In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
state.edu>, David Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>An early scene in Evelyn Waugh's novel _Scoop_ has eight-year-old Josephine 
>construing her day's passage of Virgil.  "'Floribus Austrum,' Josephine 
>chanted, 
>'perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus apros; having been lost with flowers in 
>the South and sent into the liquid fountains; apros is wild boars but I 
>couldn't 
>quite make sense of that bit.'"  That is all we are told of her efforts.
>
>I'm trying to figure out how this paragraph relates to other things happening 
>in 
>the scene and the novel.  One (if not both) of my questions is likely to seem 
>terribly elementary to many list subscribers, so I start by thanking you in 
>advance for your patience and explaining that the fifteen years of accumulated 
>rust since I took the intensive Latin course at CUNY have made me as bad as 
>Josephine at construing passages of Virgil.  My first question (in two parts) 
>is 
>what the passage says and what Josephine does to it; the second question is 
>whether anyone knows where the passage appears in Virgil.

In the second eclogue of the Bucolics, lines 58-9. The correct
translation would be something like: 'ruined (by madness) that I am, I
have let the south wind loose upon the flowers [i.e. exposed them to the
fierce Sirocco] and the boars into the clear springs', i.e. I have
ruined everything by falling in love with my master's minion.

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
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Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road                                         usque adeone
Oxford               scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?
OX2 6EJ

tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/267865(work)          fax +44 (0)1865 512237
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)         [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)

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