|
|
|
Then came the rigid strength of steel and the shrill saw-blade (for primitive man was want to split his wood with wedges).
Tum ferri rigor atque argutae lammina serrae (nam primi cuneis scindebant fissile lignum).
Virgil, Georgics, Book I, lines 143 - 4, Trans. C. Day Lewis, The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, Anchor, Doubleday, New York, 1964
PLACE: Italy - Greece
TIME: Sometime before Virgil's day (ca. 70 B.C.)
CIRCUMSTANCE: The invention of the saw.
One farmer stays awake and splits up wood
For torches with his knife. And all the while
His wife relieves her lengthy task with song,
And runs the squeaky shuttle through the warp,
Or boils down sweetened wine-must over flame,
And skims with leaves the bubbling cauldron's wave.
Et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignis
pervigilat, ferroque faces inspicat acuto;
interea longum cantu solata laborem
arguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas,
aut dulcis musti Volcano decoquit umorem
et foliis undam trepidi despumat aeni.
Virgil, Georgics, Book I, lines 291-296, Trans. Smith Palmer Bovie, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956.
PLACE: Italy
TIME: Sometime before Virgil's day (ca. 70 B.C.)
CIRCUMSTANCE: Night sounds in the farmhouse.
home
