Fall Fallowturn Moon
Knee deep in the Aeneid this morning. So far I find Virgil more of a challenge than Ovid, but I suspect that’s because I’ve accustomed myself to Ovid’s style. That means the translating goes more slowly. Part of the reason lies in the very helpful text, a commentary well known among classicists as Pharr’s.
(Dido and Aeneas (detail), by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin (1774-1833)
He has vocabulary and textual comment all on the same page, a tiny bit of text, around 4 verses or so, then the words not on the common word list (a pullout at the back, which I tore out long ago and spread out above my work) and below that a verse by verse exegesis, focused largely on grammar, but throwing in the occasional bits of Virgil and classical studies lore.
In the grammatical explanations Pharr often refers to a grammatical appendix number 1 through 400+, covering both the common and the not so common permutations of Latin grammar. Since I’m far from facile with the grammar, this means a fair amount of paging to the back, reading, figuring out how the reference relates to the text, then using it in my translation.