auricula meretricula english mary whitlock translation

#AURICULA MERETRICULA ENGLISH MARY WHITLOCK TRANSLATION HOW TO#

Ballio, before departing, hurls this threat at him: Nam si te cum ea invenero, te quoque occidam. In the new version, Marcus remains on stage as a segue to a new scene. In the original version, Ballio leaves the threat unfinished, and Marcus runs off, allowing for a threatening gesture and nice bit of stage business.

In the third scene Ballio is roundly insulted by Marcus (a nice adaptation of the flagitatio scene in Plautus's Pseudolus), then threatens Marcus to drive him away. Only one moment, really one word, in the new text rings false to me. In general, the Latin remains a delight: the authors have a genuinely Plautine ear for bombastic alliteration and word chimes, mixed with familiar tags ( carpe diem, nam tempus fugit) and parodies or adaptations of nobler verses. Jettisoning discussion of Auricula's claim to be a virgo intacta, however, is a wise move the concept is as alien to some of our students as the legalistic phrase, and Marcus won no points with them for his concern over it, at least in my classroom experience.

The original passage, based on Ovid's Amores 1.5.19-22 reads: Quos umeros, quos lacertos videbis tangesque! Forma papillarum quam apta premi! Quam planus sub pectore venter! Quam juvenale femur! The new version reads Quem colorem videbis! Quod corpus tanges! Pectus quam aptum premi! and one suspects the reason is not to spare the student the effort of mastering extra vocabulary. Less justified may be the toning down of the naughty bits in Ballio's description of Auricula's physical charms.

#AURICULA MERETRICULA ENGLISH MARY WHITLOCK TRANSLATION HOW TO#

Packman, 'Call It Rape', Helios 20, 42-55), even the attempt is out of keeping with the tone of a comedy now, and the new solution of how to keep Pugnax and Auricula apart is a distinct improvement: in a scene inspired by Plautus's Miles Gloriosus the soldier is lured away by Dolia, pretending to be a rich and thoroughly infatuated widow. While successful rapes are a feature of many Roman comedies (a motif often ignored or played down in translations see Zola M. The original edition featured an attempted offstage rape, foiled by the soldier's impotence rather than the intervention of any human agency. Time and changing sensibilities have brought other changes as well. The change results not only in a plot much more like the Roman archetypes with their helpless young masters and clever slaves but in a much livelier staging (with eavesdropping scenes). The new edition gives him a clever slave named Pseudolus, who is greatly aided by his slave girlfriend Dolia. In the first edition Marcus had only fortune and the parasite Edax on his side. There are significant plot innovations in this second edition, mostly notably with the addition of two new characters. Her owner, the pimp Ballio, tries to sell her first to the soldier Pugnax, then to a randy old man named Malacus, but true love triumphs in the end. Auricula, the little courtesan of the title, is in love with a penniless poet named Marcus. The plot is the standard romance and resistance vehicle. Some of the early facing vocabulary lists look a little heavier because of this attempt to suit other texts (and in what beginning text will the student not have learned meus, -a, -um by the time one reads the first scene?), but students should still be able to read these scenes with the facility and speed which makes the jokes funny.

The new edition in fact trims a little of the vocabulary with just this goal in mind. While conceived for use after the student has mastered a given number of chapters in Wheelock (the first scene after chapter 8, the last after chapter 24), the scenes should work well with any beginning text. The ten scenes, using a progressively richer vocabulary and syntax, are accompanied by a facing vocabulary.

The format is suitable for use either as a sight- reading exercise or as a prepared text. To leaven its steady diet of paradigms and ennobling maxims, the authors turned to Roman comedy and elegy for inspiration and created this playlet in the style of Roman comedy. Wheelock's book, originally designed as a review or self-teaching text, is very efficient-and resolutely dull, as generations of glassy-eyed freshmen will attest. Its origins lie in the two authors' struggle to find something to enliven their teaching of Wheelock's Latin Grammar (the current title of this standard text) at Berkeley in the early 1980's. By Mary Whitlock Blundell and Ann Cumming revised editionĪuricula Meretricula is a brief but snappy comedy (it plays easily in under a half hour) written in Latin and designed to accompany the teaching of a first semester Latin course.

Auricula meretricula english mary whitlock translation