It’s a compilation of diary entries and deceptively deep snippets from Elspeth Marr, a Scottish woman who died in 1947 but left behind a wealth of good advice. So far, here’s my favorite:
Chastity: There is much talk of this, and great expectation placed upon a woman, none on a man, no more than if you would expect a bee to produce milk, or a cow honey. That is very well for the man, who is not expected to comprehend the secret of chastity. As for you, understand one thing: chastity is a spiritual, or at least a mental condition, not a physical one. You are not to confuse it with virginity. There is no better representation of this in literature than Mr. Hardy’s Tess, who loses her virginity but remains chaste to the end. Many’s the vile-minded virgin and chaste whore. Splendide mendax et in omne virgo nobilis aevum.
Any Latin majors? I got “False splendor something maiden noble old age.” Yeah. I am not a Latin major.
Here’s more on Aunt Epp.
I took Latin, but I’m having trouble with this. Doesn’t seem to be a verb?
Something about/the idea is: With the passage of time, all noble virgins take on a false splendor.
I think. In other words, don’t take your virginity into old age; you’ll seem splendid, but you really won’t be happy. I think.
That’s all I could get from it, and that was with using some probably-not-trustworthy Interweb sites. Thanks for this. The potential translation suits this book entirely.
I have always had a problem with the perverted social belief that Men can be promiscuous, which makes them a “Stud, ” but a women who is promiscuous is looked down on as being “unchaste,” or worse.
I never cared if my wife was a virgin when we were married. I only cared that she would love me ’till death do us part.
Google indicates it’s a quote from Horace, possibly translated as: Gloriously deceitful and a virgin renowned for ever.
I’m not sure I understand it, but it reminds me of something shocking a co-worker once told me. Before they married, he and his Catholic wife had done EVERY sexual act except intercourse, which allowed her to consider herself still technically a virgin. Surprised that I was shocked, he told me that “everything but” virgins were very common among his wife’s friends. (BTW, it had nothing to with the contraception prohibition, as she started the pill just before the wedding.)
I was left shaking my head on so many grounds: that such a technicality could possibly have any religious meaning, that she could convince herself that their behavior was chaste, that some of those acts are at least as intimate as intercourse …
Gina, that makes so much more sense!
My translation: Beautifully deceitful, but with nobility forever.
Conington translation of Horace: One only, trut to Hymen’s flame, was traitress to her sire forsworn “that splendid false lights her name through time unborn.”
Horace, “Odes,” iii., 11, 35, 36, eloquently says of Hypermnestra, the only daughter of Danaus who refused to murder her husband on the bridal night, after promising to do so that she was “Splendide mendax, et in omne virgo Nobilis aevum;” that is, “a virgin gloriously false to her promise, and illustrious to every age.”
Yeh! Jaysus, LaVonne, you sure sound like you know what you’re talking about, and I have just exposed yet another hole in my self-education — Latin/Greek/All that stuff, save for a little reading about the Vestal Virgins, because I kind of wanted to sign up.