Farting Statues, Witches, and Gross Rome: discussing Horace “Satires” 1.8
After a hiatus following my mother’s death, I was back to discussing weird stuff with students again. I stupidly decided to go with Horace Satires 1.8. The poem was published sometime around 36/35 BCE in a collection of satirical poems Horace dedicated to his uber-wealthy patron, Maecenas, the close friend of Rome's first emperor, Augustus. I chose it as I’ve always found it to be hilarious (and the last thing I need right now is something sad), I have a heap of background information on Roman witches, and it’s already translated. A lazy option. Ha ha ha ha ha! So funny that I thought that. I went straight to the Loeb as I really like being able to compare the Latin text to the translation. Now the Loeb translation is H. Rushton Fairclough’s 1926 translation. And I immediately found that I had significant problems with it. First and foremost he uses the term “witch” a few times, but Horace never uses any Latin word meaning “witch” throughout his 50 lines of hexameters. The closest...