Fantastic Blognanza!

Here are two things you might not know about me: first, that I’ve been a bit of a classics/Latin nerd (I’ve been in 8 years of Latin classes!). The second is that I love the Aeneid. There, I said it. So when I happen upon a t-shirt depicting a scene from the Aeneid, I just can’t help myself.

Laocoön and His Sons from James Anthony Apparel

If you’re unfamiliar, this detailed handprinted t-shirt design features, well… Laocoön and his sons. They’re getting devoured by two snakes while Laocoön tries to fend them off! Pretty gruesome, isn’t it? The print is actually of a sculpture that has a pretty interesting history of its own. If you like the design, you should check out James Anthony Apparel’s Etsy page for more styles and colors!

I’ll leave you with my own translation of the Laocoön passage, in which I try to emulate the meter of elegiac couplets and the onomatopoeia and ’surprise endings’ of the original Latin (what did I tell you about me being a nerd?):

Laocoön, selected as priest to Neptune by fortune,
was sacrificing, huge on dour altars, a bull.
Behold, however, twins from Tenedos through the sea tranquil,
(Recalling, I shudder) snakes winding with enormous coils;
they lean over the sea and stretch equal to shore,
whose stomachs tower between the waves and whose crests
bloody surmount the waves and the rest of their tails across the sea
behind them traverse; huge backs they wind with their folds.
There was the splash of the frothing sea; by now they have reached land.
Their burning eyes they suffused, possessing ichor and fire.
Hissing with sibilant tongues in their mouths they were licking.
Seeing them, we, bloodless, flee. They, with a certain driving,
Laocoön they assail, but first the small frames of his
two sons the serpents, after engirdling each
envelops and, biting the wretched boys, consume their joints.
Behind that, coming with help, Laocoön, brandishing spears
the snakes seize and bind him in their enormous coils; now
twice ringing his waist, twice ‘round his neck, lamellose
backs lying they overtop him with heads and lofty shoulders.
That man at once stretches out hands of his to rend their knots,
his fillets by now drenchèd with gore and black venom.
Forthwith trembling cries up to the heavens he lifts,
same as are bellowed when flees from the altar a wounded
bull, who shakes off from his neck axes uncertainly fixed.
But, to the highest temple the twin serpents, with gliding,
they slip away and seek the walls of savage Athen’.
Under the feet of the goddess and curve of her shield are they shrouded.

–Aeneid, II.201-227, my translation

If you want to read my theoretical background for the translation (or my analysis of Virgil’s use of Epicureanism in the Aeneid, which I suggest more highly!), let me know and I can email it to you!

Link: [Laocoön and His Sons from James Anthony Apparel]
Espensiveness: $22