Zerega on Horace: Carmina 1/11
Richard A Zerega: The Odes of Horace / Rendered Into English Prose (1924)
An illustration for: Nine Maxims On Translation
E Bruce Brooks / University of Massachusetts / 5 Dec 2002
Background: All Zeregas in the United States derive from the village of Zerega near Genoa, where their presence is documented since the 14th century. Richard Zerega was the grandson of shipping magnate Augustus Zerega (1803-1888) of the Red Z clipper line, and the son of John A. and Katherine Berry di Zerega (the noble "di Zerega" was one benefit of increasing success). He was born in New York in 1866. He attended St Paul's School, graduated from Harvard in 1887, and held the post of Assistant Paymaster in the US Navy during the Spanish-American War (1898) at the still young age of 32. Besides a position as vestryman of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, he was a member of the St James and Union Clubs of London. An older sister, Charlotte di Zerega, whose wedding to Sir Frederick Frankland in November 1890 was the social event of that London season, moved to Yorkshire with him and died only a year later, at the age of 26; a situation for the pen of a Howells or a James. At the time of his own death in 1956, at the age of 90, Richard Zerega was living at the Harvard Club of New York.
The epitaph on his tomb in the Augustus Zerega family plot reads "Justum et tenacem propositi virum." It is the first line of Carmina 3/3, and this line, in Richard Zerega's own translation, goes as follows:
"The passions of his fellow citizens, to measures base inciting, the threatening tyrant's visage, Auster, the restless Adriatic's boisterous lord, or the mighty hand of Jove the thunderer shake not from his steadfast determination the man who is just and in his resolution firm."
His translation of all the Carmina, plus the Carmen Saeculare, appeared in 1924, when he was 58, without fanfare and also without preface or other orientation save the subtitle, "Rendered Into English Prose."
[The elements of these translations corresponding to the Latin oppositis and pumicibus, which in the original are separated by the verb debilitat, are shown in red for easier technical comparison].
Carmina 1/11Thou shalt not seek to know, Leuconoe, for to know is a sin, what end the Gods may have allotted to thee, what end to me; nor shalt thou make trial of the Babylonian cyphers. How much better to endure aught that may happen, whether Jupiter has vouchsafed to us many a winter more, or whether this, which now shatters the Tyrrhenian Sea against porous cliffs, opposing, may be the last. Be wise, strain thy wines and within a restricted boundary great hopes confine. While we are now conversing, envious time is fleeting; enjoy the present day, trusting as little as possible to the morrow.
Zerega may well have known the Anonymous interlinear version. Compared to it, this modest effort registers some gains and a few losses. "End" (for finem), as allowing the implication "the way one dies" is less safe than Anonymous's "term," which rightly confines itself to the sense "how long one will live." Babylonian cyphers," however, is lovely for "Babylonios / . . . numeros," implying not merely astrological calculations, but the idea that there is a secret there to be decoded (Anonymous, less cogently, had "Chaldean tables"). In the 7th line, with which Anonymous struggled, Zerega has "within a restricted boundary." Though more wordy than spatio brevi, this avoids Porphyrio's ablative absolute interpretation, and does so more then 30 years before Hulton correctly explained the phrase (Classical Review ns v8, 1958; approved by Nisbet and Hubbard 1970). Perhaps in some future Horace commentary, Richard Zerega may be given credit for this little discovery.
I am grateful to Patricia, Michael, and Dennis Zerega for information about Richard Zerega.
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