I've recently been keeping up with my Latin by reading Cicero's
Second Speech Against Catiline and it has reminded me how one cannot get the same feeling, which Cicero wanted the Senate to see, when his speech is read in English. So much more meaning and irony bleeds through when you read it in the Latin. Here's an excerpt for you to translate. My humble translation and notes are below the excerpt. Cicero brings me such joy (although I must admit that sometimes he reminds of Obama)!
Hesterno die, Quirites, cum domi meae paene interfectus essem, senatum in aedem Iovis Statoris convocavi, rem omnem ad patres conscriptos detuli: quo cum Catilina venisset, quis eum senator appellavit? quis salutavit? quis denique ita aspexit ut perditum civem, ac non potius ut importunissimum hostem? quin etiam principes eius ordinis partem illam subselliorum, ad quam ille accesserat, nudam atque inanem reliquerunt.
Hesterno die - yesterday
interfectus essem - subjunctive with "cum" to denote time
ut - as
Literary Love: Notice that in the last sentence (and one can only do this in Latin) "nudam atque inanem" agrees with "partem illam subselliorum" but the Latin listener would hear "ille accesserat" before "nudam atque inanem." He wants everyone in the room to feel that not only the benches/seats are empty but also Catiline himself. His "principes" have abandoned him. Don't you just love the bluntness of the great Latin rhetor!
My translation (even though it seems a little choppy, I believe a more "to the letter" translation is better.):
Yesterday, Quirites, when I almost had been murdered in my own house, I called together the senate in the temple of Stator Jove, I reported all this to the conscript fathers: whither he had come with Catiline, which senator called out to him? Who hailed him? Who finally thus looked at him as a destructive citizen, and not rather as a most unbridled enemy? Nay more even the princes of his order
(interesting choice of words) abandoned that part of the benches - naked and also empty - towards which that guy had ascended (perhaps Cicero pointed theatrically in Catiline's direction).
P.S. - If anyone would like for me to write some fun little stories in Latin just let me know!
Eheu! Caput cognoscet malum militem et mallet cognoscere bonum, qui vigilat.
