows that the same should happen in Rome but the institutions and ethos of the latter make this completely meaningless, as plebs and aristocrats are all Roman citizens and all all share in the welfare of the community and the State (whereas the Perioeci, who as I was typing this I was almost inclined to compare to the bourgeoisie in Marxist terms, were not citizens of Sparta despite being free individuals). Roman slaves, per the usual classical norms, were not considered persons... so what we're getting at is, I believe, we can't talk of Marxist dialectics in Rome as it seems not to be true that there was an oppressed class. This unless, then again using Marxist jargon and ideas which I personally don't subscribe to at all, the real conclusion is that in modern societies being a citizen in the legal sense is not equivalent to actually being a full fledged citizen; this would imply that the mass of modern Perioeci are functionally serfs of the few Spartiatae, who are amongst themselves Homoioi, equals. Interesting.

>Go watch TikToks for hours while Netflix plays in the background along with xQc

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languages with cases are a pain in the ass

>user tries to learn new languages
>learns that some of them have cases
>user is angry
Many such cases

i can read a lot of german
it doesn't change anything. it's still a pain in the ass

for us western caselets especially, learning a case-heavy language from birth must be a great advantage e.g I think Slavs despite being further from us lexically from e.g Latin and Greek have an easier time mentally adapting to how they work, even after all these years I sometimes need to translate some Latin expression in my head in the equivalent preposition + noun

Reading even someone like Livy makes me fear whether in ancient Greek one also encounters such hermetic, dry annalistic style, god dammit. Hope it's true that Greek should be milder in this regard.

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Does it make a difference if you start with Greek before Latin or vice versa?

i started with greek and it was torture. learning latin after felt like stealing candy from a baby.

>page 10 in 4 hours

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Why is the board so fast suddenly?

I'm not sure, I learned Greek having never learned a language before. I'm not sure why Latin was always prescribed before Greek. It all depends on what you want to read, if you have no interest in Latin authors then I don't see how you'll be better off spending a year on a language you'll never use.

I thought the same thing but a Russian in a classics server I'm in says it's not really any easier, in fact he says that it's kind of worse since you know how much memorization you'll have to do

is your native language a romance one?

Is Lingua Latina a legitimate way to learn good latin? I am taking a 101 course at my university, but it feels lacking somehow, and I've just got Lingua Latina and it already feels like I'm learning the language after maybe 4 pages, compared to 4 very dull weeks in class. Of course it's worth it for the interaction, but the method in L.L. appears to be much more effective. The uni. class is using the oxford intro to latin.

Can someone speak to this? I want to be a good scholar here.

Any book that helps you learn is a good way to learn. Go through both textbooks.

isn't the oxford course another version of LLPSI. i may be confusing it with the cambridge one

you're wrong son, it is worth it. It's all worth it

Is there a site like realkana but for the Greek alphabet?

There's a reason why your school is not using the LLPSI. It is not as effective as Wheelock and other Latin textbook mainstays. Learning Latin in a class room with emphasis on learning grammar is the best way to learn Latin. You can't be a good scholar if you can't describe what your talking about other than saying, "You know, the thing. The thingy that the thing." If reading the LLPSI helps you get goods grades and even get ahead, then you should definitely use it, but don't drop out because you are going to use le LLPSI instead.
Anything worth doing comes with a challenge. For me, I had to drill Latin and the other languages I learned for hours and hours. magnus, magni, magno.... sum, es, est... You learn to love the pain and the repetition, if you have what it takes anyway. There was a thread on this board last week about fountain pens. I highly recommend them for such practice. If not a fountain pen with nice paper, then a gel pen with any paper. I use a Pilot Metropolitan (entry level pen), Heart of Darkness ink, and Oxford BlacknRed notebooks. You can thank me later. Lots of repetition helps, and having as comfortable of an experience as possible makes it go along better. Sometimes, working in public helps, but don't be a weirdo with a fountain pen in public.

>There's a reason why your school is not using the LLPSI.
no one has ever learned a language inside a classroom

Duolingo now seems to put advertisements after every lesson. Fucking annoying.

nope. not even an indo-european one

true, aside from every latin scholar and priest, but who cares, ranieri is better than them anyway

>ranieri
rent free
please kill yourself

>You can't be a good scholar if...
stopped reading there

I have to agree. I've been doing a lot of greek and now I'm doing some work on latin and it's way way easier.

I'm guessing Semite. I was also guessing Turk, but it looks like that is inflected.

Anons please be honest. How many of you can read in a Classical language at least semi comfortably? Is learning really worth the trouble when you have so many translations at hand?
I'm contemplating starting the LLPSI once I get my C1 in Italian.

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finno-ugric

For latin you just need to learn the grammar and then grind anki decks of common words

depends a lot on the author and the accumulated experience, as well as if you've already read the author once
e.g I can more or less read Caesar fluently and without translating in my head for 99% of it as well as e.g Latin wikipedia articles, but Livy is still another challenge, Tacitus even more

Ahh. Forgot. That would have been a good guess too.

Do you think there has ever been an user in any of these threads who could read the metamorphoses?

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yeah he's right

this is the guy who posted that
youtube.com/watch?v=Oudgdh6tl00

he speaks arabic in this video
youtube.com/watch?v=S6EuVB-tg0I

speaking isn't really relevant here not sure what your point is

i wasn't trying to make a point. i just wanted to give some context

there definitely were people like that last year

nevermind i thought you posted those videos to invalidate his claim