He of the Lion - May 9th, 2006
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01:24 am
[Link] | I realize I have been unusually silent this past month or so. It is time to correct this, but only a little.
I am in general happier than I have been accustomed to being. Some of you know some of the reasons why. Life, as a general proposition, is good.
I have much more to say, but it will have to wait until I have had more sleep. For now you will have to content yourself with brief cryptic pronouncements, of which I have three:
- In this way they went about the burial of Hektor breaker of horses.
- Fortune cookies do not lie.
- Llama llama cthulhu llama.
There. Chew on that, why don't you.
Tags: nonsense
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12:58 pm
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Snobby Latin Phrase
We appear to have missed the month of April for our snobby latin project. Mea culpa.
The phrase for the month of May is "dis aliter visum," which translates as "it seemed otherwise to the gods." It comes from Book II of the Aeneid:
cadit et Rhipeus, justissimus unus
qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus aequi
(dis aliter visum)
(ll426-8, p140 in the Mynors edition.) In Mandelbaum's translation, this is Book II, ll573-5 (p43):
Then Rhipeus, too, has fallen—he was first
among the Teucrians for justice and
observing right; the gods thought otherwise.
The appropriate usage is when something happens that is not what you had thought would or should happen. A rough English equivalent would be "the best laid plans of mice and men..." Other rough translations include, "God works in mysterious ways," "it wasn't meant to be, "or "the world's a funny place." An example: "I can't believe that (choose your least favorite politician) won the election. I would have thought we had learned our lesson ... but, dis aliter visum."
References, for the curious:
Mandelbaum, Allen, trans. The Aeneid of Virgil. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982.
Mynors, R.A.B., ed. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Tags: snobby latin
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