Latin Reading Club (18) - Love Beyond the Grave

[Cato]

This famous elegy of Propertius (IV.9) is a consolation to the ex-consul L. Aemillius Paullus on the untimely death of his wife Cornelia; it is spoken by the deceased Cornelia herself. Only the opening lines are given below, but they are a powerful meditation on the finality of death.

Desine, Paulle, meum lacrimis urgere sepulcrum:
...panditur ad nullas janua nigra preces;
cum semel infernas intrarunt funera leges,
...non exorato stant adamante viae.
Te licet orantem fuscae deus audiat aulae:
...nempe tuas lacrimas litora surda bibent.
Vota movent superos: ubi portitor aera recepit,
...obserat herbosos lurida porta rogos.
Sic maestae cecinere tubae, cum subdita nostrum
...detraheret lecto fax inimica caput.
Quid mihi conjugium Paulli, quid currus avorum
...profuit aut famae pignora tanta meae?
Non minus immites habuit Cornelia Parcas:
...et sum, quod digitis quinque legatur, onus.

Paulle - Vocative; Cornelia is addressing her husband from the grave.
pando, -ere - to spread, extend, open up .
semel - "once (and for all)"
exoro, -are - to win over, prevail.
licet - "suppose that"; this supposition explains the subjunctive audiat.
fuscus, -a, -um - dark, dim.
deus - specifically Pluto, god of the underworld, in contrast to superbos two lines later.
nempe - "of course".
surdus, -a, -um - deaf.
aera - from aes, aeris (n.) - "bronze", referring to the bronze coin placed under the tongue of a corpse in Greek funeral custom; this was used by the deceased to pay the toll across the river Styx.
obsero, -ere - to sow thoroughly (with plants), cover over.
herbosos...rogos - "grassy pyres" (rogus, -i - "funeral pyre"). Why is it described this way?
cecinere = cecinerunt, past tense of cano.
cum...caput - Try this order: Cum inimica fax subdita detraheret caput nostrum lecto. Subdita refers to the position of the fax; caput is metonymy (for corpus); lecto - "bier" is abl. of separation.
currus, -i - "chariot", particularly a triumphal chariot; this is another instance of metonymy (for divitiae).
avus, -i - lit. "grandfather", but in the plural more general - "ancestors".
famae...meae - a second dative after profuit.
pignora - in the singular pignus, -oris (n.) means "pledge, security, guarantee". In the plural this frequently refers to children, who are our guarantee of immortality.
Non minus immites - "no less sour", referring to Cornelia's Parcas - "Fate". The point is that despite her luxurious life Cornelia had a fate the same as we all do.
quod digitis quinque legatur - quod refers to onus; a little thought about Cornelia's current state will make the meaning clear.

English translation

Habete Ludum

 

[Iynx]

Thank you again, Cato.

I am afraid that despite your gloss, and the translation provided, I'm still having trouble with:

...cum subdita nostrum detraheret lecto fax inimica caput.

The problem is that nostrum. It modifies caput? Why "our head" when she clearly means "my head"?

PS: It was worth reading this just to get to that last line.

 

[[eX]Achilles]

A for of "nos" is meant to be a form of "ego" frequently in ellegy. Ovid does many times throughout the "Amores".

 

[QMF]

Vergil does that occasionally as well.
That passage has almost excessive use of interlocked word order and word-picture...

 

[Cato]

I am afraid that despite your gloss, and the translation provided, I'm still having trouble with:

...cum subdita nostrum detraheret lecto fax inimica caput.

The problem is that nostrum. It modifies caput? Why "our head" when she clearly means "my head"?

This has already been answered (it's somewhat akin to the royal "we", though yes it's hard to imagine anyone ever saying "our head" literally). Still, my follow-up question is, with this device so often used by Roman poets, do you think it is strictly for the sake of meter, or does the use of the plural signify something else (not just in this passage but in general)? Somehow it seems more melancholy to use "nostrum" rather than "meum", but I'm interested in other opinions...

PS: It was worth reading this just to get to that last line.

It just tugs at your heart, doesn't it? I remember reading this specific elegy in a college seminar on the elegaic poets; a girl across the table from me gasped when we got to this line, and the class seemed to nod and even chuckle in agreement (the elegists seem to have that effect when you read them extensively; they're either really corny or really brilliant, and sometimes manage to combine both sentiments in one transcendent line).

BTW this elegy is close to 100 lines; it's in the Latin Library if you'd like to check the rest. Propertius is an excellent poet, but he dwells in the shadow of Catullus and Ovid, so he's not as well-known today as he was, say, 300 years ago.

 

[QMF]

I think the significance of it varies based on the context, but that in general it intensifies whatever emotion is being expressed. I'll try and flip through my Aeneid and find an example of this "royal we" for comparison.

 

[Cato]

One other line I enjoyed here:

obserat herbosos lurida porta rogos

This is literally "A lurid gate covers over the grassy pyre." As noted, the base word sero means "to sow, plant"; there is also another verb sero which means "to join, connect, entwine". By adding ob Propertius means that the pyre is completely covered with grasses; this thick overgrowth is what makes the porta impassable.

In describing the pyre as herbosos, Propertius is playing a little with the timeline. The funeral pyre must of course burn out and quite a bit of time must pass before anything can grow there, so strictly speaking this is a bit of a mixed metaphor. But time is of little consequence; whether it takes weeks, months, years, or centuries, graves all eventually get reclaimed by nature; nothing can stop us from passing away into nothing. A somber note, I know, but also touching in a way...