So was he a gay?

I actually just got it as a surprise gift, It's very intimidating, but I flipped through a few pages and there's a section on Lycanthrope, so there's that.

Your OP question comes across as homophobic, in particular given that usage of the indefinite article. Aside from that, you give no reason why this merits a discussion here, mainly because it doesn't.

are you a gay

oh jeez, here come the fun police, coming to lock me up. you'll never take me alive, fucker!

So I take it you haven't actually READ it either, OP. Has ANYONE here read the damn thing?

Of course not, It's the end boss of Lit. No one's read it.

I read it all the time, especially on the toilet, but I just read random sections and have never even tried to sit down and read it through. It's one of my favorite books.

What makes you think he was gay? I don't think there's much indication one way or the other. He writes about heterosexual love, and he criticizes homosexuality and pederasty graphically (though in my edition the gay parts are in untranslated Latin).

Every author who doesn't get married, fags think he's a gay. You people are worse than my older female relatives.

what makes you think he's not gay? Let me enjoy my fantasies, user, all you fuckers trying to ruin my fun.

Not relating to this thread, but I like how millennials like to reveal someone as gay in order to discredit his opinion, yet laud homophilia as this orientation that is just as good and normal.

look at that face though, doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about him getting ploughed by a big dong?

What the hell is wrong with you?

Who does this and isn't playing around? OP has made it clear he is joking. I'm surprised how many butthurt responses he's gotten.

Why is it not PC to ask if this guy is gay? It's a legitimate question. If you are familiar with his book or his biography, why not give us some info?

Because that's degenerat :-(

you. i like you. apparently there's a quite nice conversation about him and his work on "in our time", here's the link if you're interested!
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010y30m

I have been meaning to...

Here's the nasty bit, translated just for you, friend. Third Partition, Mem. 1, Sec. 2, Subs. 2, now for the first time in English

Semiramis coupled with a horse, Pasiphae with a bull, Aristo of Ephesus with an ass, Fulvius with a she-horse, others with dogs, goats, etc. whence monsters are sometimes born, Centaurs, Sylvans, and prodigious spectres that terrify men. Some have to do not with beasts, but with other men, which is commonly called the sin of Sodomy; and it was once a common fault among the Orientals, and certainly among the Greeks, Italians, [North] Africans, and Asians: Hercules had Hylas, Polycletus, Diones, Perthoon, Abderus and Phryx; others say Euristius was loved by Hercules, too. Socrates would go to the crowded gymnasium on account of the handsome youths, and feasted his eyes on a disgraceful spectacle, of which the Platonic dialogues, the rivals Philebus and Phaedo, Charmides, and the rest of them, bear more than sufficient witness: I am repulsed by what Alcibiades says of the same Socrates, and gladly pass it by in silence: it provides such a goad to lust. But Theodoretus grazes this story of Alcibiades, lib. de curat. Grac. affect. cap. ultimo. Indeed, Plato himself loved Agathon, Xenophon loved Clinias, Virgil Alexis, Anacreon Bathyllus. I would rather you seek from Petronius, Suetonius, and others, what has been handed down concerning Nero, Claudius, others' unnatural lust, since it surpasses belief; but we are complaining of ancient matters. This sin is common among the Asians, Turks, and Italians now than it ever was; the Diana of the Romans is Sodomia; in some places among the Turks there are whole offices of this sort of men, who "consign their seed to the stones", plowing sand; and there are frequent complaints about this affair, even between spouses, "and the women indicate the illicit coitus of their husbands to the magistracy by turning their shoe the opposite way." There is no sin more familiar among the Italians, who defend themselves in written volumes, e'en after Lucian and Tatius. John de la Casa, bishop of Benevento, calls it a holy work, a sweet crime, and further brags that he uses no other Venus. Nothing is more common among monks, cardinals, priests, and this furor leads even to death, and insanity. Angelus Politianus killed himself from love for a boy. And it is horrible to say, how much this unholy sin flourished among us even in our fathers' time. When, in the year 1538, "the most wise king Henry VIII caused to be visited the monasteries, and colleges of priests, by the venerable Doctors of Law Thomas Lee, and Richard Layton, etc, so many male prostitutes, pretty boys, debauchees, pederasts, homosexuals, pedophiles, Sodomites, and Ganymedes were found among them, that in any one monastery or convent you would have thought you had found a new Gomorrha." See, if you like, the full catalog of them in Baleus.

That's enough for one day, I'll post more tomorrow if the thread is still up

sounds like a sophisticated man locked deep in the closet. i bet he dreamed of hambones sounding his shovelcock.

(thanks for this btw, really neat)

This is awesome, my edition definitely doesn't have it translated, did you really translate this yourself?

Yeah man, it is quick and dirty though with some errors, "monastery or convent" should be "monastery or college", there are other minor errors too.

That's very impressive, I gotta say. When did you learn latin? How? Lemme guess, hard work and a touch of natural talent. I was pretty psyched when I got it but was crestfallen to see how much of it was in latin, I've wanted to learn for quite some time, but never had the wherewithal to buckle down and do it. Any tips would be much appreciated!

Nothing too impressive man, it's just a language, albeit not the easiest. I started taking it in CC when I was 16 on a whim, loved it and majored in Classics at a 4-year. I will say I had to move beyond the class and do more than was required to get a good grade, to get halfway decent at reading it. I don't know if my school had mediocre students, or if it's like this everywhere, but at graduation only one or two other people actually had a relatively comfortable reading knowledge of the language, though everyone got good marks.

I am a very big advocate of Orberg as a learning method, supplemented with the grammar booklets. Orberg is a series of Latin stories and starts with lots of illustrations to make the meaning of the Latin clear. So like the first few sentences are "Roma in Italiâ est. Italia in Europâ est. Roma et Italia in Europâ sunt." And from many sentences like this you learn that "in" + a noun in "a" = â, and that est is singular, sunt plural. You should memorize every word of the vocab, mutter paradigms until you can say them backwards in your sleep, and make sure you understand everything in one chapter before going on. This method gives you more reading practice than other books and so gives you a more intimate understanding of Latin grammar, so that you don't squint and decode every sentence, which besides being slow is difficult and no fun, but read it in its natural word order with something closer to ease and fluency. From Orberg you can do Vol II or read one of the easier prose authors, of which there are many. I would keep lists of every word I had to look up in a dictionary and go over them every morning while waiting for coffee etc. Even after doing this for years I still have to look up words more often than I'd like, but I have been slacking on the vocab lists the last couple of years.

Thank you for the advice, truly. I made this thread as a meme, but mostly to start people talking about the book, didn't expect it to be this rewarding. I'll have to look up Orberg. A long time ago I found two latin teaching primers from my great grandmother's belongings, and tried for weeks but couldn't break through without someone helping me along with the basics. I imagine all i might ever be able to do is read a few sentences or translate a vague meaning out of the root words i recognize. It seems like something I need to learn, maybe i should trust my demon and go for it eh?

You really should. It's not a matter of Hard Work, more perseverance. 20-40 minutes a day for two years will get you very far. And I've gone for months without even looking at Latin and I still more or less "learned it", I just got back to it and never completely gave it up.

Latin and Greek are magical languages to me. Every sentence is like opening a wrapped gift. Even a farming manual or a school-boy's commonplace book is fascinating to me as long as it's in one of the learned languages.

The girls (Baelus says) cannot even sleep in their beds on account of the necromantic monks. If these sins are committed by votaries and monks, holy chaps, what do you think happens in the forum, in the hall? What happens among the nobles, the brothels, which is not dirty, which is not filthy? I am silent about those mastrupations of monks, which cannot even be named, the masturbators. Roderick a Castro names them, as well as those who beat each other with flails to excite their Venus, and rent-boys, succubi, chicories, and those sluts with frisking limbs, who rub each other, and besides eunuchs, have artificial penises to excite them. And what you would marvel more, in Constantinople a woman loved a woman so much that she dared an incredible thing, and changing her garb lied that she was a man and spoke of marriage, and soon was wed: but refer to the author of this, Busbequius. I pass over those salt-cellar Egyptians who slept with the corpses of beautiful women; and their mad lust who even fall in love with idols and images. The story of Pygmalion in Ovid is well known; that of Mundus and Paulinus in Hegesippus, Belli Jud. lib. 2, cap. 4; Pontius, legate of Caesar, according to Pliny, lib. 35, cap. 3, whom I suspect is the same Pontius who crucified Christ, was so inflamed by pictures of Atalantas and Helen, that he would have wanted to remove them if the nature of the plaster allowed it.; another loved the statue of Bona Fortuna (Aelianus, lib. 9, cap. 37), another of the Bona Dea, and lest any part be free of sin, "he was dragged to his shameful activities by his libido and not even her mouth was free from his lust." Heliogabalus received pleasure through every cavity of his body (Lamprid. vita eius). Hostius made mirrors, and thus placed them, that when a man was having sex with him, he could see all the motions of his partner in the mirror, and would delight in the false size of his member in the mirror as if it was real, as he took on a man and woman at once, which is filthy and abominable to say. So that it is true what Gryllus objects to Ulysses in Plutarch: "Up to this day neither has man loved man, nor woman woman among us, though many memorable and famous men have done such things among you: to pass over the common people, Herculus, chasing after a beardless boy, abandoned his friends etc Your lusts cannot be kept within the bounds of nature, but like an overflowing river they beget a terrible filth, a tumult, and confusion of nature...

The certainly buttered his toast on both sides

KEK

the only thing this does is make me more and more hyped for The Anatomy of Melancholy, frankly.

He was probably just in the closet, OP.