sauvage noble

One of my Latin 1 students showed me Harry Mount’s OpEd in the New York Times before class today, and I was gratified by the attention to the subject in the popular press, as well as my student’s enthusiasm for it. But happening upon a Mawrticampian post, I just found out about the Latin version.

I must say of (I assume) Mr. Mount’s Latin: vae mē! Behold, the first paragraph:

Primum, duces nostros linguam Latinam non iam studere triste non videtur. Sed reipublicae artem—quae principes iuvenes educationem praeparationem pro curriculo considerare excitat—cum rhetorica exigua, moribus infirmis, grammatica inepta et rationis historicae metu congruissse fors non est; aeterna de quibus Romani nos multum docere possunt. Romani ipsi dicunt, Roma urbs aeterna; Latina lingua aeterna.

To render:

AT first glance, it doesn’t seem tragic that our leaders don’t study Latin anymore. But it is no coincidence that the professionalization of politics—which encourages budding politicians to think of education as mere career preparation—has occurred during an age of weak rhetoric, shifting moral values, clumsy grammar and a terror of historical references and eternal values that the Romans could teach us a thing or two about. As they themselves might have said, “Roma urbs aeterna; Latina lingua aeterna.”

The Latin strikes as just un-Ciceronian. I would have done it this way, if charged the task in Prose Comp class:

Prīmā faciē, nihil paenitet prīncipēs nostrōs linguam Latīnam iam nōn didicisse. Nūllus autem est cāsus rem cīvilem plūs plūsque paucīs negōtium factam esse—quod hominēs cīvilīs mediō honōrum cursū urgeat ut sē sōlum ad ipsum cursum ēducārī putent—aetāte inertis rhētoricae, mōrum mūtantium, grammaticae rudis, ac rērum terrōris historiā referendārum ac immūtābilium tollendārum dē quibus nōs Rōmānī haud nihil possint docēre. Ut ipsī ita dīcerent, “nostra sī aeterna est urbs, lingua est aeterna.”

In Old High Translationese:

At first sight, it grieves not at all that our leaders have now not learned the Latin language. However, it is no accident that politics has become more and more an occupation for few—which urges politicians in mid-cursus honorum to think that they are educated solely for the cursus itself—in an age of unskilled rhetoric, changing customs, rough grammar, and fear of things to be referred from history and immutables to be extolled, which the Romans could teach us hardly nothing about. As they themselves might say, “If our city is eternal, our language is eternal.”

Struggling to term modern concepts in ancient words, working in as many stylistic devices as possible and appropriate.

Labels: composition, Latin, studying, teaching, topical