Lughnasa                                                                           College Moon

I asked Greg (Latin tutor) for something new, a different arrangement. He wrote back and suggested I start reading Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. That’s not quite what I had in mind, but I decided I’d try it before our time together next Friday. I’ve already translated 20 lines. It goes quicker than Ovid, prose rather than poetry explaining part of that I imagine. Translating made me feel like I’d made real progress. Probably Greg’s point in recommending it.

The commentary I’m using for Caesar suggests reading in the Latin word order first. That’s very hard with poetry because Latin poets move words around based on rhyme scheme and meter, as well as for dramatic effect. With Caesar however it gave me, for the first time, a feel for Latin as a foreign language rather than a puzzle created by unfamiliar words. Reading in the Latin word order means thinking the way a Latin writer and reader would.

There is a subtle irony involved in reading Caesar for me, two in fact. The first is that Caesar was the first real Latin text I ever began to read, way back in Miss Mitchell’s class in high school. (Yes, speaking of ancient times, that was 1964 and 1965.) The second and more profound one for me is that it is through Caesar and through De Bello Gallico, Of the Gallic Wars, that we have a great deal of our knowledge of the ancient Celts. Gaul = Celt. And, it was Caesar who invaded Briton. Between Caesar and Tacitus, a Roman historian, we have the bulk of the written accounts about the Celts, how they lived, fought, worshiped.

I’m going to keep translating both Ovid and Caesar, though I’ll finish Caesar long before I finish the Metamorphoses.