Tuesday, September 14, 2021

 

Streets Filled with Greeks

Plautus, Curculio 288-295 (tr. Paul Nixon):
Yes, and as for those cloaked Greeks that stroll about with muffled heads
and stalk along with their clothes bulged out by books and provision baskets,
renegades that stand about together, palaver together,
block your road, set themselves in your way, stalk along with their sage observations,
fellows you can always see guzzling in a tavern
when they’ve stolen something — muffling their wretched heads and taking hot drinks,
then stalking along grave of face and half seas over! — well, if I bump up against them,
I'll knock some porridge-fed wind out of every one of their bodies.

tum isti Graeci palliati, capite operto qui ambulant,
qui incedunt suffarcinati cum libris, cum sportulis,
constant, conferunt sermones inter sese drapetae,        290
obstant, obsistunt, incedunt cum suis sententiis,
quos semper videas bibentes esse in thermipolio,
ubi quid subripuere: operto capitulo calidum bibunt,
tristes atque ebrioli incedunt: eos ego si offendero,
ex unoquoque eorum exciam crepitum polentarium.        295
Cf. Wolfgang de Melo's translation of lines 294-295:
                                                                     If I meet them,
I'll drive the barley-fed farts out of every single one of them.
C. Barwick, ed., Charisii Artis Grammatici Libri V (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1964), p. 312 (2.16):
Trit Naevius in Corollaria (v. 48 R.3). significat autem, ut ait Plautus in quadam (Curcul. 295), 'excutiam crepitum polentarium', id est peditum [in Curculione].
See Eric Csapo, "Plautine Elements in the Running-Slave Entrance Monologues?" Classical Quarterly 39.1 (1989) 148-163 (at 150-154).



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