Snarking The Odyssey (with AD&D)
WARNING: Those of you who are accustomed to pithy political remarks here on Internal Monologue should brace yourselves for a major dose of gaming geekitude. Here's a link to one "Jamie R." who does a very snarky close reading of Homer's The Odyssey (HT: Mad Latinist via email). I've only read book 1, but it's pretty funny so far. An excerpt: Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men… Sooooo, he’s in charge, and everybody dies. Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero and his colossal failure. What? … for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever rea
Comments
uteris et Veneri servit amica manus,
hoc nihil esse putas? scelus est, mihi crede, sed ingens,
quantum vix animo concipis ipse tuo.
nempe semel futuit, generaret Horatius ut tres
Mars semel, ut geminos Ilia casta daret.
omnia perdiderat si masturbatus uterque
mandasset manibus gaudia foeda suis.
ipsam crede tibi naturam dicere rerum:
'Istud quod digitis, Pontice, perdis, homo est.'
-Martial, Epigrams 9.41
This translation owes somethign to that of Poldy... but not everything, because I can't find Poldy's translation right now ;)
Ponticus, the fact that you never fuck, but use your left hand as a concubine
and your girlfriend-hand serves Venus--
do you think that this is no big deal? It's a crime, believe me, and a huge one at that,
so big that even you can hardly conceive it in your mind.
I mean, Horatius fucked just once to father three,
and Mars just once, to give chaste Ilia twins.
Either of them would have ruined everything if he had masturbated,
and entrusted his shameful pleasures to his own hands.
You had better believe that it is Nature herself that tells you:
"That mess which you waste on your fingers, Ponticus, is a human being."