#it has civil war lucan's Twisted Mind the most detailed description of necromancy from the ancient world many directions of hauntings

[plasmapop]

AKAKAJKS JUST SAW UR REPLY TO MY PREV ASK godcrime! anon here omg i know almost nothing ab any of this but the way u say it really makes me super interested in all of it :0 that's honestly so cool tbh and if u ever do make a translation that picks a side i would love love love to read it 🥺💖 i think it's amazing that your passion for this is so apparent !! hope u have an Amazing day xoxo

HUGE RIP this ask is probably many many months old but this is a sideblog so i. did not see it. anyway if you ARE still interested in lucan and his GODCRIMES i do extremely recommend reading the pharsalia it is one of my favourite poems of all time ever AND if you’re interested in the paradoxes of picking a side in civil war (not necessarily tdw translation though) then i also recommend shadi bartch’s book ideology in cold blood: a reading of lucan’s civil war. maybe one day i will also finish even just book 1 of my horrible pharsalia translation but dfhjsfdhs a) dactylic hexameter is Hard; b) having to guess how an anglophone reader will pronounce latin names and then fitting Those pronunciations into dactylic hexameter is Hard; and c) i uhhhhhh got stuck on pompey magnus’ (one of the main characters) NAME :((( there’s this incredible line when he’s introduced where lucan says ‘stat magni nominis umbra’ and like. magnus is both his actual name And the word for great. do you translate that as ‘he stood as the ghost of a great name’ or ‘he stood as the ghost of the name magnus’ (not even getting into do you translate umbra as shadow or ghost. i am more a fan of ghost but fsiuhsnvjsvjhdnjdkzc pain suffering agony woe). bcs even just picking one direction there limits The Imagery. but lucan also puns on the word/name magnus literally all the time and HOW do you translate that into english. especially when other words e.g. tantus in some contexts can’t be translated as anything Other than great, and so great doesn’t even map perfectly onto magnus in a way that can be explained in a translator’s note. i got to the point where i was like. what if i just put a ;) emoji after every ‘great’ that is a pun on pompey’s name like that’s fun and disruptive. but once you’re doing that And capitalising GODCRIME you might as well commit to the ideal weird paratext collage pharsalia translation and i literally do not have the time effort or ability for That :(((