Would someone like to do a Latin to English translation of Leonado Bruni’s “De Militia”? It’s a 20 page essay from mid-15th century Florence, extolling the militia as the best defense of a free city-state. I can send you the original Latin text, which has been cleaned up so it’s in easily-read printed format, rather than the specialized medieval Latin script. This would be a useful addition to modern knowledge of the Renaissance’s militia philosophy. Currently, the only extended English translations of Italian Renaissance writings on the militia are texts by Machiavelli.
The translation will be published on my website, and an excerpt will appear in a forthcoming book. (I post an announcement about that book in a few weeks.) Of course you’ll receive formal credit for the translation, thus garnering fame and honor, if not fortune.
If you’re possibly interested, but don’t want do to all 20 pages, then it might be possible to pick the shorter passage for the book, and just translate that. However, you would still have to read the whole essay, so we could work together to pick the best excerpt.
Please contact me via the e-mail address supplied on the lower right-hand column of my website.
MLS says:
An English translation of Bruni’s De militia by Gordon Griffiths has been available since 1987. It can be found in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts, Translated and introduced by Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins and David Thomson, Binghamton, New York 1987, pp. 107-111, and pp. 127-145.
[DK: Super!! Thankyou very much.]
July 31, 2010, 6:05 pmBrian says:
Want someone to mow your law, too? But I guess that’s not all fancy and intellectual and stuff.
July 31, 2010, 6:50 pmFredosaurus Rex Friday XIII says:
Will I get credit in his book?
July 31, 2010, 7:06 pmCornellian says:
Want someone to mow your law, too?
I can think of quite a few laws I’d like mowed.
July 31, 2010, 7:15 pmathEIst says:
original Latin text, which has been cleaned up
Who did the cleaning up? I don’t know about medieval script but the Romans used all upper or all lower case, ran their words and sentences together, and there was NO punctuation. Cleaning that up is almost harder than the translation.
July 31, 2010, 8:42 pmdaedalus says:
Don’t you mean to say, athEIst,
IDONTKNOWABOUTMEDIEVALSCRIPTBUTTHEROMANSUSEDALLUPPERORALLLOWERCASERANTHEIRWORDSANDSENTENCESTOGETHERANDTHEREWASNOPUNCTUATION
July 31, 2010, 9:01 pmathEIst says:
GOOD!
July 31, 2010, 9:13 pmIf I hadn’t just said it and it were in Latin, it would be hard to read.
JK says:
It’s interesting to see the collectivist spirit come out when the libertarian’s interest will benefit from it.
July 31, 2010, 9:52 pmFredosaurus Rex Friday XIII says:
What “collectivist spirit” are you talking about?
July 31, 2010, 10:38 pmbee says:
If one is interested in Bruni’s De Militia, I’m not sure how one misses this the first time round.
July 31, 2010, 10:41 pmFreddy Hill says:
Well, thank you daedalus. If it hadn’t been for your contribution I would have never known that Volokh’s blogging software is actually smart enough to show a horizontal scroll bar when the word is too long to fit into a single line. Cool!
July 31, 2010, 11:05 pmdaedalus says:
GOSHFREDDYHILLYOURESOWELCOME
August 1, 2010, 1:14 amCliveStaples says:
To use an example from my Koine Greek class:
ISEEABUNDANCEONTHETABLE
August 1, 2010, 1:26 amdaedalus says:
Clive,
August 1, 2010, 2:15 amARETHEREALOTOFMEATSANDOYSTERS?
Alessandra says:
The problem is they keep growing back.
August 1, 2010, 3:37 amApperception says:
straw men are fun
August 1, 2010, 7:20 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Straw women’d be even more fun… howcome there aren’t any straw women, anyway?
August 1, 2010, 7:26 ambeamish says:
It would have been fun to do a prank translation of the text:
August 1, 2010, 8:59 amsubpatre says:
See also:
August 1, 2010, 10:38 amCharles C Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence: the “De Militia” of Leonarado Bruni (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1961)
ray bolger says:
There are plenty of strawwomen, persons, and they come in straight, gay, flexible, bent, crazy and “working girl” configurations.
August 1, 2010, 10:41 amSven the Bjarking Dog says:
-he meant “maw”, I’m sure he did.
August 1, 2010, 11:26 amJK says:
Fair enough
It’s a matter of anatomy, it’s just easier to make a straw penis. That’s just a fact.
August 1, 2010, 12:19 pmHenny says:
But straws have openings on both ends (else they wouldn’t work.)
August 1, 2010, 12:27 pmSven the Bjarking Dog says:
That’s why the straw man makes a dandy costume because straw men have …holloweenies.
August 1, 2010, 2:54 pmbenjamin says:
Senex marcus habet fundum, i-ae-i-ae-o
August 2, 2010, 1:11 amIn hoc fundo habet porcum, i-ae-i-ae-o
Oinc oinc hic et oinc oinc illic et
oinc oinc ubique ubique oinc oinc
Senex marcus habet fundum, i-ae-i-ae-o
Alessandra says:
This is so cute! I have seen some barely creative books for teaching Latin to children, but I had never seen Old Mac in Latin. And one of my favorite children’s songs, too…
(could you translate “100 bottles of juice on the wall,” please? :-)
I use “juice” because it’s for kids)
August 2, 2010, 2:12 amBama 1L says:
The Romans had good ideas but had no concept how to put them in easy-to-read format. Of course, on the one hand literacy was not widespread and, on the other, you had specialists (often slaves) to read for you, so it did not really matter.
Carolingian monks, whose Latin was not quite perfect but who had to do their own reading and were not as hyperspecialized, introduced useful things like variation of case, spacing between words, and punctuation. Italian humanists’ textual renaissance consisted largely of editing (in the sense of reconciling divergent manuscript traditions) Latin and Greek texts and recopying them according to the best Carolingian practices. The printed book was invented about that time. In turn, the best modern typesetting practices are based on the earliest books; it is suprising how modern fifteenth-century books look in terms of typeface, proportion of text to page, etc.
August 2, 2010, 6:30 pmbenjamin says:
Unfortunately, that, along with Gallia in tertia partes est and “hic ego multas puellas fuensti” is one of the few things I remember from my five years of Latin, although one of my instructors, along with the “Old MacDonald” above, gave us White Christmas and a couple of other songs (for pronunciation purposes).
He also gave me a copy of “House on Pooh Corner” in Latin, “Winnie ille Pu.”
August 2, 2010, 10:15 pmAuf Klarung says:
The Cat in the Hat has been translated into Latin. Just Google it.
August 3, 2010, 11:29 amSlocum says:
It’s interesting to see the collectivist spirit come out when the libertarian’s interest will benefit from it.
I know it’s only an offhand comment, but it still amazing to me how profoundly modern liberals misunderstand the classical liberal tradition. Free individuals trading and cooperating for mutual benefit is not ‘collectivism’. From the very first sentence of the collectivism wiki:
Libertarianism very definitely emphasizes human interdependence (e.g. I, Pencil), but it absolutely rejects giving ‘priority to group rights over individual rights’.
August 4, 2010, 8:52 amEnglish Translation says:
Great idea! Love seeing a creative mind work and gain success!!!!!! Hope it continues to grow!
August 28, 2010, 4:51 pm