I would, to paraphrase Catullus, provide a store of quotations and appreciations from this monumentum aere perennius, if I had them to hand. He has translated more of the two great Roman poets Virgil and Horace, on whom I have spent most of my professional life, than any other translator I am aware of: all of Virgil- Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid - and almost all of Horace only that poet’s Satires remain, some of them already translated, and I remain hopeful that David will finish those complex and deceptive poems too. Were I back among my books, I could talk in detail and quote from the many translations that David has produced over the years. Finding myself, at the risk of sounding grandiose, in a similar plight as I help out following the arrival of a granddaughter in the Berkshires, I offer only this brief tribute. Tantalizingly, Catullus omits to identify what was in it. The Roman poet, a great favorite of David Ferry’s, was off in his native Verona, his library back in Rome, with only one book box following him. So Catullus, in a poem apologizing to his friend Manlius, or whatever his name was, for not sending Manlius a poem-and in the process so doing. …….huc una ex multis capsula me sequitur.Īs for my not having a good supply of authors with me here, that’s because I live at Rome: that is my home, that’s where I’ve settled, there my life is spent but when I’m up here one small box out of many comes with me. Illa mihi sedes, illic mea carpitur aetas …….hoc fit, quod Romae vivimus: illa domus, Nam, quod scriptorum non magna est copia apud me,
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