Gladiatorial contests were admired and lauded by many as examples of martial skill and courage in the face of death and injury as well. — Ciceronianus the White

This reminded me of a couple examples Seneca gave in his Moral Letter 70:

Nuper in ludo bestiariorum unus e Germanis, cum ad matutina spectacula pararetur, secessit ad exonerandum corpus—nullum aliud illi dabatur sine custode secretum; ibi lignum id quod ad emundanda obscena adhaerente spongia positum est totum in gulam farsit et interclusis faucibus spiritum elisit. Hoc fuit morti contumeliam facere. Ita prorsus, parum munde at parum decenter.

“Recently at a game of gladiators fighting wild beasts, one of the Germans, while being prepped for the morning shows, withdrew to relieve himself—no other privacy would be given him without a guard present; there he stuffed the entire sponge-mop, which had been left to clean up excrement, into his throat, and by cutting off his breath, strangled himself. This was to insult death, and what’s more, not very cleanly and not very decently.” Again,

Cum adveheretur nuper inter custodias quidam ad matutinam spectaculum missus, tamquam somno premente nutaret, caput usque eo demisit donec radiis insereret, et tamdiu se in sedili suo tenuit donec cervicem circumactu rotae frangeret; eodem vehiculo quo ad poenam ferebatur effugit.

“When recently a certain gladiator sent to the morning show was being conveyed thither under guard, as though nodding off in sleep, he dropped his head so low as to insert it into the spokes of the chariot, and held himself fast in his seat until he broke his neck from the rotation of the wheel; he escaped his sentence by means of the same vehicle which conveyed him to it.”

This I, and Seneca, offer as rare examples of “courage in the face of death”.

Then perhaps if Simone Biles had killed herself rather than participate in events she thought she'd fail in, you'd find her less disappointing.

Then perhaps if Simone Biles had killed herself rather than participate in events she thought she'd fail in, you'd find her less disappointing. — Ciceronianus

Of course not, dear man! I simply wanted to show a side of gladiatorial combat that contrasts with your characterization of professional gladiators who could sometimes be like our “superstars of sports”.
The gladiators Seneca chose to exemplify courage were of the lowliest sort: those captured in war and forced to fight—most likely to the death.

The ancient philosophers, who were, of course, writing for aristocratic readers, had often to remind them of the knowledge of mere craftsmen, or the virtues of slaves; to broaden the perspective of those men into the larger sphere of humanity who tended to consider a man to be only a nobleman. Jesus does a similar sort of thing in the Gospels by contrasting a poor widow with the wealthy Jews casting their money into Jerusalem’s coffers, or comparing an harlot to the judges who would stone her.

In these examples Seneca was illustrating, of course, the stoic doctrine,

Fit via vi;

that a human being may choose to exit an unbearable life at any moment by killing himself, and that this the ultimate proof of freedom. This is not a modern sentiment, though suicide be as prevalent now as ever.

Biles herself, if I remember correctly, confessed to having had suicidal thoughts, and she made this confession in order to impress upon the public how burdensome her stellar athletic career had been—what a toll it had taken on her psyche. “You don’t know what we go through”, she said...

...well, it became too much for her. She didn’t commit suicide, but she withdrew from competition—and I wonder if what she said was true: that we don’t know what elite athletes go through. Maybe the pressure they experience is similar to that of a common working Joe who has divorced and lost custody of the kids and has to pay child support and suffers PTSD from his service and deals with a bickering girlfriend and ex-in-laws...etc, etc: in other words, the sort most likely to commit suicide.

Of course not, dear man! I simply wanted to show a side of gladiatorial combat that contrasts with your characterization of professional gladiators who could sometimes be like our “superstars of sports”.
The gladiators Seneca chose to exemplify courage were of the lowliest sort: those captured in war and forced to fight—most likely to the death. — Leghorn

The superstars were of course relatively few. They weren't as quick to bestow stardom as we are now.
I'd say that the gladiators referred to be Seneca killed themselves to avoid being slaves, performing like deadly dancing bears.

In these examples Seneca was illustrating, of course, the stoic doctrine,

Fit via vi;

that a human being may choose to exit an unbearable life at any moment by killing himself, and that this the ultimate proof of freedom. This is not a modern sentiment, though suicide be as prevalent now as ever. — Leghorn

Yes. As Epictetus put it (I think) that door is always open. Though both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius cautioned that suicide is an option one must consider under the guidance of Reason, and isn't to be sought by anyone foolishly--"like a Christian" as Marcus put it so suggestively, or words to that effect. I always think of Tertullian relating the incident where a group of Christians went to the house of a Roman official (I forget the rank of the official) demanding that he have them killed when I remember this comment by the Emperor.

But find multiple modern translations of the same original work and see by how much they differ! — tim wood

.

Yes, they differ widely, which is why you can’t trust them. But since sometimes you have no choice, it is best to rely on a good one, which must at least be literal. As you say,

Literal over literate, again pretty much agreed - maybe footnotes as needed. — tim wood

A good literal translation will have frequent footnotes to explain its deficiencies in certain passages. For example, the one drawback of the Vulgate in its translation of Greek words of the root porn-, is its translation of porne, which it regularly renders as “meretrix”, thusly disguising its affinity with the Roman family of words identified by the root forn-. Whenever this sort of thing occurs, a good Vulgate translation would annotate an explanation of this fact for the benefit of the Greek-less reader.

And to be sure, sometimes what works in another language is awful in English, so literate is not altogether ruled out. — tim wood

Well, a translation must be literate in the sense of understandable. If the translation is so literal that it is incomprehensible, then literalness has been taken too far.

Nevertheless, I think the translator—having warned the reader that his is a literal translation, and that it may therefore be somewhat clunky and idiosyncratic—might expect him to make the extra effort necessary to read it...

I was reading today some encomiums of Shakespeare by poets of his day. One of them, by a certain L. Digges, begins thusly:


“To the Memory of the deceased Author, Master W. Shakespeare.

Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellows give / The world thy works; thy works, by which outlive / Thy tomb thy name must:...”


Digges violently shifts the regular order of English parts of speech in this verse—but context clears it all up for the reader willing to make the effort, who after thinking hard enough, realizes that what is meant is, “...thy works, by which thy name must outlive thy tomb.” Undoubtedly Digges, like all learned men of that day, was familiar with Latin verse and prose, to whose idioms he adapted his verse for metrical reasons...

And this is English, our native language! Sometimes we must as though translate our own language when it is so old that it has become like a foreign one. If we must sometimes do this for our native language, how hard could it be to decipher a literal translation of a foreign one?

Finally, let me offer what I think is perhaps the greatest virtue of a translation: that it most encourage the reader to learn the original. I think the best translation reminds its reader at every sentence that he is not reading the original; that that original lies, like a palimpsest, right behind his words.

I always think of Tertullian relating the incident where a group of Christians went to the house of a Roman official (I forget the rank of the official) demanding that he have them killed when I remember this comment by the Emperor. — Ciceronianus

Yes, Christians, especially early ones, could be irrational fanatics (as a zealous adherent to any religion can be).

For example, I remember reading somewhere that, based on Matt. 19:1-12, some early Christians surgically neutered themselves, misinterpreting the crucial twelfth verse:

“For there are eunuchs which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are eunuchs, which were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”

Now, just previously in this passage, Jesus had condemned divorce almost categorically, and had widened the concept of adultery so broadly, that his disciples exclaimed it wasn’t worth getting married at all if a man was thusly to become chained forever to an unendurable wife.

From this context I think we can interpret the twelfth verse: the eunuchs born from their mother’s womb are the homosexuals; those eunuchs made so by men are the traditional ones, to which we customarily apply the term “eunuch”, whose testicles have been removed; and “those which make themselves eunuchs” are not those who cut their own balls off, but rather men, though naturally inclined toward women, nevertheless, for some greater cause, resist coitus with them.

And we must ask of Jesus why a man cannot satisfy both needs simultaneously: those of his body and those of his soul. I think he would reply that love of a woman leads to marriage and children, and that these things beget lowly common cares that contend with the rare and lofty ones of the soul, perhaps eventually overtaking and burying them. Only look at Jesus’ own life: he didn’t marry, begat no children, and constantly consorted with a small group of men whom he tried to teach, and whom he exhorted to a higher life of the spirit which required the practice of most austere discipline.

Well, who knows? Perhaps Jesus was referring to the galli, who castrated themselves as part of the worship of Cybele and her consort Attis. Probably not, though; at least it's not an interpretation Christians would favor. But then one wouldn't think the worship of Magna Mater would have been accepted by the Senate of Rome, but it was.

Another possibility is that, since he urged one to cut off his right hand if it offend him, Jesus was being literal in suggesting that one castrate himself...

...except for the fact that I suspect it likely impossible to castrate yourself!...perhaps only a surgeon could clear this up.

@Ciceronianus Vide supra.

Btw, weren’t you previously known by the cognomen, “The White”? Why, if I may inquire, did you drop it?

Btw, weren’t you previously known by the cognomen, “The White”? Why, if I may inquire, did you drop it? — Leghorn

I was Ciceronianus in the old PF, and when that ended and the new version began I decided I would return as "the White" as a kind of homage to Tolkien. But I tired of that designation, and am not a wizard in any case, though I think I am a Ciceronian. For me, to be one isn't as distressing as it apparently was to St. Jerome.

If I recall correctly, there are brown wizards in Lord of The Rings, so you could be Ciceronianus the Brown, though in Tolkien’s world that would be a demotion from white. Funny how that works.

Yes. There was Radagast the Brown, in any case. There were also a couple of "Blue Wizards" who it seems went to the east of Middle Earth but Tolkien doesn't say much of anything about them.