This famous couplet forms a single poem in Catullus' collection
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
.....Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
With the holiday weekend coming up, here's an easy one. The epigram is so familiar and the Latin relatively easy (Odi - "hate" is the only tricky part; this is a defective verb like coepi - "begin", where past-tense forms are used for present tense), that a link to translations and such seems superfluous.
Still, there is a lot going on in this couplet, and certainly the first three words have evoked enough of a response through the ages that they've become almost proverbial for the trials of love. I'm not saying it needs a book to analyze it (although I bet a few have been written), but it's certainly not a throwaway. Habete Ludum
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
.....Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
With the holiday weekend coming up, here's an easy one. The epigram is so familiar and the Latin relatively easy (Odi - "hate" is the only tricky part; this is a defective verb like coepi - "begin", where past-tense forms are used for present tense), that a link to translations and such seems superfluous.
Still, there is a lot going on in this couplet, and certainly the first three words have evoked enough of a response through the ages that they've become almost proverbial for the trials of love. I'm not saying it needs a book to analyze it (although I bet a few have been written), but it's certainly not a throwaway. Habete Ludum