In the cover image for this course, we can see François Bucher’s The Secret Message. The 18th century Rococo artist Bucher has created a pastoral image that recalls (perhaps) Horace’s epistle very differently conceived (the reason why it is the cover image for this course).
Boucher’s paintings are inspired by classical subjects. It is not inconceivable that Horace’s letter played some inspiration here (of course, crumbling shrines in idyllic settings run rampant through 18th century French art, so…)
Horace composes his letter to his close friend Aristius Fuscus, while sitting behind a crumbling shrine of the goddess Vacuna : post fanum putre Vacunae. Vacuna is an appropriately local deity (Livy mentions her shrine in a list of those struck by lightning: aedem…Vacunae in Sabinis. Ovid mentions her in the Fasti in the passage devoted to Vesta. (Her name has been connected to *vac: empty, but perhaps we should see her, as Ovid might be suggesting, as a Sabine hearth goddess.) The image we have before us is quite different indeed.
Your assignment for Friday is to write about this image (minimum 150 words). Some ideas:
- describe the image, or a part of the image
- imagine what is happening
- what is in the letter?
- what is the woman feeling?
- why is the woman here? is she hiding?
- where is this scene?
- what is on the relief? why?
AS ALWAYS, use Smith and Hall, Lewis and Short, the Morgan-Owens Lexicon, a grammar and your best proofreading eyes!
Don’t use res when what you really mean in the indefinite neuter plural.
No excuse for:
- adjectives that don’t agree with their nouns (-2)
- verbs that don’t agree with their subjects (-2)
- adverbs tacked randomly at end of sentences (-1)
- word order that shows you just word for word translated (-1)
- words that are not Latin (-3)
Suggestion: be simple! Figure out what you can say in Latin!
