a death scene today: Ilioneus

Ilioneus Statue (1850s copy after ancient greec original) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For a look at her translation practice here's Oswald 52-53, on the death of Ilioneus:

Ilioneus an only child ran out of luck

He always wore that well-off look

His parents had a sheep farm

They didn't think he would die

But a spear stuck through his eye

He sat down backwards

Trying to snatch back the light

With stretched out hands

I've bolded the parts that appear in the Greek.  Here's the Greek, with a literal translation - the bolded parts, in Greek, are translated by Oswald:

ὃ δ’ οὔτασεν Ἰλιονῆα

υἱὸν Φόρβαντος πολυμήλου, τόν ῥα μάλιστα

Ἑρμείας Τρώων ἐφίλει καὶ κτῆσιν ὄπασσε·

τῷ δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπὸ μήτηρ μοῦνον τέκεν Ἰλιονῆα.

τὸν τόθ’ ὑπ’ ὀφρύος οὖτα κατ’ ὀφθαλμοῖο θέμεθλα,

ἐκ δ’ ὦσε γλήνην· δόρυ δ’ ὀφθαλμοῖο διὰ πρὸ

καὶ διὰ ἰνίου ἦλθεν, ὃ δ’ ἕζετο χεῖρε πετάσσας

ἄμφω· 

"And he (Peneleos, a Greek) wounded Ilioneus, the son of Phorbas of the plentiful flocks, whom especially among the Trojans Hermes loved and granted possessions; to him his mother bore the single (child) Ilioneus.  Him then he wounded under the eyebrow down through the base of the eye, and drove out his eyeball; and the spear went first through the eye and through the nape of the neck, and he sat down, stretching out both his hands."

Cool things: 

1. switching object to subject (Ilioneus is the object of the Greek, in the accusative until the last phrase, but is the subject in Oswald). 
2. switching personal to impersonal: in the Iliad the important thing is who killed him (Peneleos); in Oswald that's elided, and the spear killed him by itself.  A move Oswald frequently makes, because "who killed him" is not important to Memorial as it is to the Iliad.
3. "μοῦνον" = "an only child".
4. "μάλιστα Ἑρμείας Τρώων ἐφίλει καὶ κτῆσιν ὄπασσε" (Hermes loved him and gave him stuff, the most of all the Trojans) = "he always wore that well-off look", but also.
5. "ran out of luck" - also a reference to Hermes, because a ἑρμαῖον is a "lucky find", a "thing sent by Hermes".  So Hermes loved his father, but eventually, he, or his father, ran out of Hermes.
6. ὃ δ’ ἕζετο χεῖρε πετάσσας ἄμφω gets amplified with "trying to snatch back the light", which then leads to the simile, which actually is fascinating, but this is enough for today.

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