Latin Literary Translation in the Late Roman Republic
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository Latin Literary Translation in the Late Roman Republic Christopher Brian Polt A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Classics. Chapel Hill 2007 Approved by: Advisor: Professor James J. O’Hara Reader: Professor Sharon L. James Reader: Professor William H. Race ©2007 Christopher Brian Polt ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Christopher Brian Polt: Latin Literary Translation in the Late Roman Republic (Under the direction of James J. O’Hara) Translation has been a part of Latin literature since its beginning with the Odusia of Livius Andronicus. Throughout the late Roman Republic literary translators – those translators who aim at creating innovative pieces of literature rather than following their source texts verbatim – develop their art and a variety of techniques for appropriating Greek poetry. This study shows that each Latin literary translator draws on their predecessors and finds unique solutions to their individual problems. It demonstrates that each translator also adapts their source texts in different ways according to their periods, genres, styles, and purposes. It looks at the ancient terminology, theory, and practice of translation and shows that, while there is no consistent vocabulary or system of translation in Rome, literary translation is nevertheless highly-developed and subtle throughout the Republic. It examines the translations of the Preneoteric translators Quintus Lutatius Catulus and Gnaeus Matius, Cicero and Varro Atacinus, and Catullus. iii To Rachel and Derek Ὥν ἡ σοφία παρασκευάζεται εἰς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου βίου μακαριότητα, πολὺ μέγιστόν ἐστιν ἡ τῆς φιλίας κτῆσις -Epicurus iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank James O’Hara, without whose sage advice, gentle encouragement, and steady guidance I could not have completed this thesis. I am most grateful to the other members of my committee, Sharon James and William Race, for their patience in reading and help in refining my work. I am also grateful to Rosanna Warren for first showing me how rich translation can be. Finally, I would like to thank all the graduate students in Classics at UNC, in particular: John Henkel and Erika Zimmermann-Damer, for helping me shape some ideas in their infancy; Derek Smith, for keeping my spirits high and always being willing to listen; and Rachel Boehme, for inexhaustible and kind support in times of need. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON ROMAN TRANSLATION, ANCIENT TRANSLATION THEORY, AND THE ORIGINS OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE 3RD AND 2ND CENTURIES BC................................................1 CHAPTER I: THE PRENEOTERIC TRANSLATORS: QUINTUS LUTATIUS CATULUS AND GNAEUS MATIUS.......................................27 QUINTUS LUTATIUS CATULUS FR.1 AND CALLIMACHUS EPIGR.41........................................................................................28 GNAEUS MATIUS’S ILIAS AND HOMER’S ILIAD................................................64 CHAPTER II: MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO AND PUBLIUS TERENTIUS VARRO ATACINUS................................................................74 VARRO ATACINUS’S ARGONAUTAE AND APOLLONIUS RHODIUS’S ARGONAUTIKA..........................................................75 VARRO ATACINUS’S EPHEMERIS AND ARATUS’S PHAENOMENA.....................................................................................102 CHAPTER III: CATULLUS AND THE INCORPORATION OF TRANSLATION WITHIN A POETIC CORPUS....................................................109 CATULLUS C.51 AND SAPPHO FR.31..................................................................110 CATULLUS C.66 AND CALLIMACHUS AETIA FR.110......................................139 APPENDIX A: OVID’S NAVITA, RECTOR, AND AURIGA........................................171 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................173 vi INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON ROMAN TRANSLATION, ANCIENT TRANSLATION THEORY, AND THE ORIGINS OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE 3RD AND 2ND CENTURIES BC publica materies privati iuris erit, si non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem, nec verbo verbum curabis reddere fidus interpres, nec desilies imitator in artum, unde pedem proferre pudor vetet aut operis lex Horace Ars Poetica 131-1351 Yet common matter thou thine own may’st make, If thou the vile broad trodden ring forsake. For, being a poet, thou may’st feign, create, Not care, as thou wouldst faithfully translate, To render word for word: nor with thy sleight Of imitation, leap into a streight, From whence thy modesty, or poem’s law Forbids thee forth again thy foot to draw. trans. Ben Jonson2 For if you don’t just lazily saunter about On easy paths of the public domain you’ll earn Your rightful ownership of part of it, So long as you’re not a pedissequous slave Following foot for foot one foot at a time Into the trap of timorous hyper-correctness. trans. David Ferry3 I open this study with these three epigraphs for two reasons, one minor and one major. First, Horace’s statement about translation in Ars Poetica vv. 131-135 is one of 1 For a fairly literal modern translation of this passage, see below, n.65. All translations in this study are my own, unless otherwise noted. 2 Gifford (1875, 89). 3 Ferry (2001, 161). our only two relatively substantial surviving sources for understanding how the Romans viewed the art of literary translation, and as such is vital to keep in mind from the outset of our discussion. Second, and more importantly, the translations of this passage of Horace by Ben Jonson and David Ferry demonstrate the broad range of possibilities that literary translation necessarily entails. It is not my intention here to make any judgment about the value of either of these English renderings: I leave it to the reader to decide which is the better, which the lesser, and why this is so. I intend only to offer a glimpse at what two different authors, writing in two different periods,4 with two different purposes can and choose to do when bringing the work of a foreign tongue into their own native speech. Regardless of what we believe their aims were, or should have been, we can recognize most easily in our own language the very fact that translation is not so much a mechanical process as an art in which an infinite number of choices resides. One would be hard pressed to find two more disparate versions of the same verses. Jonson’s translation is quite literal, stiff and contrary to Horace’s own precepts.5 Ferry’s, conversely, is loose in the extreme and the reader is sometimes at pains to see Horace’s words or sense through Ferry’s own. And yet, we can see that, for good or ill, both translators have made Horace their own. Latin literary translation is no different, at least in this fundamental respect. Romans who translated Greek texts, poetry and prose, faced many of the same choices that Jonson and Ferry did, and in each case it is easy to see the variability that comes 4 Jonson’s translation was published posthumously in 1640. For a brief history of this publication, see Gifford (1875, 76). 5 Jonson’s fidelity in translating has long been an object of criticism. Gifford (1875, 77) quotes Henry Ames: “Ben Jonson, (with submission to his memory,) by transgressing a most useful precept, has…trod so close upon the heels of Horace, that he has not only crampt, but made him halt, in (almost) every line.” 2 along with the different approaches to translation that these authors take. In this study I attempt to shed some light on the complexity of these approaches, as well as on how Roman literary translators draw on their genres, their predecessors, their periods, and their own personal poetics in order to make the texts of Greek authors their own, innovative poetry. But first, we must lay some necessary groundwork, beginning with a brief history of the work done thus far on translation in Rome. In 1913, Classical scholarship on translation received a boon in the groundbreaking work of Friedrich Leo.6 Leo was the first to analyze descriptively, rather than prescriptively, Livius Andronicus’s Odusia, a translation of Homer’s Odyssey into Saturnian verse. He saw in Livius’s poem a work of unique innovation and showed that Livius aims not at a translation faithful to the original but rather one fully appropriated to a new context and culture.7 Leo’s analysis was decades ahead of its time and, although it was developed more fully later on by Fraenkel and Mariotti,8 Leo’s initial work on Livius’s role as a translator established much of the framework for studies on Classical translation. Livius, however, was exceptionally fortunate in his early reception as a literary translator and it was not until Hans Richter finished his dissertation in 1938 that there was a comprehensive, albeit incomplete, study of Roman literary translation. Richter rd compiled an extensive list of Roman translations, both extant and lost, from the 3 6 Leo (1913). 7 Possanza (2004): “In analyzing the fragments of Livius’s translations, Leo employed a descriptive approach, as now advocated by Translation Studies, in order to discover Livius’s methods as a translator. And when he finished his analysis of this translator whose work was to serve as the paradigm for the Latin translation of Greek