Wednesday, April 7

Here is a round-up of today's blog posts - and for previous posts, check out the Bestiaria Latina Blog archives. You can keep up with the latest posts by using the RSS feed, or you might prefer to subscribe by email. Plus, you can find some Latin "pipilationes" at my Proverbia Latina feed.

HODIE: ante diem septimum Idus Apriles. You can add a Roman calendar as a widget in your blog or webpage, or display it as a Google Calendar: here's how.

MORE FABLES: Here are today's fables from the Ictibus Felicibus project. These fables ALL have long marks, plus stress marks for easy reading, and the poems have meter marks, too, along with an easy-to-read prose presentation of the story:

• Canis et Iuncus, a funny little scatalogical story from Odo of Cheriton.
• Asinus et Senex, a story of how the more things change, the more they stay the same - at least for the donkeys.
• Avarus et Invidus, a wonderfully paradoxical fable about the vices of greed and envy.
• Upupa, a story about the hoopoe, so lovely a bird, and so stinky.
• Canis Venaticus et Alter Domesticus, a debate between a hard-working dog and the dog who stays at home.

I've picked out my favorite one, the funny little story about the dog and the bulrush, to share with you here in the blog - facere rusticitatem being Odo's way of saying "to poop"!

Contigit quod Canis voluit facere rusticitātem suam super congregātiōnem scirpōrum, et ūnus iuncus bene stimulāvit posteriōra ipsīus. Et Canis recessit longius et super iuncōs lātrāvit. Dīxit Iuncus: Melius volō quod lātrēs mē ā longē quam coninquinēs mē dē prope.

TODAY'S MOTTOES & PROVERBS: You can get access to ALL the "proverb of the day scripts" (also available as random proverb scripts) at the SchoolhouseWidgets.com website.

3-Word Mottoes: Today's 3-word motto is Virtus durat avorum (English: The worthiness of my ancestors endures).

3-Word Proverbs: Today's 3-word proverb is Dii facientes adiuvant (English: The gods help those who are doers - something like Ben Franklin's famous "God helps those that help themselves").

Rhyming Proverbs: Today's proverb with rhyme is: Est pax villana melior quam pugna Romana (English: A rustic peace is better than a Roman war).

Vulgate Verse: Today's verse is Novos caelos et novam terram expectamus, in quibus iustitia habitat (II Peter 3:13). For a translation, check out the polyglot Bible, in English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek, at the Sacred Texts Archive online.

Elizabethan Proverb Commentary: Here is today's proverb commentary, this time by Taverner: Dulcia non meruit, qui non gustavit amara: That is to say, he hath not deserved the swete, whiche hath not taste the sowre. Also an other Proverbe saith, The catte woulde fishe eate, but she will not her feets weate.

Today's Poem: Today's poem is the moral from Phaedrus's fable of the fox and the crow, with a word list at NoDictionaries.com:

Quae se laudari gaudent verbis subdolis,
serae dant poenas turpi paenitentia.

English: "Those who enjoy hearing themselves praised with treacherous words eventually pay the penalty in the form of ugly embarrassment." For those of you interested in iambic meter, these are great lines to look at - no elisions, and no substitutions.

For today's image, here is an illustration for the story of the greedy man and the jealous man, Avarus et Invidus - and yes, that's the god Apollo there; you can tell he is a god as he doesn't have any clothes on. :-)