Roman Literature: Translation, Metaphor & Empire
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Roman Literature: Translation, Metaphor & Empire Shadi Bartsch Abstract: The Romans understood that translation entails transformation. The Roman term “translatio” Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/30/1830898/daed_a_00373.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 stood not only literally for a carrying-across (as by boat) of material from one country to another, but also (metaphorically) for both linguistic translation and metaphorical transformation. These shared usages provide a lens on Roman anxieties about their relationship to Greece, from which they both transferred and translated a literature to call their own. Despite the problematic association of the Greeks with plea- sure, rhetoric, and poetic language, the Roman elite argued for the possibility of translation and trans- formation of Greek texts into a distinctly Roman and authoritative mode of expression. Cicero’s hope was that eventually translated Latin texts would replace the Greek originals altogether. In the end, however, the Romans seem to have felt that effeminacy had the last laugh. Recent work on Roman literature has turned to the act of translation as a fundamental and defining feature of the Roman literary corpus. The focus on translation is not new, per se; both the Romans and the scholars who have written about them acknowl- edge that Roman literature originated in the appro- priation and translation of Greek texts. Roman liter- ature was thus already “secondary,” “belated,” “im- itative,” even as the Romans mused on the paradox SHADI BARTSCH is the Helen A. of taking to their collective bosom the literature of a Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and the Pro- conquered empire. What is novel about the current gram in Gender Studies at the Uni - approach is the understanding that Roman discourse versity of Chicago. She is the au- on the origins of their literature entailed a compli- thor of (inter alia) Persius: A Study cated ideological battle fraught with implications for in Food, Philosophy, and the Figural their social, cultural, and political thought. Recent (2015) and The Mirror of the Self: Sex- scholarship has focused, inter alia, on literary produc- uality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in tion as a tool for elite self-definition; on the creative the Early Roman Empire (2006). She is also the editor of The Cambridge nature of what the Romans loosely called “transla- Companion to Seneca (with Alessan- tion”; on Roman epigraphy and how Greek source- 1 dro Schiesaro, 2015) and Seneca and texts are treated in Roman inscriptions. What is al- the Self (with David Wray, 2009). ready clear is that the notions of “imitation,” “transla- © 2016 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00373 30 tion,” and “transmittal” that were so ba sic metaphor and translatio as translation Shadi to the old denigration of Roman literature sheds light on the connections between Bartsch actually involved creative processes that metaphor, translation, and Roman anxi- laid down a challenge to their source-texts, eties about the influence of a subject em- provided grounds for competitive claims pire: the Greeks.6 within Roman culture, and ultimately fed The Romans lacked an indigenous liter- into a broad nexus of concerns about for- ary and philosophical tradition, and self- eign influence, native character, and the consciously inherited the Greek tradition dan gers of empire. to fill the void. Their direct contact with In this essay, I offer a specific case study Greek learning through the conquest and of one feature of Roman translation that annexation of the Greek mainland in the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/30/1830898/daed_a_00373.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 has remained unexplored in the flourish- second century bce provided the condi- ing of translation studies. This is the curi- tions in which translatio, the noun mean- ous overlap of the Roman terminology for ing “carrying across,” came to hold anoth- translation with the Roman terminology er extended meaning: that of translating. for metaphor.2 While we moderns under- From the conquered territories, the Ro- stand that to translate is always to trans- mans acquired not only booty, but also form, our lexicon does not trace the two Greek texts; the latter were “carried processes back to identical literal mean- across” from abroad and also “translated” ings with different figural extensions. In from Greek into Latin, hence solving the Latin, however, to translate is to “turn” poverty of native Roman literature, which one text into another or to “transfer” a the Romans themselves figured as a lack text from one language to another (ver- (inopia) in their culture.7 Translation and tere, transferre; the past participle transla- the acquisition of Greek volumes were tum). At the same time, to “turn” a phrase thus mutually linked; Terence, for exam- or “transfer” a term also means to create ple, describes himself as “transferring” ma a metaphor.3 In other words, both trans- terials from Menander’s plays, and we lation and metaphor developed from the know that he physically traveled to Greece basic language of turning, changing, or to fetch them.8 All this is unsurprising, but transferring. Of course, the Romans un- the fact that ancient discussions of met- der stood that signifiers from one language aphor likewise relied on the vocabulary cannot be mapped onto exactly the same of lack, substitution, and transferal from meaning in another, and that translation a foreign venue provides a striking parallel thus involved a transformation of sorts.4 that demands more explanation.9 The an- But unlike contemporary theorists who cients generally took a substitution view posit that a translation is itself a meta- of metaphor (the replacement of one phorical rendition of an original,5 the lit- word by another),10 defining the trope as erary and rhetorical writers of the ancient an “ornament” that provides immediacy, world never compared translation and clarity, and a foreign quality.11 Cicero in- met aphor–never even put them side by structs speakers to use metaphor “via si- side–as if there was a deep gulf between militude” when a proper word is lacking the ways they could be understood. This (inopia, again) or when they can introduce was the case even though (as I demon- sweetness (suavitas), the latter being a fun- strate below) the very metaphors they used damental feature of the trope and one rea- to talk about metaphor and translation son why its effect on the reader is pleasur- were largely the same. In the end, this able.12 As we know, the literal meaning of shared Roman vocabulary of translatio as the verb transferre is “to carry across,” and 145 (2) Spring 2016 31 Roman in Greek and Latin, metaphor is viewed which Vergil took his model spoke more Literature: as dependent on the foreign qua li ty of the boldly of “deeds of love,” and a bed (Ver- Translation, Metaphor “new” term. But the Roman treatises em- gil Aeneid 8.404–406). Vergil, then, is be- & Empire phasize geographical and spatial charac- ing praised for describing a sex-act in very teristics in their definitions, as if meta- oblique (read: “pure and hon orable”) lan- phors were foreign texts. Where Aristotle guage. But does Gellius mean that Vergil’s speaks in terms of a transfer between ge- polite “embrace” is a met aphor for sex, or nus and species (Aristotle Poetics 1457b), a translation of Homer’s passage? All we for Cicero, metaphor’s vehicle is seen can discern is that it is a translatio, a trans- as specifically fetched or imported from feral, from the too-frank original.16 This a distant place to carry out a local act of and similar passages from Gellius are al- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/30/1830898/daed_a_00373.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 signification.13 Thus, he notes, “Everyone ready revelatory in their combination of takes more delight in carried-over [trans- a number of considerations: the notion of latis] and foreign [alienis] words than in transformation, the use of metaphor to the proper ones that belong to them” (Ci- suggest modesty, and the competition be- cero De Oratore 3.39.159), and offers as tween Roman and Greek versions (Vergil one explanation that “it’s a mark of tal- improving on Homer, or not). As Vergil’s ent to skip over what is at your feet and to mastery in translation is praised, so is his seize foreign words sought at a great dis- correct use of metaphor.17 tance” (3.40.169).14 With the same idea in In fact, modesty played a role in the mind, he cautions elsewhere that one’s evaluation of both successful translations source shouldn’t be too far away (46.163)– and successful metaphors. Cicero, we saw and that the metaphorical vehicle should above, calls for metaphor to be modest, to seem to have immigrated to, but not in- seem invited into the text rather than to vaded, its new home (Cicero Brutus 274).15 have forced its way in. The author of the The first-century philosopher and rheto- Rhetorica ad Herennium also wants met- rician Seneca sees the reader as doing the aphor to be modest, lest it seem to have travel ing instead: metaphor, on which we “rashly and libidinously” (!) run across to lean like a pair of crutches, “brings us to a dissimilar term (Rhetorica ad Herennium the lit eral spot” where we can see what we 4.34).18 Such “libidinous” (uncontrolled or need to (Seneca Epistles 59.6). In either case, far-fetched) metaphors were tied to literally there is some ground that has to be crossed.