Wednesday, June 16, 2021
The First Thing to Go?
Seneca, Oedipus 818-819 (tr. John G. Fitch):
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Old men's first weakness is their memory, tired and ebbing away in slow decay.But cf. the translation of Frank Justus Miller, which takes prima in a different sense:
prima languescit senum
memoria, longo lassa sublabens situ.
An old man's early memory grows faint, failing through weakness and long disuse.Emily Wilson's translation sidesteps the problem:
Old folks' mindsI don't have access to the commentaries of Karlheinz Töchterle (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994) and A.J. Boyle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
get tired and the memory grows dull.
