Hello, could anyone please help me with this? Page 70, I give the link as always just in case: http://ia600409.us.archive.org//load_djvu_applet.php?file=14/items/liberadhonorema01siragoog/liberadhonorema01siragoog.djvu
This, among other very pleasant things, is addressed to the guy who advised Tancredus's wife to send the empress to be kept in a quite unpleasant place.
Templum Luciferi, qui noctem Lucifer odit,
Qui, quanto voluit celsior esse, ruit.
Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Nam Cartago tuos dirruta misit avos;
Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?
First I have a problem with the qui's in the first two lines. Is their antecedant Lucifer? But it seems strange: "Temple of Lucifer, Lucifer who hates the night, who, as much as he wished to get higher, fell"?
Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Where you got your race from, no race requires from me??? Makes no sense.
Nam Cartago tuos dirruta misit avos;
For your ancestors came from the destroyed Carthage (lit. Carthage sent them).
Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
They came to Salern clad with poor rags,
Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?
And what else could one do than cry over their poverty? I guess it means something like this but literally it's strange: we have the subject pauperies and the infinitive flere can be nothing else than its predicate so literally... "what was their poverty except to cry?" It's strange. If it was really "what was to do except cry over their poverty", pauperies shouldn't be in nominative. Unless the infinitive is used instead of a gerund or so?
Ideas?
This, among other very pleasant things, is addressed to the guy who advised Tancredus's wife to send the empress to be kept in a quite unpleasant place.
Templum Luciferi, qui noctem Lucifer odit,
Qui, quanto voluit celsior esse, ruit.
Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Nam Cartago tuos dirruta misit avos;
Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?
First I have a problem with the qui's in the first two lines. Is their antecedant Lucifer? But it seems strange: "Temple of Lucifer, Lucifer who hates the night, who, as much as he wished to get higher, fell"?
Duxeris unde genus, gens a me nulla requirat,
Where you got your race from, no race requires from me??? Makes no sense.
Nam Cartago tuos dirruta misit avos;
For your ancestors came from the destroyed Carthage (lit. Carthage sent them).
Paupere lintheolo tecti venere Salernum,
They came to Salern clad with poor rags,
Quorum pauperies quid nisi flere fuit?
And what else could one do than cry over their poverty? I guess it means something like this but literally it's strange: we have the subject pauperies and the infinitive flere can be nothing else than its predicate so literally... "what was their poverty except to cry?" It's strange. If it was really "what was to do except cry over their poverty", pauperies shouldn't be in nominative. Unless the infinitive is used instead of a gerund or so?
Ideas?