Thursday, March 19, 2015
Comic Catalogues of Love's Ills
Plautus, Mercator 18-19, 24-31 (tr. Wolfgang de Melo):
Newer› ‹Older
Well, normally all these vices go hand in hand with love: worry, distress, and excessive refinement....But the following things that I didn't mention also go hand in hand with love: sleeplessness, toil, uncertainty, fright, and flight. There's silliness, stupidity to boot and recklessness, mindless thoughtlessness, lack of moderation, petulance and lust, malevolence; laziness, greed, idleness, injustice, lack, disgrace and waste, over-talkativeness, under-talkativeness.Terence, Eunuchus 59-61 (tr. John Sargeaunt):
nam amorem haec cuncta vitia sectari solent,
cura, aegritudo, nimiaque elegantia.
....
sed amori accedunt etiam haec quae dixi minus:
insomnia, aerumna, error, [et] terror, et fuga: 25
ineptia, stultitiaque adeo et temeritas[t],
incogitantia excors, immodestia,
petulantia et cupiditas, malevolentia;
inertia, aviditas, desidia, iniuria,
inopia, contumelia et dispendium, 30
multiloquium, parumloquium.
Love has in it all these evils: wrongs, jealousies, quarrels, reconcilements, war, then peace again.See Keith Preston, Studies in the Diction of the Sermo Amatorius in Roman Comedy (Menasha: George Banta Publishing Company, 1916 = diss. University of Chicago, 1914), pp. 4-14.
in amore haec omnia insunt vitia: iniuriae,
suspiciones, inimicitiae, indutiae, 60
bellum, pax rursum.