[Aaron Poochigian]

Thanks, Andrew. I am glad you enjoyed it.

First, Latin strikes me as harder to translate even than Greek because it is even more compressed—no articles (definite or indefinite) and fewer prepositions than English. There is no way to reproduce that compression without using constant Tontoisms—such translations sound crude.

Second, the Love Elegists have their own amorous technical vocabulary that would be impossible to reproduce in English, and I hate resorting to footnotes and endnotes.

Third, I don’t think I would be able to reproduce Propertius’ tone in his most powerful passages—simultaneously highly artificial and perfectly earnest.

Also, there’s the problem of vocabulary—Latin has a much smaller vocabulary than Ancient Greek and English but, in compensation, individual words in Latin tend to have wider fields of meaning and more meanings. “Amor” in Latin can mean about a hundred different things. When I try to translate Latin, I go for the precise word in English, and the resulting translation just feels too different from the original.

Nah, I’ll leave Latin in Latin.