Πέμπτη 12 Ιανουαρίου 2017

First Translations

First Translations of Aristophanes plays from Greek to Latin.


The first Latin translation was that of Andreas Divus, published
without the Greek text at Basle in the year 1539. It was a translation of all the eleven Comedies into Latin prose. No doubt the translator expected by his laborious undertaking to earn the gratitude of all subsequent students of Aristophanes; but his translation has been everywhere received with a chorus of derision and abuse. This unfortunate venture was followed, towards the close of the sixteenth century, by two partial translations into Latin verse, both of remarkable excellence. Florent Chretien, the tutor of Henry IV of France, published the Wasps, the Peace, and the Lysistrata as separate plays. The original edition of the Peace, was published at Paris in the year 1589.  And in 1597 the Acharnians, the Knights, the Clouds, the Frogs, and the Plutus were published by Nicodemus Frischlin at Frankfort, in one volume, dedicated to the Emperor Rodolph II. 
Each translator gave the Greek text by the side of his translation, and in each version even the most complex choral odes are given in the identical metres of the Greek, with (especially in the case of Florent Chretien) extraordinary skill and felicity.
But the first complete edition of Aristophanes which contained a Latin translation of all the eleven plays was that of Aemilius Portus in 1607. He gave the verse translations of Florent Chretien and Frischlin, and for the three Comedies which they had left untranslated-the Birds, the Thesmophoriazusae and the Ecclesiazusae-the prose translation of Andreas Divus. 
This arrangement was continued in the editions known
as Scaliger's and Faber's  but in the latter was added the Ecclesiazusae with commentary and Latin prose translation by Le Fevre from whom the edition derives its name. And Andreas Divus was finally shelved by the translation or the Birds by Hemsterhuys and of the Thesmophoriazusae by Kuster. Kuster's own edition (in 1710) contained the eight verse translations by Florent Chretien and Frischliu and the three prose translations by Le Fevre, Hemsterhuys and himself. Bergler turned into excellent Latin prose the eight Comedies translated in verse by Florent Chretien and Frischlin; and his edition, published after his death by Burmann, was the first to contain a complete translation of all the eleven Comedies in Latin prose. 

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