Monday, October 13, 2014
Catullus 5.4-6, Misquoted
John Griffiths, The Good Spy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1990), p. 189 (click to enlarge):
Transcribed:
Hat tip: A friend.
Newer› ‹Older
Transcribed:
PART IVThe translation is accurate, but the Latin text is not. There is no such Latin word as cul, which in French means backside, bum, derived from Latin culus, meaning anus. The word culus does make its first appearance in Latin literature elsewhere in Catullus (23.19; 33.4; 97.2, 4, 12; 98.4). See J.N. Adams, "Culus, Clunes, and Their Synonyms in Latin," Glotta 59 (1981) 231-264. The culus is a place where suns don't rise and set, indeed don't shine at all, as the expression goes. Read cum for cul.
"Soles occidere et redire possunt.
Nobis cul semel occidit brevis lux
Nox est perpetua una dormienda."
Catullus
("Suns may set and rise again.
For us, once our brief light is spent,
there is one perpetual night to be slept through.")
Hat tip: A friend.
Labels: typographical and other errors
