Meggie Macdonald

In New York Times columnist Steve Coates’ response to various outraged comments about the death of King Priam of Troy, the author replies that it is true that the death of Priam is not chronicled in Homer’s epic, The Iliad (which is obvious, when one is aware of the fact that the Iliad concludes with the death of Achilles, not with the end of the war), but rather in the Roman epic, The Aeneid, by Publius Vergilius Maro or Virgil, if you will.  It is the concluding comments in this article that took me aback more profoundly than any argument over the source of the death of King Priam:

No matter how skillful these translations, Virgil’s Latin suffers far more in translation than does Homeric Greek. It’s worth learning Latin just to read the “Aeneid.”

Clearly there are some people who enjoyed translating the mightily convoluted 4th Eclogue more than my high school latin class who condemned the technicolour sheep for their very presence in our busy lives.

Not to condemn the value of learning Latin, of course.  Yes, to read the Aeneid, you must have some sincere appreciation for the beauty of the language Virgil uses throughout his poetic epic.  But you need that same appreciation to recognize Caesar’s wit and political prowess, to sympathize with Catullus’ sparrow, and to understand what a conceited wretch Cicero really was.  To know the people, you must know the language so that you can know how they thought about the world they lived in.  It’s as simple as that.