{"id":30243,"date":"2015-03-18T15:15:34","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T21:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=30243"},"modified":"2016-05-06T09:26:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:26:24","slug":"30243","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=30243","title":{"rendered":"Medea and Aeson (an excerpt)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Imbolc \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Black Mountain Moon<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll stop saying this, but I am amazed at the facility I&#8217;m now enjoying with Latin. Of course, I&#8217;ve been working at it off and on for over 5 years, so there&#8217;s that. But the jump in ability is what fascinates me. How did that happen?\u00a0Sometime soon I&#8217;m going to test it in other texts: Caesar, Lucretius, maybe Tacitus. Just to see.<\/p>\n<p>(Medea and Aeson: Giovanni David, 1780)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m getting close to having Medea and Aeson finished. Here&#8217;s an excerpt:<\/p>\n<p>Metamorphosis Book VII: (Medea&#8217;s Prayer)<\/p>\n<div>180 After the fullest moon shone, and the whole moon beheld the earth through shadow<\/div>\n<div>181 Having dressed she came forth, having\u00a0ungirded\u00a0her clothes under the roof,<\/div>\n<div>182 With naked feet, exposed\u00a0hair spread over her shoulders,<\/div>\n<div>183 And unaccompanied<\/div>\n<div>184 She takes\u00a0a wandering pace through the deep silence<\/div>\n<div>185 of the middle of the night. The quiet has set free<\/div>\n<div>186 men, high flyers and wild beasts: when often (there is) nothing with a roar,<\/div>\n<div>187 the undisturbed leafy branches are silent, the moist air is silent;<\/div>\n<div>188 stars sparkle (over) the land. Her arms stretched out, turned<\/div>\n<div>189 three times by themselves toward something, three times she sprinkled her head\u00a0with water taken up by hand from the river,<\/div>\n<div>190 and loosed her voice<\/div>\n<div>191 with three ululations. On the hard earth she sank down on her knee,<\/div>\n<div>192 &#8220;O night, most safe with secrets,&#8221; she says, &#8221; whoever looks toward the stars with the golden moon<\/div>\n<div>193 and by day toward the fiery sun,<\/div>\n<div>194 and you, tri-form Hecate, who is aware of our undertaking,<\/div>\n<div>195 and of incantation, of knowledge, of magics, she that helps, come,<\/div>\n<div>196 whatever magical songs, whatever you, O Earth provide with powerful herbs,<\/div>\n<div>197 and to the air and the winds and the mountains and the streams and the lakes<\/div>\n<div>198 and all the gods of the forests, the gods of all the night-works, attend.<\/div>\n<div>199 By whose help, when I wished, the streams\u00a0turned back in their marveling\u00a0banks<\/div>\n<div>200 Into their sources themselves, I calmed the shaken streams,<\/div>\n<div>201 Standing I aroused\u00a0the seas to song, I banish the clouds and<\/div>\n<div>202 I call them back, I drive away the winds, and I invoke them,<\/div>\n<div>203 I destroy monsters with words and by invocation I force open their throats,<\/div>\n<div>204 After I shattered the boulders themselves and the hard-wood trees, on the living earth<\/div>\n<div>205 I move the forests, and command the mountains to quake<\/div>\n<div>206 and to rumble alone, and spirits to go forth from the grave.<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imbolc \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Black Mountain Moon &nbsp; I&#8217;ll stop saying this, but I am amazed at the facility I&#8217;m now enjoying with Latin. Of course, I&#8217;ve been working at it off and on for over 5 years, so there&#8217;s that. But &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=30243\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Medea and Aeson (an excerpt)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2109,4003],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin","category-translating-metamorphoses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30243"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38020,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions\/38020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}