From dlupher@ups.edu Sun Sep 10 13:56:30 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id NAA124246 for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:56:29 -0700 Received: from mail.ups.edu (traveler.ups.edu [192.124.98.2]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id NAA25081 for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:56:28 -0700 Received: from [207.207.116.71] (wyatt1dhcp71.ups.edu [207.207.116.71]) by mail.ups.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA24602 for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:56:24 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <000701c01884$09e62000$5d509318@ne.mediaone.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:55:57 -0700 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Lupher Subject: another Herodotean query Though the Herodotean query I posted yesterday has so far been greeted by a deafening silence, I am going to try another one. I'm preparing a little handout for a double-mini-lesson on Herototean digressions and translations. I want to give my students various renderings of the disarming parenthetical remark Herodotus makes at 4.30.1: prosthhkas gar dh moi ho logos ex archhs edizhto. My students the other day were charmed by the Penguin's version: "(I need not apologize for the digression--- it has been my habit throughout this work)." Well, I want to offer them some alternatives, not only to continue our discussion of Herodotean digressions but also to let them know how widely translations may vary. What I would like to have is Robin Waterfield's Oxford World Classics version of these words. I'm sorry to confess that I don't have it within reach, and I want to get this handout ready for tomorrow. By the way the most intriguing translation I have found so far is that of David Grene: "for this history of mine has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument." What I find intriguing is not so much the translation itself as the fact that this is the very version of the sentence offered by the "English patient" on p. 119 of the eponymous novel. Very interesting. In his acknowledgments, Ondaatje duly confesses to using the Grene translation, except for the story of Candaules' wife (so central to the novel), for which he used the 1890 G.C. McCauley version. Is it not a bit odd to have Almasy citing, ca. 1945, a translation not published until 1987? David Lupher Classics Dept. Univ. of Puget Sound .