“Love among the Roses”

An anonymous Anacreontic verse (Anacreonta, Fragment, 35):

Ἔρως ποτ’ ἐν ῥόδοισι
κοιμωμένην μέλιτταν
οὐκ εἶδεν, ἀλλ’ ἐτρώθη.
τὸν δάκτυλον παταχθείς
τᾶς χειρὸς ὠλόλυξε,
δραμὼν δὲ καὶ πετασθείς
πρὸς τὴν καλὴν Κυθήρην·
“ὄλωλα, μῆτερ,” εἶπεν,
“ὄλωλα κἀποθνήσκω· 
ὄφις μ’ ἔτυψε μικρός
πτερωτός, ὃν καλοῦσιν
μέλιτταν οἱ γεωργοί.”
ἃ δ’ εἶπεν· “εἰ τὸ κέντρον
πονεῖς τὸ τᾶς μελίττας,
πόσον δοκεῖς πονοῦσιν,
Ἔρως, ὅσους σὺ βάλλεις;”

My translation:

Once love among the roses
did not discern a bee;
and on a little finger
it stung him, painfully.
He wept and bellowed loudly,
and ran, with outspread wings,
to lovely Aphrodite.
He cried, “I’m done for, Mother;
I’m done for, woe is me!
A tiny wingèd serpent
did smite me mortally—
the farmers call it ‘bee’.”
She said,  “Reflect, my darling,
how much a bee sting smarts:
how more, then, must they suffer
whom thou hitst with thy darts?”

Thomas Moore’s translation:

Cupid once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless urchin, not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee!
The bee awaked—with anger wild.
The bee awaked, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
“Oh mother!—I am wounded through—
I die with pain—what shall I do?
Stung by some little angry thing,
Some serpent on a tiny wing—
A bee it was—for once, I know,
I heard a peasant call it so.”
Thus he spoke, and she the while
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said: “My infant, if so much
Thou feel the little wild-bee’s touch,
How must the heart, ah, Cupid, be,
The hapless heart, that’s stung by thee?”

Robert Herrick’s translation:

Cupid as he lay among
Roses, by a Bee was stung.
Whereupon in anger flying
To his Mother, said thus crying;
Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying.
And why, my pretty Lad, said she?
Then blubbering, replyed he,
A winged Snake has bitten me,
Which Country people call a Bee.
At which she smil’d; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears:
Alas! said she, my Wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is:
Come, tell me then, how great’s the smart
Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart! 

Latin and Lexicographical Prudery

Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est.   

—Catullus, Carm., XVI, 4-6.*

OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE WARNING:  very coarse terms in Latin and English. 

A problem with lexicographical prudishness in Latin dictionaries can be exemplified by translating an elegiac epigram of Martial:

Cum futuis, Polycharme, soles in fine cacare.

   Cum pedicaris, quid, Polycharme, facis?  (VIII, lxix)

In only two lines, three verbs occur which (rare in canonical literature) are absent from many small Latin dictionaries, so a student without access to a larger dictionary might be at a loss (though able to make, no doubt, some fair guesses):

When thou art futuere-ing, Polycharmus, thou art accustomed to cacare in the end.

When thou art pedicare-d, what, Polycharmus, dost thou do?

Furthermore, in fine, found in Juvenal and Martial, has a particular sexual meaning which, too often, dictionaries fail to explain; for example, Juvenal describes the demands of a schoolmaster in his seventh satire as he cares for his boys:

observare manus oculosque in fine trementis. (VII, 241)

Peter Green, in his translation for Penguin (rev., 1974), has, “To keep check over all those darting eyes—and fingers”, but a more explicit translation is, “to observe the hands and trembling eyes in climax.”  Another wittily Shakespearean translation of manus oculosque in fine trementis would be “hands and eyes in fine frenzy rolling”—but I digress.

So, since in fine means “in [sexual] finish”, and futuere, cacare and pedicare mean, respectively, “fuck”, “shit” and “bugger”, we can translate Martial’s epigram (whilst modernising the name with an apposite, topical reference to a pornerastic member of federal Parliament):

Whenever you fuck, Thommo, you shit as you come.

But what do you do, Thommo, when fucked up the bum?

*  For, though an upright poet should be pure,
    there’s no such need for his literature.

Quod Verum Meum Est

A few weeks go I sent the following message to Riverside High school, by e-mail:

In my day (1974-77), Riverside High School’s motto, quod verum meum est—“What [is] true is mine”—, was officially translated as, “That which is true is mine”.  The motto was adapted from the younger Seneca’s defence of literary appropriation, quod verum est meum est (Epistulae I. xii, 11)—“what is true is mine”.
Now, however, I see that you translate the motto loosely as, “All that is true is mine”.  Where is the Latin word for “all” in the motto?  L. Annaeus Seneca was a fairly bright bloke, who was a recognised master of Latin; had he wanted to say “all” rather than “what” he would surely have used a suitable Latin word for “all”.
Latin had several words meaning all: cunctus, omnis, and totus; but none is in the motto.
Could it be that in recent times someone decided that “That which is true is mine” sounded clunky, or did some bright spark decide that if what is a true thing be mine then, logically, all that is true must be mine?
It’s quite a step from claiming that what is a true statement may be appropriated by me to asserting that all true things belong to me.  If any of the buildings of Riverside High be true, by the way, I hereby claim ownership; feel free to send me a few reams of cartridge paper, the odd laser-printer, a selection of brass instruments, and a cash-box or two: they’re mine.
I advocate the more accurate translation, “What is true is mine.”

I have so far received no response.