Authors Electric

We called them trots--or sometimes cribs: word-for-word translations we used in the study of Latin. And in a moment I'll tell you why you should give a rat's arse about that. Without a trot, who could survive the horror of translating Cicero, Caesar, Horace, and the other Dead White Dudes who made our days such nightmares?   The two most basic trots were from the Loeb Classical Library and Cambridge University Press. Loeb as shown below shows the original text on the left and a more or less literal rendition on the right. The Cambridge text beside it sheds detailed light on lines and even single words.    We could survive a course in Latin where all that really mattered were grammar and literal meaning. But to have a prayer of understanding the deepest meaning of any classic needed help from Cambridge and other first-rate trots. Which we had no time for then, no more than our instructors.     Okay okay already! What's trotting got to do with you in 2021?...