Laudator Temporis Acti

Colin Macleod (1943-1981), Horace, The Epistles. Translated into English Verse with Brief Comment (Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1986), p. 38 (1.14.18-21):

We differ in that different things excite
us both. What you find bleak, unfriendly hearths
are to me and my sort beauty-spots; we loathe
what you think lovely.

Horace's Latin, from D.L. Shackleton Bailey's Teubner edition (4th ed., 2001), p. 275:

non eadem miramur; eo disconvenit inter
meque et te. nam quae deserta et inhospita tesqua
credis, amoena vocat mecum qui sentit et odit         20
quae tu pulchra putas.

Macleod's hearths must be a misprint for heaths. See Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary:

tesca (tesqua), ōrum (the sing. v. in foll.), n.,

I. rough or wild regions, wastes, deserts: tesqua sive tescua κατάκρημνοι καὶ ῥάχεις καὶ ἔρημοι τόποι, Gloss. Philox.: deserta et tesca loca, Att. ap. Varr. L. L. 7, § 11 Müll.; v. Varr. in loc.: loca aspera, saxea tesca tuor, Cic. poët. ap. Fest. pp. 356 and 357 Müll.; so, deserta et inhospita tesca, Hor. Ep. 1, 14, 19: nemorosa, Luc. 6, 41: remota, App. Flor. p. 358, 22; cf. id. ib. p. 348, 22. Such places were sacred to the gods: loca quaedam agrestia, quae alicujus dei sunt, dicuntur tesca, Varr. l.l.—Sing.: templum tescumque finito in sinistrum, an old religious formula, Varr. l.l.; cf. Fest. l.l.

Roland Mayer on line 19:

inhospita: a poetic synonym for inhospitalis, which does not fit hexameters; tesqua 'heath', a very rare word of uncertain origin; there is no evidence for its currency among country-folk.

Thanks to Gonzalo Jerez Sánchez for pointing out a misprint of my own (now fixed).

Labels: typographical and other errors