Sunday, July 20, 2014

 

Survivors

Conrad Celtis, Epigrams 2.46, tr. Leonard Forster, Selections from Conrad Celtis, 1459-1508 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1948), p. 35:
What but the fame of your ruin is left, O Rome, of so many Consuls and Caesars? Devouring time does so consume all things, nothing permanent exists in the world. Virtue and books alone survive.
The Latin, id., p. 34:
Quid superest, o Roma, tuae nisi fama ruinae
    De tot consulibus Caesaribusque simul?
Tempus edax sic cuncta vorat nilque exstat in orbe
    Perpetuum, Virtus scriptaque sola manent.
Forster cites this as "Epigr. II.6 ... ed. Hartfelder," but it is numbered II.46 in Fünf Bücher Epigramme von Konrad Celtis, ed. Karl Hartfelder (Berlin: Verlag von S. Calvary & Co., 1881), pp. 32-33.

Cf. id., 5.60 ("Ad mortem," p. 114 Hartfelder, my translation):
You destroy everything, O Death, you seize everything won by toil:
    After death Virtue and books alone survive.

Omnia, mors, perimis, rapis omnia parta labore:
    Post mortem probitas scriptaque sola manent.
Hat tip: Ian Jackson.



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