A Colossal Error

Paul Berman, "Virgil and the Homeless Nations," Tablet Magazine (September 20, 2019):

In high school, I made the colossal error not to take Latin, in the belief that Latin was never going to be bear on anything that interested me....Deeply I regret my error in high school. Some years ago, I purchased Wheelock's Latin, in the hope of undoing the error. Now and then I slog through a page. Only, my patience for this sort of thing drained away before I had begun, and I fitted myself out, instead, with the little red volumes of the Loeb Classical Library, in the belief that it might be good to read Virgil in English on the right-hand pages, and run my eye over the Latin on the left-hand pages, binocularly. The Loeb translations are by H.R. Fairclough, and they are in a stuffy prose that seems to come from some corner of England that, as of a century ago, had not yet completed the transition from Roman times to Anglo-Saxon times.

My edition was updated in 1999 by G.P. Goold, who explains that he removed the antique thees and thous, in the hope of achieving a modern tone. But he shouldn't have bothered. The stuffiness remains, and it is marvelous. To read Virgil in the Loeb edition is like tramping through a blackberry patch, getting stuck on prickly leaves and roots and discovering succulent purple outbursts of God knows what—the Olympic winds, the supernatural tides, eagles tearing at snakes, lions panting for blood, seas of rage and grief, godly intimations of destiny. I turn the page and say, oh, there's a good one!—and pluck it for consumption.

Hat tip: Jim K. (old and dear friend).