Haltern am See is a German town nowhere near the sea. It sits instead on the Lippe River, a tributary of the Rhine navigable by boat some distance to the east. Just outside the modern town are the remains of a Roman fort that dates to around the year zero. The fort was placed so that it could easily be supplied from the river.
Yes, I know there was no year zero. Why are you such a pedant?
The site has been subject to excavation for decades, and archaeologists think it was built during the Roman attempt to conquer Germania between 12 BC and 16 AD. As you can see, the gate has been reconstructed.
There are reenactors, and others.
This was a large complex of buildings, as shown on a model in the local Roman museum.
Most of the archaeological finds at the site have come from a large cemetery.
Nearby is this strange statue, which seems to be titled
Der gescheiterte Varus. Not sure how one would render
the failed Varus in idiomatic English. Perhaps
The Defeated Varus, or
Varus Haunted by Failure? Or maybe the intent is,
Varus' Zombie Stalking the Dreams of Augustus?
The find I want to write about was made in 2019. It came, not from a formal grave, but from a ditch. As you can see, it included not just the
Pugio itself but a nearly complete belt. Nobody knows what it was doing in the ditch. It emerged from the ground as a lump of rust and metal that took 18 months to dissect and conserve.
But what an amazing object it is.
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Nearby is this strange statue, which seems to be titled Der gescheiterte Varus. Not sure how one would render the failed Varus in idiomatic English. Perhaps The Defeated Varus, or Varus Haunted by Failure? Or maybe the intent is, Varus' Zombie Stalking the Dreams of Augustus?
ReplyDeletePerfectly fine and serviceable translations. But while "defeated", "failed", etc, fit the grammatical structure and the modern usage of the word, I often find that in translation, retracing the etymology can offer up other options which sometimes better capture the feeling in the differing language.
Scheitern; schīt; schīze; *skittjā; *skiti; *skītiz/*skītaz - thousands of years worth of words that all essentially boil down to our English "shit" (all derived from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "to split", "to divide", with cognates of all sorts obvious to us).
Now, if we follow the grammatical structure of German, and go back to this literal earlier etymological meaning rather than the broader, more figurative modern usage, "Der gescheiterte" is arguably equivalent to "The Shitted" or similar.
But to an English ear, that sounds stilted and odd - in large part because we tend to use more adjectival forms rather than past participle forms. Thus, "The Shitty" sounds instantly better to us, despite not really matching the original grammar (and despite feeling a bit informal).
However, if we're going for something that sounds more like a title for a sculpture - particularly something relating to Roman Antiquity, I feel that in English we'd tend to invoke Latinate forms, and end up with something like "The Excremental", "The Fecal", etc.
Honestly, "The Feculent Varus" sounds just about right to my mind.
It goes beyond him simply "failing" or being "defeated", and it captures the essence of his failure being so great that it is considered repulsive or detestable, and by extension, he being so himself as well.
It wasn't just that he blundered; it's that he never succeeded in anything of note ever. It wasn't just that he could been seen as worthless; it's that he would have actually been less than worthless - his simply never having existed would have been a preferable outcome, if the Roman legions had their druthers after the fact. He was existential waste.
He wasn't just unsuccessful - he was shit. Der gescheiterte Varus.