Juster and "Mad" Max
 

Hey, the openly pseudonymous Mike Juster's translation of Maximianus (the greatest poet you've never heard of) is out! http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15717.html

Max is lusty and cranky and dear to my heart.

Thanks, Aaron! For an obscure text, it has been going pretty well between The Millions making it one of its six February "must-reads" and hitting as high as #35 on the Amazon medieval literature charts.

It's expensive, but it is the kind of book bigger libraries buy (if you ask them).

The thought of the "Medieval Literature Charts" is highly amusing. This week will Chaucer at last unseat Beowulf as #1?

Max:

Aemula quid cessas finem properare senectus?
cur et in hoc fesso corpore tarda uenis?
solue precor miseram tali de carcere uitam:
mors est iam requies, uiuere poena mihi,
non sum qui fueram:

Envious old age, why do you hesitate to hasten my end? Why do you arrive slowly in this tired body? I beg you: release my wretched life from this prison-house. Death is now rest for me, to live is punishment.

I am not what I was.

I believe some of this was in Arion? Nice lines there.

Two links relevant to the quote just above (worry not, there's nothing in Latin, alas, alas):

https://hubpages.com/education/Old-Age-Aint-for-Sissies

https://hubpages.com/literature/Quotes-on-Aging