"'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,' remarked Sarlish surprisingly."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 332.
Since Sarlish is from "'...Jagranath, which lies beyond the Empire...'" (p. 331), this is indeed surprising. He is also an Imperial Duke's chief Intelligence officer. This explains his knowledge of Anglic, though not of a Latin quotation. I was pleased to come across this famous line, "I fear Greeks bringing gifts," because our Latin class recently read that passage, about the Trojan horse, in the Aeneid.
Aycharaych, another extra-Imperial alien but also a student of humanity, tells Flandry:
"'I already had business in these parts - negotium perambulans in tenebris, if you like -...'" (p. 461).
I do not know how Flandry feels but I am in the dark about this phrase and have asked our Latin tutor for enlightenment. It is something to do with "a task walking around in darkness."
Addendum, 26 May 2014: "Doing the job in the dark."
2 comments:
Hi, Paul!
I have wondered if the Latin spoken by Aycharaych was either quoted by him from another writer or was composed by him on the spot.
And let's not forget, as another example of Aycharaych deep learning in human culture, how he quoted the last stanza of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musicial Instrument," as rueful acknowledgment of the "Satanic" role he was playing as he strove to undermine the Empire--with all the pain and agony he knew he was causing. The last lines of that stanza has stuck with me: "The true gods sigh for the cost and pain--/for the reed which grows nevermore again/As a reed with the reeds in the river."
And today I purchased a copy of JRR Tolkien's translation of BEOWULF, which I look forward to reading after I finish MULTIVERSE.
Sean
I remember how startled Flandyr was that Aycharaych should have known a by then ancient poem in Old Anglic which was probably not read by many in Flandry's time.
Aw, drat! Somehow I garbled the first note. The text beginning with "I remember.." should have been the last sentence of the second paragraph.
Sean
Post a Comment