So Many Fires

Sometimes a phrase and its translation are so beautiful it stops the reading eye in its tracks. In bed last night, whispering Pliny aloud, I ran across one such happy marriage.

Tot locis, tot incendis rerum natura terras cremat. Natural History, book 2

The translation? “In so many places and by so many fires does Nature burn the countries of the earth.”

That’s fucking gorgeous, the Latin rolls off the tongue, the English is fantastic too, and it’s also a perfect epigraph for the epic fantasy I’m working on now. The deep abiding satisfaction of coming across something so lovely stayed all through my dreams and is still here in mornlight.

Latin, man. Latin.