Aesopi Carmina: Desbillons Book 2

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This project has moved to a blog of its own: Fabulae Aesopi.

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This continues my series of posts about the Latin verse fables of Desbillons; for more about Desbillons, see the starting post. I'm working through the poems book by book with indexes to each of the individual fables; this is the post for Book 2.

For each book, I am picking out one very short poem as the focus. So, you'll find a poem-by-poem index to Book 2 below (linking to the pages at the Internet Archive), and here's the poem I selected from that book, just 4 lines long; just 3 lines long if you omit the moral at the end which is more of a label than a moral. This is a fable that Desbillons adapted from the great Renaissance fabulist, Abstemius, and it resembles the classical type of fable with a faux-doctor where the patient makes a witty reply to the hypocritical visitor (see "Doctor Cat" below):

II.32 Equus AEgrotans et Canis 

Equus aegrotabat; mandere assuetus canis

Projecta cadavera adiit hunc et quaesiit

quomodo se haberet. "Melius" inquit "quam velis."

Fabula ad avarum spectat heredum genus.

Here is the poem written out in English prose order to help in reading:

Equus aegrotabat.

Canis,

assuetus mandere projecta cadavera, 

adiit hunc 

et quaesiit

quomodo [equus] se haberet. 

[Equus] inquit, 

"Melius quam velis."

Fabula spectat ad avarum genus heredum.

Watch out for the verb mandere; this is a later Latin word, synonymous with manducare, and it means "to eat" (literally, "to chew"); compare Italian mangiare, French manger, etc.

The meter is iambic, and here is some help with the meter (for more about iambic meter, see the post about Desbillons 1.19).

Equus ae · grota · bat: man · der~ as · suetus · Canis

Proiec · ta cada · ver~ adi · it hunc · et quae · siit,

Quomodo · s~ habe · ret: Meli · us in · quit quam · velis.

Fabul~ ad · ava · rum spec · tat he · redum · genus.   

Since this is not a classical fable, I don't have a specific illustration for it, but the theme resembles Dr. Cat visiting the Chickens, so here's an illustration by Arthur Rackham to go with that classical fable:

A Cat heard that the Birds in an aviary were ailing. So he got himself up as a doctor, and, taking with him a set of the instruments proper to his profession, presented himself at the door, and inquired after the health of the Birds. "We shall do very well," they replied, without letting him in, "when we've seen the last of you."  

More poems in Desbillons, Book 2:

1. malus exspoliata (lines: 10)
2. cervus et hinnuleus (lines: 12)
3. lepores et ranae (lines: 14)
4. vulpecula et gallina (lines: 6)
5. testudo et aquila (lines: 9)
6. puer et agricolae (lines: 8)
7. bubulcus et leo (lines: 13)
8. grues et anseres (lines: 7)
9. mula (lines: 10)
10. mors et rusticus (lines: 20+)
11. mors et rusticus (lines: 5)
12. agricola et filii eius (lines: 17)
13. tauri quattuor et leo (lines: 8)
14. lupus et ovis (lines: 9)
15. gallina ova pariens ova (lines: 5)
16. lupus et anicula (lines: 12)
17. ovis et cornicula (lines: 6)
18. asellus et equus (lines: 11)
19. leo et capra (lines: 7)
20. leo senex et vulpis (lines: 17)
21. fringuilla (lines: 9)
22. ranae duae (lines: 10)
23. cerva, venator et leo (lines: 5)
24. formica et columba (lines: 14)
25. apes et ipsarum dominus (lines: 14)
26. asinus silvestris et asinus domesticus (lines: 16)
27. mus in cista natus (lines: 17)
28. milvus et agricola (lines: 5)
29. femina mortem pro marito appetens (lines: 11)
30. asinus, simia, et talpa (lines: 7)
31. lupus et hystrix (lines: 15)
32. equus aegrotans et canis (lines: 4)
33. vir eruditus et trossulus (lines: 9)
34. canis infidelis et pastor (lines: 18)
35. Lucius late regnandi cupidus (lines: 21)
36. asellus viridis (lines: 8)
37. leo et rana (lines: 6)
38. agricola et Fortuna (lines: 11)
39. tulipa (lines: 15)
40. pueri et ranae (lines: 9)
41. pisces (lines: 6)
42. puer et coluber (lines: 7)
43. rosa et amarantus (lines: 5)
44. canis et herus (lines: 10)
45. piscis volans (lines: 14)

Aesopi Carmina: Desbillons Book 1

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This project has moved to a blog of its own: Fabulae Aesopi.

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One of the projects I've decided to work on is an anthology of Aesop's fables in Latin verse, including classical, medieval and modern Latin poetry. Among the modern poets, François-Joseph Terrasse Desbillons is without doubt the most important. There are Wikipedia articles in French and German about Desbillons, so perhaps as part of this project I will try to write an English article about him! In the meantime, you can rely on Google Translate to render those Wikipedia articles in English. :-)

I'm relying on the nice edition of his Latin fables available at the Internet Archive, Fabulae Aesopiae, published in 1778, containing all 15 books of his Aesop's fables. I'll do a series of blog posts book by book with indexes to each of the individual fables. In addition, I'll pick out a very short poem to feature in the blog post. My goal is to focus on very short Latin poetry (everybody knows I like tiny things!) which is obviously a big plus for beginning Latin readers.

So, you'll find a poem-by-poem index to Book 1 below (linking to the pages at the Internet Archive), and here's the poem I selected from that book, just three lines long. It is the classical fable of the crab and its child:

I.19 Cancer et eius Filius

Ut prorsus iret, filium retrogradum

Cancer monebat; at filius, "I prae! Sequar."

Cuiquam ne objicias, quod tibi objici potest.

Here is the poem written out in English prose order to help in reading:

Cancer monebat

retrogradum filium

ut iret prorsus; 

at filius [dixit], 

"I prae! 

Sequar."

Ne objicias cuiquam, 

quod potest objici tibi.

The meter is iambic. Sadly, most Latin textbooks have nothing to say about iambic meter, and even school editions of Phaedrus sometimes just ignore the meter entirely. I suspect that is because of the range of substitutions which make iambics harder to scan than the much more regular dactylic hexameter and the closely related elegiac couplet.

Still, it's not impossible to get a feel for iambics, and the best way to explain how to read iambic verse is to think about the verse as it unfolds foot by foot and the decision points you reach:

* Is the first syllable of a foot long? Then it can be followed by a long (L-L) or by a short, in which case, expect another short (L-S-S); end of foot!

* Is the first syllable of a foot short? Then it can be followed by a long (S-L) or by a short, in which case, expect two more syllables (S-S-S or S-S-L); end of foot! 

* You might also find a S-S-S-S foot, but it's so rare as to not worry about it.

Once you spend some time reading iambic lines, these five most common feet — L-L, L-S-S, S-L, S-S-L, S-S-S — will become just as familiar as the dactylic hexameter lines with their L-L and L-S-S feet, and you'll be able to "feel" the feet taking shape as the verse line unfolds, syllable by syllable.

In addition, the two-syllable feet greatly outnumber the three-syllable feet (for various reasons having to do with iambic verse composition which I won't go into here), and in order to help those three-syllable feet stand out, I have underlined them below. The tilde marks elisions, and the raised dot appears between feet:

Ut pror · sus i · ret, fi · lium · retro · gradum

cancer · mone · bat; at · filius: · I prae, · sequar.

Cuiquam · n~ objici · as, quod · tib~ ob · jici · potest.

If you have only worked on dactylic or elegiac Latin poetry, don't worry if iambs feel strange at first. And when you learn to read them, then you can better appreciate the poetry of Phaedrus, and of Plautus and Terence too! 

You can find illustrations for the fable here. Here's one by Arthur Rackham, and I used imgflip to make it a graphic:

More poems in Desbillons, Book I: 

1. belluae pestilentia laborantes (lines: 20+)
2. formica et cicada (lines: 17)
3. aquila, corvus, et pastor (lines: 14)
4. lacerta et testudo (lines: 4)
5. ericius et talpa (lines: 14)
6. leo, lupus, et vulpis (lines: 20+)
7. pueruli fratres (lines: 18)
8. rosa et papilio (lines: 17)
9. columba plumipes, et columba saxatilis (lines: 19)
10. capo (lines: 14)
11. simius et hinnuleus (lines: 20+)
12. gruis et pavo (lines: 16)
13. mala aurea (lines: 20+)
14. cucurbita, glans, et rusticus (lines: 20+)
15. lupus poenitens (lines: 20+)
16. vulpis et canis (lines: 5)
17. mures duo (lines: 20+)
18. aries et taurus (lines: 13)
19. cancer et eius filius (lines: 3)
20. agricola et Mercurius (lines: 20+)
21. aquila et mus (lines: 11)
22. cycnus et anser (lines: 20+)
23. equus et asinus (lines: 11)
24. lupus ovilla pelle indutus, et pastor (lines: 11)
25. rusticus et silva (lines: 6)
26. canis et lepores duo (lines: 4)
27. leo, simius, et vulpis (lines: 11)
28. aquila et sol (lines: 11)
29. Liber et Prelus (lines: 20+)

It begins...

 Here we go!