Comment I placed on the wall of my friend Robert Carraher who I learned had died this morning of the cancer he had been battling for a year. Robert has been a wonderful Facebook friend as well as a fellow Veteran. I will miss his wit and wisdom sorely. multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus Carried through many nations and over many seas, advenio has miseras frater ad inferias I arrive, brother, for these wretched funeral rites ut te postremo donarem munere mortisso that I might present you with the last tribute of death et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem and speak in vain to silent ash, quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsumsince Fortune has carried away from me you in the flesh. heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi Alas, poor brother, unfairly taken away from me, nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentumnow in the meantime, nevertheless, these things which in the ancient custom of ancestors tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias are handed over as a sad tribute to the rites accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu receive dripping much with brotherly weeping. atque in perpetuum frater ave atque vale And forever, brother, hail and farewell. The funerary speech of the poet Catullus for his brother lost in the Punic wars.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 20:40:02 +0000