Dressing up sheep and so forth

[quislibet]

Because our journal's website contains a mention of the writer Macrobius, we received an e-mail message from some Dutch guy asking, could we provide for him an English translation of such-and-such a Macrobius passage so he can use it in his book about an old Dutch saga concerning men who dress up their sheep as a child to avoid livestock taxes?

(Presumably there's more to the "saga" than that, but I can't be sure.)

Google searches reveal that the man is active in Ace-of-Bass fandom.

I'd help the guy out, but no English translation exists online, and I'm not going to pop over to the library and type it out for him.

Maybe I will send him the Latin -- Macrobius, Sat. 1.6.30:

Tremellius vero Scropha cognominatus est eventu tali. Is Tremellius cum familia atque liberis in villa erat. Servi eius, cum de vicino scropha erraret, subreptam conficiunt: vicinus advocatis custodibus omnia circumvenit, ne qua ecferri possit: isque ad dominum appellat restitui sibi pecudem. Tremellius, qui ex vilico rem conperisset, scrophae cadaver sub centonibus conlocat super quos uxor cubabat: quaestionem vicino permittit. Cum ventum est ad cubiculum, verba iurationis concipit: nullam esse in villa sua scropham nisi istam, inquit, quae in centonibus iacet: lectulum monstrat. Ea facetissima iuratio Tremellio Scrophae cognomentum dedit.

It's about how some guy named Tremellius obtained the nickname "Sow" by hiding his neighbor's dead pig under his wife's bed and then telling the neighbor, who had come seeking the pig, that the only sow he had was the one lying in the bedroom. But don't ask me to translate it fully because I'm just not going to do it.

A couple of weeks ago, I may have mentioned, a grad student wrote us asking for a copy of an article we published. As his university library subscribes to the journal, we politely suggested he copy it himself, and, moreover, that if he provided us with a mailing address we'd be happy to send him a back-issue order form. Haven't heard from him, though.

[Update: Well, the boss thinks, no harm in helping Ace-of-Bass guy, so he's going to bring the translation from home and I'll have to type it, alas. And then we'll mail him an information packet with subscription form.]

Comments

[canonfire.livejournal.com]

Ea facetissima iuratio Tremellio Scrophae cognomentum dedit. and that was that.

That's a fucking weird story.

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

It is.

And you'd think the result would be his *wife's* being called Scropha. But it's probably best for their marital harmony that such was not the case.

[canonfire.livejournal.com]

probably so. there does seem to have a Metamorphoses weirdness to it, too. no?

[frederic.livejournal.com]

What I do with the plethora of reprint request forms is take a few minutes to see if google can provide me their email address and I send them the PDF. More minutes if they're from eastern Europe. Less if they're at a major university with probable access. If this fails, I do what old boss recommends to do first which is just pitch it in the can.