Noli Pugnare duobus
English translation: do not fight the two of them
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| 06:51 Nov 16, 2013 |
| Latin to English translations [PRO] General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters / Poetry | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Charles Davis Spain Local time: 06:51 | ||||||
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| 4 +5 | do not fight the two of them |
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Answers
46 mins confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +5
peer agreement (net): +5do not fight the two of them Explanation: This one really depends on the context in which it is being quoted, and whether the person quoting it is aware of the context in which it occurs in Catullus, Carmen 62. It comes at the end of that poem, in a passage addressed to a maiden regarding marriage. "Duobus", the two, refers to her parents: it is telling her not to resist her parents' wishes, because her virginity is not wholly her own: "uirginitas non tota tua est, ex parte parentum est, tertia pars patrest, pars est data tertia matri, tertia sola tua est: noli pugnare duobus, qui genero suo iura simul cum dote dederunt. " Your maidenhead is not all your own; partly it belongs to your parents, a third part is given to your father, a third part to your mother, only a third is yours; do not contend with two, who have given their rights to their son-in-law together with the dowry." http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/062.html (Catullus, Carmen 62, lines 62-65). This is a fairly literal translation. Sir Richard Burton put "stint thee to strive with the others" http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin///ptext?doc=Perse... Here's an anonymous translation which reads "do not fight them both" http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/consortium/ancientweddingscat62.... But here it is translated much more freely (by Peter Wigham) as "incline then to their will" http://books.google.es/books?id=6v23i9HMoB0C&pg=PA290&lpg=PA... (p. 135) So it's probably being quoted non-contextually, to mean as you say: do not fight two opponents (at once), but if it's being quoted contextually, it would mean "do not oppose your parents' will". See also here, where it is quoted as a free-standing proverb and explained grammatically: http://latinviaproverbs.blogspot.com.es/2010/07/duo.html The use of the dative in "duobus" is also commented on here: http://books.google.es/books?id=YAe7RcmW6dgC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA... -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 5 hrs (2013-11-16 12:05:18 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- No one seeing this in isolation would guess that it meant "obey your parents" unless they knew the Catullus poem well. It seems very likely that it's being quoted in your source in the sense you've deduced: don't take on two opponents at once. Here's a source in which it's translated in context as "Fight not then two to one", which sums it up pretty well. http://202.41.82.144/rawdataupload/upload/0104/946/TXT/00000... -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 5 hrs (2013-11-16 12:11:10 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- And it's true that the "two against one" idea is there in the original (two parents vs. one daughter), so it's not unreasonable. An accurate general-purpose version would probably be do not fight two opponents or do not take on two opponents. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 5 hrs (2013-11-16 12:11:30 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- As you said! |
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