Multaque per maestum demens effata furorem Se causam clamat crimenque caputque malorum, 600 Infelix pugnae iuvenem in certamine creditĮxstinctum et subito mentem turbata dolore Nusquam acies contra Rutulas, nulla agmina Turni,

Regina ut tectis venientem prospicit hostem, 595 The knot of ugly death to the high rafter. Her crimson robes, and slung a noose and fastened I am the cause, the source of all these evils!”Īnd other wilder words. Had seen the Trojans coming and the wallsĬoming to help. Speaking wildly, in despair,Īnd set on death, she tore her purple robeĪnd hung a noose around a beam–an ugly end.įrom Rolfe Humphries, lines 595-603 in Book XII of the Aeneid She cried she was the cause and culmination None of Turnus’ troops, the unhappy woman 595-603 in Book XII of the AeneidĪpproach, saw the walls attacked, torches flying There are similarities between suicidal Amata and suicidal Dido (Book IV), and yet the parallels are strange: Amata is a married middle-aged queen with a thing for her daughter’s aspiring fiance Dido a young widowed queen in love with Aeneas, then deserted by him.įrom Shadi Bartsch’s new translation, vv.

Now, when Amata sees the Trojans attacking the walls, and no sign of Turnus, she believes he is dead, and decides to commit suicide herself. Amata is half in love with Turnus, the Italian prince who was the favored suitor of Lavinia. Queen Amata, who opposed a marriage between her daughter Lavinia and Aeneas, a Trojan refugee fated to found Rome, stirred up a civil war in Italy. 595-603, the first by Bartsch, and the second by Rolfe Humphries.įirst, let me explain the context. Below are two translations of Aeneid, Book XII, vv. I am a fan of comparing English translations, and have decided to share the fun with you. It also means to bury, to hide, to plunge a weapon into a body, to found or establish (as a city)–and to compose verse! Condo basically has the sense of “to put x in y” (including in one’s memory). Latin words do not map cleanly onto English words, and this gives every translator a choice of which term brings the most appropriate nuances for the situation…. We are not only reading but deciphering a puzzle that can seem jumbled until you understand the elegant effect of separation.īartsch addresses many such problems in the Translator’s Note, including the challenge of Latin vocabulary.

Latin is an inflected language, unlike English, and the sense does not depend on word order, but on word endings that cue the reader to the relationship of words in the sentence. The problems of translation are manifold.

The aeneid translated