Latin Literature Tournament - Round 1
Propaganda under the cut!
Cicero Propaganda:
This is literally the Cicero Website! You're gonna be on Classics Tumblr and not vote for him??
He saved the republic, you know
All kidding aside, he genuinely wrote some of the most marvelous prose in the Latin language
Martial Propaganda:
Dude basically invented the modern epigram
Was a Huge Bitch and could sling trash talk like no other. A funnier motherfucker you will never meet
Additional propaganda from his dear friend Pliny
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An Epigram on Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
Anthologia Palatina XV.23, author unknown
If you wish to master grief,
Open up this blessed book
And come to it attentively--
Through it, you may easily see
The richest way of thinking about
What's to come, what is now,
And what is past--how joy and pain
Are no whit mightier than smoke.
εἰ λύπης κρατέειν ἐθέλεις,
τήνδε μάκαιραν ἀναπτύσσων
βίβλον ἐπέρχεο ἐνδυκέως,
ἧς ὕπο γνώμην ὀλβίστην
ῥεῖά κεν ὄψεαι ἐσσομένων,
ὄντων ἠδὲ παροιχομένων,
τερπωλὴν τ᾽ ἀνίην τε
καπνοῦ μηδὲν ἀρειοτέρην.
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Writing love poems without being loved is perhaps one of the toughest things I do as a poet.
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“Thaïda Quintus amat.” “Quam Thaïda?” “Thaïda luscam.”
unum oculum Thaïs non habet, ille duos.
Martial, Epigrams, Book III, VIII
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I did an English translation of Poem 104 from Book 11 of Martial's Epigrams. I think it's quite good
it is however rather NSFW (like, smuttily so) and therefore may be found under the cut
"Dear Wife"
Martial 11.104
Honey, it's my way or the highway:
I'm not Curius, Numa, or Tatius.
I like nights that stretch into drinking and fun:
You’ve had your water, you get mopey and can't wait to leave.
You want the dark: I like to play in full view of the lamp
And let its rays illuminate my form.
Cloths and clothes and modest robes cover you:
But a girl can’t get nude enough for me.
I adore hot steamy kisses:
You give me the kind you’d give your grandma in the morning.
You don't deem the deed worthy of moving, or help out by moaning
Or fingering yourself; you fuck like you're preparing wine and incense:
Trojan servants used to start wanking outside the door
Every time Andromache sat on Hector’s cock and rode him,
And even while Ulysses snored, faithful Penelope used to
Always have her hand on her sweet spot.
You won't let me fuck you in the arse: Cornelia let Gracchus,
Julia let Pompey, and didn't Portia let you, too, Brutus?
Before that particular attendant started mixing sweet wine for him
It was Juno who let Jupiter Ganymede her!
If you want respectability, you can be
Lucretia all day: at night I want Lais.
Uxor, vade foras aut moribus utere nostris:
non sum ego nec Curius nec Numa nec Tatius.
Me jucunda juvant tractae per pocula noctes:
tu properas pota surgere tristis aqua.
Tu tenebris gaudes: me ludere teste lucerna
et juvat admissa rumpere luce latus.
Fascia te tunicaeque obscuraque pallia celant:
at mihi nulla satis nuda puella jacet.
basia me capiunt blandas imitata columbas:
tu mihi das aviae qualia mane soles.
Nec motu dignaris opus nec voce juvare
nec digitis, tamquam tura merumque pares:
masturbabantur Phrygii post ostia servi,
Hectoreo quotiens sederat uxor equo,
et quamvis Ithaco stertente pudica solebat
illic Penelope semper habere manum.
Pedicare negas: dabat hoc Cornelia Graccho,
Julia Pompeio, Porcia, Brute, tibi;
dulcia Dardanio nondum miscente ministro
pocula Juno fuit pro Ganymede Jovi.
Si te delectat gravitas, Lucretia toto
sis licet usque die: Laida nocte volo.
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Versus
New Hampshiremen mock us Vermonters
and the odd state that we are in.
But we regard the Granite State fondly,
as our feeble, bastard twin.
--Roderick Bates
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Epigram in Fannish:
Reader, you complain that I don’t write endings;
You aren’t writing anything yourself; is that your way of completing long fics?
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Let’s meet Starbuck
His age and appearance:
He’s only 30, and his skin is as weathered as 
Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness
His risk management strategies:
Most importantly, stay alive. Don’t take risks with shipmates. Don’t take risks with whales.
“I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
He had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs.
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"Stating" - a sestet written 7/14/2023
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Death of a Charioteer
Martial, Epigrams X.53
I am the famous Scorpus, glory of the shout-filled Circus,
Source of your clapping, Rome, and your brief delight;
Envious Lachesis snatched me away at twenty-seven--
Counting my victories, she thought me elderly.
Ille ego sum Scorpus, clamosi gloria Circi,
Plausus, Roma, tui deliciaeque breves,
Invida quem Lachesis raptum trieteride nona,
Dum numerat palmas, credidit esse senem.
Mosaic depicting a charioteer of the albata (White) faction, one of the four factions that dominated Roman chariot racing, with his horse. Artist unknown; 1st half of 3rd cent. CE. From the Villa dei Severi, Baccano; now in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome.
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Trust me, it's not what you've lost that matters, but what you're losing while lamenting over it.
Shayan Das
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Si tua nec Thaïs nec lusca est, Quinte, puella,
cur in te factum δίστιχον esse putas?
sed simile est aliquid. pro Laïde Thaïda dixi?
dic mihi, quid simile est Thaïs et Hermione?
tu tamen es Quintus: mutemus nomen amantis:
si non vult Quintus, Thaïda Sextus amet.
Martial, Epigrams Book III, xi.
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It’s a fact. 🤘🖤
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Winging It
Albatross, ovenbird,
John Keats’s nightingale,
Skylark, a sparrow in
Nemerov’s zoo,
Ornithological
Poetry murmurates,
Raven to darkling thrush,
Swan to cuckoo.
--Chris O'Carroll
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They that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.
Viola, Twelfth Night 3.1
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