Griffith's Manner on RV.61.5-9

[Valerie J Roebuck]

Jaekwan Shim writes:

>A professor make a joke that the stanza is too obscene to translate, but
>seriouslly, was it a usual manner to do this in his days?
>Any antiquus can guess or read his mind?

I don't think the professor was joking!

When I was doing Classics at school in the 60s, the "rude bits" in English
translations of Greek authors were in Latin.  The "rude bits" in Latin
authors were in Italian!  (And in English text-books, the Fool's bawdier
jokes were removed from "King Lear".)  These were old text-books, and by
that date such practices were already considered rather funny.

If nothing else, I suppose it was an incentive to improve our knowledge of
languages.

Valerie J. Roebuck,
Manchester, UK