Spending time in Heaven doing good on earth

Ste Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)

I have recently finished the chronological chapters of 'L'Histoire d'une Âme' by Ste Thérèse of Lisieux. I am most fortunate to have a beautifully illustrated first edition of the French original that I will be reviewing shortly. It has been translated several times into English: 'The Story of a Soul: the Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux'.

Two of the books that played a very important role in Ste Thérèse's short life were:

'Le Manuel du Chrétien' and

'La Fin du monde présent et mystères de la vie future' (1881, Abbé Arminjon).
 
One of my most prized possessions is a 1921 edition of the Manuel (in French and Latin). I have French and English editions of the work by Father Arminjon ('The End of the present world and the mysteries of the futire life'). I aim to include short reviews of these two works in the very near future.

Venesection 18 May 2018

I've been somewhat hors de combat recently. Here's the story.

Last Wednesday I saw the haematologist who put me forward for another venesection on Friday morning. My first was fine, my second was also no problem. I was half looking forward to this, my third. I don't mind needles. I'm not particularly squeamish about blood. Easy peasy, I thought. What could possibly go wrong..?

After about 25 minutes, they finished taking the last few mils of the 500 ml total and detached the bag. I felt ever-so slightly light-headed... then, with alarming swiftness, a very unpleasant dark sludge seemed to flow over my mind and I fell forwards in my chair, just managing a quick:

'Nurse!'

I don't remember all the details of what happened next. There was an oxygen mask. There were lots of people. A discussion about 'pushing' something called 'atropine'. I was taken to A & E. A saline drip was inserted. My wife had been contacted and arrived at the hospital. She acted as my interpreter because I was mentally confused, apparently, and had lost some of my power of speech. She explained this to me later, somewhat bemused, as you can imagine.

To cut a long story short, I was kept in hospital until the evening and then driven home by my wife. DG.

*****************************************

Well, I've survived. I'm still a bit groggy, but that's probably having to look up too many new Greek/Latin-based words such as bradycardia, vasovagal syncope, and atropa belladonna (what a quaint name for Deadly Nightshade, Atropos of the Three Fates, styled as a beautiful lady). Atropine has some unpleasant side effects such as hallucinations, mental confusion, dehydration, migraine headaches... but is just what the doctor ordered for a slow heart. My rate had apparently gone down to 32 per minute. I later set the metronome on our piano to 32 pm - it was quite scary; I think I prefer allegro non troppo.


My pentelope production unit has slowed down in a sort of 'parasympathetic response'*. Here is a pentecoda for my war story:

Reports from Front of bloody action

Heavy fire at venesection

Reinforcing dereliction

Belladonna's dread decoction

Centre saved from fell effluxion...

*I learned that blood-letting lowers blood-pressure. This would normally provoke a 'sympathetic response' leading (naturally enough) to a higher pulse rate. My doctors said that for some reason a 'parasympathetic response' was provoked, slowing the pulse-rate.

A Whitsun wedding (with due apologies to Philip Larkin)

A Windsor wedding at Whitsun for Harry and Meghan
Royal magic at work we all saw once again
While the world was watching princely idyll begin
Ghosts of the past chased by the wind were gone
There was joy in the hearts, and, yes ma’am !, lots of fun.

GH 2018

Dear GH: The position of poet laureate will fall vacant, I believe, next year. I can only urge you to continue your bid which will assuredly be supported and promoted by your friends here at Court... Your latest number is apparently in one of HM's Red Boxes already.

Arthurian Romance and Indian Cuisine

The entente pentelopicale  continues to bear fruit...

Idylls of the King

Camelot’s life was far from lax :
The knights were supposed to abstain from sex
To bed at ten, wake up at six...
But Launcelot eyed Guinny's plum smocks
And they went together to feed the ducks.

GH 2018


Food for thought

Hot vindaloo and cold chapatti
(I fear this may sound pretty petty)
Convinced me (though it’s such a pity)
I’m not exactly all that potty
A-masticating spicy putty.

PB 2018

Suburban Perturbia

 or

Going off the rails

It's early on Monday they start to arrive
At Carshalton Beeches in Fa(i)rest Zone Five;
Then Wallington, Waddon and on to West Croydon,
It's easy to see why a few are annoyed on
Account of the people, all squashing and squeezing,
With standing room only, all coughing and sneezing.
The general rule for this bleary-eyed crowd
Is to gaze at an i-phone (no talking's allowed);
For this is the race of the daily commuters,
All destined to labour in front of computers;
Consigned to submit to a trial by rail,
With constant delays and the   s p  e  e  d  of   a     s   n   a   i     l.
Mid sleeping and waking, they yawn at the blurbs
Of stations that service these southern suburbs;
At last they limp past little Battersea Park
And imagine the sound of a meow or a bark;
Is a dog's life in London so very much worse
Than the barking commuter's, in doggerel verse?

Envoi

With terminal madness, collective euphoria,
They charge through the barriers at London Victoria.

© PB 26 April 2017

Pentelope in French alexandrines

Me levant ce matin

This is another pentelope offered by my super-talented French connection, GH. He remarked that those who have been through pre-seventies classical studies in France, find that 'alexandrines' come rather easily. An alexandrine is a syllabic metre of twelve syllables divided into two half-lines of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line in France from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

He noted that you can even find alexandrines in the public space, such as the following information on metro doors:

<<Le train ne peut partir que les portes fermees>> 

The train cannot depart unless the doors are closed. 

Our  equivalent might well be:

Stand clear of the closing doors, this train is about to depart.

Me levant ce matin, Dieu que j'avais la dalle!
Je n'avais sous la main qu'un peu de mortadelle;
Il fallait se résoudre à faire un tour en ville
Pour acheter bien vite une brioche molle
Et au bout d'une paille aspirer quelque bulle.
GH 2018

When rising this morning, God I was starving! All I had to hand was a bit of sausage. I resolved to walk into town to buy a soft brioche and to blow a bubble out of the end of a straw.

Any suggestions from my readers about the best translation of the last line?

Ronnie Knox: Two Limericks and a rejoinder

Knox on Predestination

There was a young man who said 'Damn!
I have suddenly found that I am
A creature that moves
On predestinate grooves,
Not a bus, as one hoped, but a tram.'

A Knoxonian Ontology

Jesus College, Oxford. First Quad. By John Wigham

There was a young man who said 'God
Must think it exceedingly odd
When he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no-one about in the Quad.'

REPLY

Dear Sir:
Your astonishment's odd,
I am always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
GOD.




 [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A Cambridge rejoinder

A young man said 'Surely God ought
To respond to this worrying thought:
Why oh why does this tree
Continue to be
When there's no-one about in the Court?'

Chapel Court, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. By Azeira. CC Public Domain.

REPLY

Dear Sir,
A celestial retort:
These things are not quite as you thought;
The mysterious tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Myself in the Court.

PB 2016


Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was the son of an Anglican bishop but converted to Catholicism. He was a brilliant classicist, wit and raconteur as well as a priest, a theologian, a translator of the Bible and an author of detective stories. He went to Balliol College Oxford, hence my use of 'Knox on' and 'Knoxonian',  and his use of the word 'quad'. In Cambridge, the enclosed area of grass found in  colleges is  termed not a quad but a 'court'. Here is an area, I thought, where I might.. with um, much respect to a master... redress Knox's bias a little.

 

480 BC revisited - a unique double

My correspondence with GH, a French classicist, author and polymath has been continuing. I introduced him to pentelopes and we have been firing them back and forth of late.

Having grown up in leafy Warwickshire (think Arden), I started to look for something redolent of Shakespeare but my mind went blank; so, naturally enough, I turned to blank verse. Alack! Vaulting ambition leapt from this already tricky task to approach one still more vainglorious. To end and begin each line in accordance with the pentelope vowel rules. The result is set out below in 480 BC revisited..

Shambling iambic pentameter is held fast by doubled pentelopic punctuation, front and rear. It is of course a prototype, quite incapable of flight, or much else for that matter. I am wondering whether any of my readers will be able to take this ugly duckling and produce a swan, worthy of the Avon.

480 BC revisited

As Spartans form their lines, Leonidas
Espies afar the serried hosts of Xerxes;
Is foretold triumph soon at Salamis,
O Sybil, tribute to heroic loss?
You stand foredoomed, fell sons of Darius...

PB 2018

Battle of Thermopylae.By Cleber.knfire*

NOTE: At the head of a huge army, Xerxes continued his father Darius' war with the Greeks by defeating the Spartans under King Leonidas after a heroic last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae. The anxious Athenians consulted the Sibyl (the Oracle at Delphi), only to learn that Athens was doomed. A second part of the prophecy stated however that 'only the wooden wall will not fail'. The meaning of these mysterious words became clear when the Greek navy defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. The Greek ships proved to be the wooden wall. The Persians withdraw. The war was over.
* [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons.  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Thermopilas_Batlle_art.jpg

Hinc lucem et pocula sacra

My experiments continue with the verse form invented by the famous codebreaker 'Dilly' Knox: the pentelope. Here is one in Latin followed by my translation. In some ways, it's simpler in Latin because the letter forms of the vowels almost always have one particular sound, unlike 'bird' and 'word', for instance, in English.

Pocula sacra laudate
Omnes pueri gaudete
Verbum domini plaudite
Verumtamen scitote:
Bibendum non est dilute!

PB 2018

From this place (come) light and sacred draughts
(Motto of Cambridge University)

Praise ye the sacred draughts,
Come all ye boys rejoice;
Applaud the word of the master (don)
But know ye all this much:
Take it undiluted!

Dental Appointment

Fresh from the vasty fields of France, I have just received the following pentelope:

Today was the date, the die was cast.
Strong on his feet to match the test,
He rang the bell and clenched his fist.
To hell the price new teeth would cost
The truth was: when we muft, we muft.

GH 2018

I think this must be a favourite to carry away the 2018 Pentelope Award.
The triple d-alliteration in line one presages the sense of impen-ding, dreadful doom. A galloping metre carries us relentlessly forward but then changes pace when iambic tetrameter strides doggedly towards its destined climax and then... an irresistible bathos.

In the background, barely noticeable, is the pentelopic DNA, faithfully reproducing its own kind: tradidi quod et accepi.

A masterpiece from an artist whose working motto seems to be: ars est celare artem.

A French poet contacts this blog

A French poet, going under the nom de plume of Anne Honnimusse, has contacted me via a mutual acquaintance in order to present to our readers the following finely crafted pentelope.

Quand Mélenchon entre en débat
Toutes les bouches restent bées;
On est scotché par le débit
Et par les abois du cabot
Qui déblatère, honte bue.

Anne Honnimusse 2018

When Mélenchon starts arguing,
All the mouths come a-gaping;
One is struck (literally stuck, as if with scotch tape) by the effluence
And by the barkings of the cur
Who yaps away shamelessly (literally, having drunk all his shame).

To convey my appreciation, and that of the readers of this blog, I drew a deep draught from my alma mater and replied with:

Hinc lucem et pocula sacra

Pocula sacra laudate
Omnes pueri gaudete
Verbum domini plaudite
Verumtamen scitote:
Bibendum non est dilute!

PB 2018

Pentelope Psychiatrique

Ma petite âme, mais qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
«Hélas! J'essaie de prier
Pour tous ceux dont le sort ici
Prévoit un destin idiot
Qui ne vaut pas un demi-sou»

PB 7 May 2018

The previous post on 'Dilly's Pentelopes' sowed a teasing question in my mind: could the fivefold, 'aeiou' rhyming scheme work in French? The verse above confirms, 'Of course`! I was, admittedly, having a lot of difficulty with the last line until... er ... the penny dropped, or rather the demi-sou, to coin a phrase. Why is the pentelope 'psychiatrique'? Well, psyche means âme or soul, and iatros means médecin or doctor. 

Free translation:

Oh what's the matter, little soul?
'Full sadly I petition
For prisoners in their foolish hole
Who risk their soul's perdition.'

More literally: My little soul, what's the matter? 'Alas! I'm trying to pray for all those whose fate here (on earth) will lead to a foolish outcome that's not worth a farthing.'

Dilly's Pentelopes

I first discovered Dilly and his 'pentelopes' while reading The Knox Brothers by Penelope Fitzgerald (first published by Macmillan in 1977). Alfred Dillwyn ('Dilly') Knox was one of the four brothers featured in her biography of her father and three uncles. He was a classics scholar at King's College Cambridge and later a cryptographer in the First and Second World Wars. Amongst his wide range of interests were word-puzzles, poetry and... the 'pentelope'.

The rules for writing a pentelope are simple to understand but devilishly difficult to translate into practice. There must be five lines; each line must end with a word of the same kind but with a different vowel in the last syllable. The vowels, moreover, must be in alphabetical order: ie, a e i o u (or their phonetic equivalent). The word 'pentelope' may be based on three Greek roots meaning 'five', 'end' and 'voiced'.

Here is an example from Dilly's own pen:

Just look at my father
And mother together!
I fancy that neither
Would very much bother
If rid of the other.

Here is another, written as an epitaph on the very morning of AE Housman's death in 1936.

Sad though the news, how sad
Of thee, the poet, dead!
But still thy poems abide - 
There Death, the unsparing god
Himself dare not intrude.

The third example represents the feverish, flurrying fruit of my own effort:

He'd really be blind as a bat
Who was ready to aid and abet
Those who laud each liturgical split
So assisting thereby Satan's plot
To poison the Church at her root.

All submissions from readers will be carefully considered for publication. This is not a  f a c e t i o u s  offer!

Queen of the May

Salve Regina

The date and authorship of this Marian antiphon remain something of a mystery. It was certainly in widespread use as early as the 13th century. It is sometimes claimed to be the particular favourite of the Queen of Heaven herself: see the Preces Latinae site for more.

The first four words are incorporated in our banner that we unfurled when launching this blog at the beginning of May. Every year at my primary school, we would process from our classrooms into St Benedict's Church to take part in a ceremony to crown Mary as Queen of the May.

Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus, exsules fili Hevae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria. Amen

V: Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genitrix.
R: Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.

Hail Holy Queen

Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us. And after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin mary. Amen.

V: Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God.
R: That we may be made worthy of the promisses of Christ.

Two verses for little ones

The Toucan

For K

AHB 2018

O a wonderful bird is the TOUCAN

And often I've wondered WHOUCAN

Describe its great beak

So smooth and so sleek

That gobbles food faster than YOUCAN!

 © PB c1988

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think that she could be?

AHB 2018

Here's my little daughter

Short and stout,

Here's her tail

And here's her snout;

There's her little eye

Twinkling at me;

What do you think that she could be?

© PB c1988

In Memoriam

A Georgian Triptych

May 1st Celebrations Over Whitacre 1914

Old George 
And Young George
And Young George's Son;
Young George
Will be a George
When Old George is done. 

But Young George
Will ne'er be George,
Tho' Old George's Son;
Young George
Will ne'er be George
Since Young George is done.

So when Old George
Is no more George,
When Old George is done;
Youngest George
Will then be George,
Young George's son.

© PB 26 April 1977

Note: The first verse was a bit of family doggerel I learned from my father when I was a boy in the Warwickshire countryside. As befits his name, he was a farmer. When his eldest son died in 1977, I added the second two verses to form a triptych in honour of the three generations. The photograph shows Nether and Over Whitacre villagers getting ready for their celebrations on May Day 1914. 'Old George' is the little boy in a straw hat shown by the arrow. He was nine years old and in charge of the pony and float.

A Tolkien Treasure Trove

Apprentice Archivist: A

Tolkieniana April 2018

The picture shows a selection of books and games by or about Tolkien. The collection now has an apprentice archivist and curator, AHB. He has risen to the challenge and has been adding to the collection (as well as covering his bedroom walls with Middle Earth maps and memorabilia).

My own interest in Tolkien began was I was 11 years old and was inspired by my cousin, RW. In summer 1966, I came down to London from Warwickshire to spend a fortnight with my cousins who lived in a five bedroom council flat in Hampstead. RW was a fascinating man who left a lasting impression on me. He worked for St Dunstan's (helping blind servicemen) but had many, varied hobbies and interests (read, passions). These included:

• the study of Greek, Latin and (towards the end of his life) Hebrew; searching for ancient tomes in Portobello Road and in sundry antiquarian bookshops;
• amateur photography, developing prints in his own dark room at home;
• collecting tobacco pipes;
• musicology (he played the piano and was the only man I ever met who could hum a tune and accompany himself with his own whistle);
• theology, liturgy and all things related (he was a convert in the heyday of the 20th century Catholic renaissance)
• story-telling  (I still recall his tale of 'elementals' as we walked in the dark along the canal towpath from Hartshill to Mancetter.

His wife, Cecilia, was a cousin of my mother, both MacDonalds of Clanranald from Moidart. His children included:

• one daughter who married a South African concert pianist;
• a second who was a Latin scholar but whose dissertation at university was on Bossuet; she became a religious sister; 
• a third daughter who was a vivacious young rebel of the sixties;
• a son who had poems read on the BBC and was a humorist and story-teller;
• a second son who became a virtuoso on the recorder family of instruments. 

Vietnamese Ent (Surrey 2018)

Myeloproliferative Neoplasms

Diagnosis

On the 20th February 2018, I was diagnosed at my local hospital with a condition previously unknown to me. With reassuring smiles, the consultant revealed the results of various tests I had undergone over a number of weeks. The tension mounted as the knotty little drama moved towards its dénouement.

Finally, gulp, the moment of critical articulation arrived:


' ... myeloproliferative neoplasm....polycythaemia vera...'  

This was just as impressively imponderable and impenetrable as if Asclepius himself had appeared in person, Deus ex machina, and had intoned the terrible utterance in the Hittite tongue, before giving me cuneiform tablets.

Having heard the evidence and listened to the verdict, I now awaited the sentence.   

Dum spiro, spero, but....  

I (probably) have polycythaemia vera and it is (apparently) incurable. I took little consolation from learning that it is very rare: two in 100,000 (whatever that means).

It was a life sentence, but a life that would never be quite the same again. However, with suitable medication and a modified life-style, the life in question can continue, more or less, in the general direction of a normal term. 

«Ç'est la vie» (I suppose).

MPNs and PV

You should now be able to work out what 'MPN' and 'PV' stand for. MPNs are rare blood disorders related to leukaemia and are accordingly blood-related cancers. PV is an MPN characterised by overproduction in the bone marrow of red blood cells and blood platelets. The main risk of PV, if untreated, is thrombosis with minor inconveniences such as strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms.

Treatment

What I now take

Low dose aspirin and 500 mg of chemotherapy (taken orally) once a day.

What I now give

Blood. I have had two venesections to date. You probably thought that blood-letting was an ancient and barbaric practice, commemorated quaintly nowadays by the (surgeon) barber's stripy pole. Or it's Dracula and vampires. No - phlebotomy's got to be standard medical practice in the 21st century. Look it up.

Energy. Spruce, spritely and sprinterly is sometimes overtaken by slow, slothful and sluggish.

 

To be continued (Deo volente)

Welcome Post

BloorBooks

The aim of this site is to provide a showcase for words.

Much of the material is original or historical and has not been published previously. I hope the selection will resonate with family, friends and all those who love words, delight in history or enjoy surprises.


Comments are welcome. Please read the Comment Policy under the Contact tab..

Madonna and Child. Em c1989

The site is placed under the care of Mater Misericordiae and is dedicated to EEKPTEE and EA. Certain names have been encrypted to respect privacy and to avoid any embarrassment. 

This beautiful image of the Madonna and Child is by a young Em. I have also placed it in the banner.

Flos Carmeli (Flower of Carmel)

Sancta Maria

Flos Carmeli,

Vitis florigera

Splendor Coeli

Virgo puerpera

Singularis!

Mater mitis

Sed viri nescia

Carmelitis

Da privilegia

Stella Maris!

Ora pro nobis!

Here is a verse translation:

Holy Mary

Flower of Carmel,
Vine-blossom laden;
Splendour of Heaven,
Child-bearing yet maiden.
None equals thee.

Mother tender,
Who no man didst know,
On Carmel's children
Thy favours bestow.
Star of the Sea!

Pray for us!

Flos Carmeli. PB 1980s

The two Latin verses are the first of eight that are attributed to St Simon Stock (c1165-1265). He became prior of the new Carmelite monastery at Aylesford in Kent and was always reputed by Carmelites for his personal holiness and his devotion to Our Lady. His feast day is the 15 July. We used to  journey en famille by train and on foot to Aylesford in the 1980s.


I drew this image in the mid-1980s. It measures 26cms by 18 cms. The colours have faded somewhat with the passage of time. This adds, perhaps, to the case for a general Marian rerstoration.

Mein Kampf - version russe

An historical puzzle

Illustrated on the left is a small flip-book, measuring 5cms by 8cms, that I acquired in the early 1980s from a weekly book market that used to be held in Camden Passage, Islington. It has 24 leaves and a front cover bearing the following words:

Mein Kampf Version Russe

 Mein Kampf






VERSION RUSSE


DESSINS DE
R Michaury

MODÈLE DÉPOSÉ No 55
COPYRIGHT BY A. GENICOUD - A.MAILLET __THONON.



   

The first leaf has an image of Adolf Hitler on his own. Over the following pages, he is joined by Stalin who proceeds to boot him off the final page. When the pages are flicked, it produces the effect of a cartoon with moving images.

The artist and the publishers would appear to be French. Thonon is in the Haute Savoie department of Eastern France.  Does this, and the use of 'Version Russe', imply a French target audience? Was it produced after the opening of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 when Hitler's armed forces invaded the Soviet Union? Was it produced by the French Communist Party?


On the rear of the booklet is a faint entry in pencil that appears to read as follows:

Maly Ko??k
5 Maja 1949

One possibility is that Maly is the Polish word meaning 'Little', applied either to a child or to someone of diminutive stature. In that case, Maja would also be Polish and mean May. The word beginning with Ko and ending with K has five letters but is very difficult to decipher.

Your help in resolving the mystery of this little booklet would be greatly appreciated.

Latin O Level in 1970

Delighted to have found my Latin 'O' Level papers from 1970, I am posting some extracts for nostalgia's sake and to give modern students of Latin the chance to try their hand with questions from a different century. Comments are particularly welcome on the issue of whether the equivalent papers nowadays are very different  or even...um ...easier. The best answers will be published on the Blog.

Unseen: Latin to English

You have two hours for Paper 0.1.

Latin O Level 1970

1     Translate into ENGLISH:


(a) Tarquin, having seized the throne, throws King Servius down the Senate House steps and has him murdered.

ira commotus, Servius rogavit cur Tarquinius senatores convocavisset. se ipsum enim, non Tarquinium, regem populi Romani esse dixit. clamore tum orto, concursus populi in curiam erat. Tarquinius, qui aetate et viribus multo validior erat, necessitate iam eum ultima facere* cogente, Servium arripuit. celeriter eum a curia per gradus deiecit et ad senatores rediit. Servii amici comitesque, maxime territi, fugerunt. rex ipse, prope exsanguis**, ab eis qui a Tarquinio missi erant, captus et interfectus est. multi vero credunt iussis mulieris id factum esse.

[LIVY (adapted)]

 * ultima facere = to take extreme measures.

** exsanguis = unconscious
    

(b) Darius' plans to press on and surround the Macedonian enemy are partly thwarted by fear shown by some of his men.

Darius initio montes cum parte copiarum occupare constituit. prope mare quoque copias alias collocare voluit, ut hostes undique premeret. praeterea viginti milia militum praemissa cum sagittariis iusserat transire fluvium Pinarum, qui inter duo agmina fluebat, et aciem instruere contra Macedonum copias. si id agere non possent, debere eos in montes redire et clam circumire hostes dixit. sed fortuna, qua potentissima semper est, consilia eius impedivit. alii enim ob metum iussis parere non audebant, alii ea perficere conabantur sed frustra quod, ubi nonnulli timent, omnes turbantur. [QUINTUS Curtius (adapted)]

English to Latin

2    Translate into LATIN (candidates may combine the sentences into continuous prose if they wish): 

(a) Darius hoped to defeat the Macedonians between the mountains and the sea.

(b) He therefore sent many soldiers to that place to hold it against the enemy.

(c) But he was afraid that they would depart by another road and so escape.

(d) His scouts had not told him whether they were able to do this.

(e) So he decided to resist them with troops placed beyond the river.

(f) If these men had been willing to fight bravely, the enemy would certainly have been defeated.

Turning, twisting

Turning, twisting, curling, sliding,

Coiling, looping, stooping, gliding;

Burnished scales of steely shimmering,

Cold and smooth with golden glimmering.

Hard and steady is the gaze,

Bright his eyes with mesmer glaze;

Swift and silently he steals,

Quick the death he coolly deals.

More subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. Genesis 3, 1.

© PB c1982