Shadi Bartsch on the Classics and China (Ep. 120)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
Today my guest is Shadi Bartsch, who is a professor of classics at the University of Chicago.
今天我的嘉宾是沙迪·巴特奇（Shadi Bartsch），她是芝加哥大学的古典学教授。
She has written very well-known books on Seneca, on Lucan, on Persius.
她写过关于塞内卡、卢坎和珀尔修斯的著名书籍。
Her latest work is a wonderful translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid, and she has another book coming out on political thought about the classics in China.
她的最新作品是维吉尔的《埃涅阿斯纪》的精彩翻译，她还出版了另一本关于中国经典著作的政治思想的书。
Shadi, welcome.
沙迪，欢迎。
Thank you so much, Tyler.
非常感谢你，泰勒。
I’m excited to be here.
我很高兴来到这里。
On literary representations of history
论历史的文学表现
Now, when I read Virgil, I see so many visual representations of history.
现在，当我阅读维吉尔的作品时，我看到了很多历史的视觉表现。
There’s the temple of Juno, there’s Pallas’s belt, the ivory gates of the underworld, the Daedalus relief, the shields.
这里有朱诺神庙、帕拉斯腰带、地狱象牙之门、代达罗斯浮雕、盾牌。
In The Aeneid, how do visual representations differ from literary representations of history?
在《埃涅阿斯纪》中，历史的视觉表现与文学表现有何不同？
That’s an excellent question.
这是一个很好的问题。
Before I try to answer it, I’ll just quickly say that the usual pronunciation is A-nee-id rather than Ā-a-nid.
在我尝试回答这个问题之前，我先简单说一下，通常的发音是 A-nee-id，而不是 Ā-a-nid。
One of the interesting things about all the visual representations of history that are described in the poem is that they all have viewers, and the viewers consistently misunderstand what’s going on in the picture that they see.
这首诗中描述的所有历史视觉表现的有趣之处在于，它们都有观众，而观众总是误解他们所看到的图片中发生的事情。
There is a tension between the forward-driving, apparently pro-empire vision of The Aeneid — although my own perspective is that it’s not what it has been taken to be — there’s a tension between that and the confoundment of its protagonists as they look at the history in front of them.
《埃涅阿斯纪》的向前推进、明显亲帝国的愿景之间存在着一种紧张关系——尽管我自己的观点是，它并不是人们所认为的那样——它的主人公们在面对眼前的历史时所感到的困惑之间存在着一种紧张关系。
I’ll give you a few examples.
我给你举几个例子。
When Aeneas lands in Carthage, which is an area hostile to the Trojans, he sees on the walls of Juno’s temple a big frieze of the Trojan War, and he sees the Trojans getting whacked as they did during the Trojan War.
当埃涅阿斯登陆迦太基时，迦太基是特洛伊人的敌对地区，他在朱诺神庙的墙壁上看到了特洛伊战争的大饰带，他看到特洛伊人像特洛伊战争期间一样遭到重击。
Instead of saying, “Oh my God, here we are getting defeated.
而不是说：“天哪，我们被打败了。
This is terrible.
这太可怕了。
What kind of a person would put this on their temple?” He turns to his companion, and he says, “Look, they love us.
什么样的人会把这个放在太阳穴上？”他转向他的同伴，说道：“看，他们爱我们。
We’re here already.
我们已经到了。
I think we found safety.” Whereas, the correct response would be to say, “I think we have a little problem here.”
我想我们找到了安全。”然而，正确的回应是：“我认为我们这里有一个小问题。”
Another example is when Aeneas himself picks up the ginormous shield that has been made for him by his stepfather, Vulcan, that contains the whole history of Rome, past and present and future.
另一个例子是，埃涅阿斯本人拿起了他的继父伏尔甘为他制作的巨大盾牌，其中包含了罗马的整个历史，包括过去、现在和未来。
Virgil tells us that he looks at it and picks it up, but he has no idea what it means.
维吉尔告诉我们，他看着它并把它捡起来，但他不知道它意味着什么。
In other parts of the poem, where we’re shown historical events — for example, in the conversation Aeneas has in the underworld with his father — we’re given a very particular view of Roman history, one that, for example, leaves out such important events as the fratricide that started the city of Rome.
在这首诗的其他部分，我们看到了历史事件——例如，埃涅阿斯在冥界与他父亲的对话——我们对罗马历史有一种非常特殊的看法，例如，它忽略了像开始罗马城的兄弟相残这样的重要事件。
Romulus killed Remus when Remus tried to jump over his city boundaries and mock them.
当雷穆斯试图跳过他的城市边界并嘲笑他们时，罗穆卢斯杀死了雷穆斯。
Either folks don’t understand, or they’re seeing something that’s very altered from historical reality.
要么人们不理解，要么他们看到的东西与历史现实有很大的不同。
This all goes back, I think, to show us that poetry itself, as a form of art, is not to be taken as reflecting history or trying to say something true about the political situation of the day.
我认为，这一切都可以追溯到向我们表明，诗歌本身作为一种艺术形式，不应被视为反映历史或试图说出当时政治局势的真实情况。
Is the ultimate vision of the work one of a forward-moving history or that we’re doomed to a kind of cyclical repetition?
该作品的最终愿景是一部向前发展的历史，还是我们注定要进行一种周期性的重复？
Definitely a forward-moving history.
绝对是一部向前发展的历史。
What Virgil does under Augustus is, instead of write an epic about Augustus — which would be seen as political pandering — he goes back, and he writes an epic based in the distant past about Augustus’s putative ancestor, Aeneas.
维吉尔在奥古斯都领导下所做的事情是，他没有写一部关于奥古斯都的史诗——“这会被视为政治迎合”——而是回去，写了一部基于遥远的过去、关于奥古斯都的假定祖先埃涅阿斯的史诗。
He shows Aeneas leaving Troy and having many adventures and finally landing in Italy, killing a lot of native Italians and setting up the city that eventually will be Rome.
他展示了埃涅阿斯离开特洛伊并经历了许多冒险，最终登陆意大利，杀死了许多意大利本土人并建立了最终成为罗马的城市。
People have taken this to be a pro-imperial forward movement of a group coming in from the inside and taking control of somebody else’s land.
人们认为这是一群从内部进来并控制别人土地的亲帝国的前进运动。
However, this forward-looking movement is radically undermined by the poet himself, who does things like, instead of showing us one version of history or one Aeneas, shows us the many different stories about Aeneas that existed before Virgil wrote his version.
然而，这一前瞻性运动被诗人本人从根本上破坏了，他所做的事情不是向我们展示一个版本的历史或一个埃涅阿斯，而是向我们展示了在维吉尔写下他的版本之前存在的关于埃涅阿斯的许多不同故事。
Virgil’s version became canonical, but if you know anything about his picking and choosing, you know that he’s consciously marking his own path through different traditions and showing that his own work is one out of many possibilities for the depiction of Rome’s growth.
维吉尔的版本成为了经典，但如果你了解他的挑选和选择，你就会知道他有意识地通过不同的传统标记自己的道路，并表明他自己的作品是描绘罗马成长的众多可能性之一。
It’s not really ideological.
这并不是真正的意识形态。
It’s more saying, “Hey, the story the victors tell is always made out of a selection of options.
更重要的是，“嘿，胜利者讲述的故事总是由一系列选项组成的。
Even though I’m selecting some of these options — calling Aeneas a good guy when he used to be a bad guy, for example — I’m also showing you the negative options so that you can see for yourselves how history is constructed, the ideological methods through which a positive history of an event is constructed.”
尽管我选择了其中一些选项 ——例如，埃涅阿斯曾经是一个坏人，但他却称他为好人 —— 我也会向你们展示消极的选项，以便你们可以亲眼看到历史是如何构建的，以及构建一个事件的积极历史的意识形态方法。”
Was T.S.
是 T.S.
Eliot correct that this poem was the first one sympathetic to the Christian mind, as he put it, or is that just nonsense?
艾略特纠正说，正如他所说，这首诗是第一首同情基督教思想的诗，或者这只是胡说八道？
That, I’m afraid, is more or less nonsense.
恐怕这或多或少是无稽之谈。
T.S.
T.S.
Eliot was writing his two essays about The Aeneid and the Christian world after the end of World War II, when there was a real sense that the civilized world — which he equated with Christianity and obviously did not equate with the Nazis or the Japanese — the civilized world had triumphed, and that its values could be traced back to The Aeneid even though that was the pre-Christian text.
艾略特在二战结束后写了两篇关于《埃涅阿斯纪》和基督教世界的文章，当时人们真正感觉到文明世界——他将其等同于基督教，但显然并不等同于纳粹或日本——文明世界已经取得了胜利，它的价值观可以追溯到《埃涅阿斯纪》，尽管那是前基督教的文本。
Those values could be traced to that poem for two reasons.
这些价值观可以追溯到那首诗，原因有两个。
One, because on the surface, Aeneas is called a pious hero.
一，因为从表面上看，埃涅阿斯被称为虔诚的英雄。
He gives up his own personal desires to follow the destiny that the gods have mandated for him.
他放弃了自己的个人欲望，追随诸神赋予他的命运。
He’s selfless, in a sense, and this resonated with some ideas about Christianity.
从某种意义上说，他是无私的，这与基督教的一些观念产生了共鸣。
The second reason is that Virgil also wrote a poem called The Fourth Eclogue, in which he speaks very mysteriously about a child that will be born, who will start a golden age and will change the world from a world of war to a world of peace.
第二个原因是维吉尔还写了一首诗《第四牧歌》，诗中他非常神秘地讲述了一个即将诞生的孩子，他将开启一个黄金时代，并将世界从战争世界变成和平世界。
All the early Christians leapt on this and said that Virgil had had a premonition of Christianity and that this was the Christ child.
所有早期的基督徒都抓住这一点，说维吉尔对基督教有一种预感，这就是基督的孩子。
Coming from a half Iranian background, how do you feel that leads you to read the classics differently?
你有一半伊朗血统，你觉得这如何让你以不同的方式阅读经典？
That’s also a great question.
这也是一个很好的问题。
I’m half Iranian and half Swedish.
我有一半伊朗血统和一半瑞典血统。
One of my first languages was, in fact, Farsi.
事实上，我的第一门语言是波斯语。
Then I became fascinated with the classics.
后来我就迷上了古典文学。
I ended up doing an undergraduate classics major.
我最终选择了本科古典学专业。
The faculty all said, “Oh, go to grad school.” I went to grad school.
老师们都说：“哦，去读研究生吧。”我去了研究生院。
At that point, you’re stuck.
到那时，你就陷入困境了。
You have to become a classics professor.
你必须成为一名古典学教授。
It was very weird because I knew a little bit about the Greeks from the Persian perspective, and now I was reading about the Persians from the Greek perspective, and they’re both treating each other as barbarians.
这很奇怪，因为我从波斯人的角度了解了一些希腊人，现在我从希腊人的角度读到了波斯人，他们都把对方当作野蛮人。
“The barbarians are fighting us.
“野蛮人正在与我们作战。
They want to destroy our empire, which represents civilization at its peak.” It’s the same thing you hear on both sides.
他们想要摧毁我们代表文明巅峰的帝国。”你在双方听到的都是同样的事情。
I think that made me very aware of the fact that most political parties, most ideologies, most governments use very similar rhetoric to represent utterly different situations.
我认为这让我非常清楚这样一个事实：大多数政党、大多数意识形态、大多数政府都使用非常相似的言论来代表完全不同的情况。
That’s because there’s basically an agreed-on rhetoric of what it’s good to claim you stand for.
那是因为对于主张自己代表什么是有好处的，基本上有一种一致同意的言辞。
Everybody wants to stand for progress, goodness, fairness — or if not fairness, at least correct hierarchies, doing good for the people, etcetera.
每个人都想代表进步、善良、公平——或者即使不公平，至少也支持正确的等级制度、为人民谋福利等等。
Nobody stands up and says, “Hey, I’m so and so.
没有人站起来说：“嘿，我是某某。
I’m a tyrant.
我是一个暴君。
I kill small children for fun, and I toss them in the Tiber River.”
我为了取乐而杀死小孩子，然后把他们扔进台伯河。”
The sameness of those claims following very different governments became, to me, something of fascination, and it’s also something you can see in Thucydides, where, in book 3, section 82, he talks a lot about how language changes in war and how certain terms are used that sound good, but really cover up unpleasant realities.
对我来说，不同政府提出的这些主张的相同性变得令人着迷，这也是你可以在修昔底德身上看到的东西，在第 3 本书第 82 节中，他谈论了很多关于战争中语言如何变化以及某些术语如何使用听起来不错，但实际上掩盖了令人不快的现实。
It’s a very old theme.
这是一个非常古老的主题。
In book 6, why is Virgil’s underworld so much busier and more bustling than Homer’s?
在第六卷中，为什么维吉尔的地下世界比荷马的地下世界更加忙碌和热闹？
You have a literal parade, right?
你们有一场真正的游行，对吧？
We have a parade.
我们有游行。
It feels so empty and lonely in The Odyssey.
《奥德赛》给人的感觉是那么空虚和孤独。
Well, Homer’s underworld is a place where the heroes who have died in the Trojan War are flittering about, wishing they were still alive, and it’s definitely a gloomy, lonely situation.
嗯，荷马笔下的地下世界是特洛伊战争中死去的英雄们徘徊的地方，希望他们还活着，这绝对是一个阴暗、孤独的情况。
Virgil’s underworld — at least the part of it that is Elysium, where Aeneas’s father is currently living — is a place where souls are put into bodies and then sent back up to the real world to be figures in history.
维吉尔的地下世界——至少是极乐世界的一部分，埃涅阿斯的父亲目前居住在那里——是一个灵魂被放入身体，然后被送回现实世界成为历史人物的地方。
Aeneas’s father says things like, “Oh, look, it’s Pompey.
埃涅阿斯的父亲会说这样的话：“哦，看，这是庞培。
He’s going to go up, and he’s going to be a great general.
他会晋升，他会成为一名伟大的将军。
Oh, look, it’s Scipio Africanus.
哦，看，这是西庇阿·非洲人。
He will defeat so and so.
他会打败某某人。
Oh, my goodness, here’s Marcellus.” Yes, it’s very crowded.
哦，天哪，这是马塞勒斯。”是的，非常拥挤。
It’s supposedly a view of all the great heroes who will come after Aeneas.
据说这是埃涅阿斯之后所有伟大英雄的景象。
But, as with everything in Virgil, there are problems in the text that completely undermine what is going on.
但是，就像维吉尔的一切一样，文本中存在一些问题，完全破坏了正在发生的事情。
Just one example: in this highly ideological, forward-looking passage in the underworld, Anchises tells his son Aeneas that the Romans will be descended from Aeneas’s son Silvius, his second son.
仅举一个例子：在这段高度意识形态化、前瞻性的地狱篇章中，安喀塞斯告诉他的儿子埃涅阿斯，罗马人将是埃涅阿斯的儿子西尔维乌斯（他的次子）的后裔。
In book 1, when Jupiter is making predictions about the future of Rome — and Jupiter is, after all, a big god — he says the Romans will be descended not from Silvius, but from Aeneas’s first son, Julus.
在第一卷中，当朱庇特对罗马的未来做出预测时——毕竟朱庇特是一位大神——他说罗马人将不是西尔维乌斯的后裔，而是埃涅阿斯的长子尤卢斯的后裔。
Okay, who cares?
好吧，谁在乎呢？
The Romans are coming.
罗马人来了。
They’re from Julus, or they’re from Silvius.
他们来自尤鲁斯，或者说他们来自西尔维乌斯。
Actually, it’s a huge deal in Virgil’s own day because Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus traced their heritage back to Aeneas, and behind him, to Venus through Julus.
事实上，这在维吉尔的时代是一件大事，因为朱利叶斯·凯撒和他的养子奥古斯都将他们的遗产追溯到埃涅阿斯，并在他身后通过朱卢斯追溯到维纳斯。
Julus, Julius.
朱利叶斯，朱利叶斯。
That similarity of names is part of the evidence on which their claim to go back to Venus lies.
名字的相似性是他们声称重返金星的证据的一部分。
However, if all the Romans come from Silvius, there’s nothing that goes Julius Caesar, Silvius, Aeneas because it has to be Julus for Julius.
然而，如果所有的罗马人都来自西尔维乌斯，那么就没有什么是尤利乌斯·凯撒、西尔维乌斯、埃涅阿斯了，因为对于尤利乌斯来说，必须是尤卢斯。
In fact, the epic presents two completely competing but equally authoritative claims for whether or not Julius Caesar does go back to Aeneas and Venus.
事实上，这部史诗对于凯撒大帝是否确实回到了埃涅阿斯和维纳斯提出了两种完全相互竞争但同样具有权威性的主张。
Was Anchises correct to predict that the Romans would not be so very good at art?
安喀塞斯关于罗马人不会如此擅长艺术的预测正确吗？
You do ask good questions.
你确实问了很好的问题。
Yes and no. He was correct in that the Romans never wanted to characterize themselves as being good at art.
是和不是。他是对的，罗马人从来不想把自己描绘成擅长艺术。
That was a fancy Greek thing, like literature, like astronomy — all those Greek arts.
那是一种奇特的希腊事物，就像文学、天文学一样——所有这些希腊艺术。
The Romans were going to be good at war and at settling down customs in new countries, and of course, at building aqueducts and things like that.
罗马人将擅长战争和在新国家建立海关，当然，也擅长修建渡槽之类的东西。
However, Virgil’s own poem is a counterevidence for that, in that, as an object of art itself, it has been taken up and treated as a masterpiece for thousands of years.
然而，维吉尔自己的诗却反证了这一点，因为作为艺术品本身，它几千年来一直被视为杰作。
Also, in that Virgil shows us sometimes in the poem that ignoring art or not knowing much about art can be detrimental.
此外，维吉尔有时在诗中向我们展示，忽视艺术或对艺术了解不多可能是有害的。
For example, rhetoric is an art, and the Trojans swallow everything that the Greek liars tell them because they’re not well versed in these arts, so for their own sake, they have to become better.
例如，修辞学是一门艺术，特洛伊人吞下了希腊骗子告诉他们的一切，因为他们不精通这些艺术，所以为了他们自己，他们必须变得更好。
Is Virgil, in fact, the greatest political philosopher of ancient Rome?
维吉尔实际上是古罗马最伟大的政治哲学家吗？
I will pause for a second over that one.
我会在这个问题上暂停一秒钟。
You’re leaving out the Greeks, which helps me answer the question.
你忽略了希腊人，这有助于我回答这个问题。
I have a feeling I’m going to get a lot of flak on this, but I would say yes, because, like Aristotle, he understands that sometimes poetry is truer than truth, and also because he manages both to represent a political ideology and to show how a political ideology is created at the same time, thereby undermining what he’s shown us how to do.
我有预感，我会在这方面受到很多批评，但我会说是的，因为，像亚里士多德一样，他明白有时诗歌比真理更真实，也因为他成功地既代表了一种政治意识形态，又同时展示了一种政治意识形态是如何创造的，从而破坏了他向我们展示的做法。
I think that is very interesting.
我认为这很有趣。
He also lets us see how — possibly at Augustus’s insistence — the figure of Aeneas, the hero, is changed from somebody who did not have a good reputation — in fact, in some of the earlier stories, he was a traitor who betrayed Troy to the Greeks — he shows us how this figure is transformed in his own poem to a heroic figure.
他还让我们看到——“可能在奥古斯都的坚持下”——“英雄埃涅阿斯的形象是如何从一个没有好名声的人变成的”——“事实上，在早期的一些故事中，他是一个向希腊人出卖特洛伊的叛徒”——他向我们展示了这个人物是如何在他自己的诗中转变为英雄人物的。
It’s just as if we were to say, “Gosh, let’s think of Mussolini, the fascist Mussolini with a dubious history suddenly becomes in power.” At that point, all the stories being told about Mussolini are stories of victory and goodness and the triumph of the second coming of Rome and so forth.
这就好像我们要说：“天哪，让我们想想墨索里尼，历史可疑的法西斯墨索里尼突然掌权了。”那时，所有关于墨索里尼的故事都是胜利和善良的故事，以及罗马第二次降临的胜利等等。
Then once he’s gone, that all becomes critical again.
一旦他走了，一切就又变得至关重要了。
The discourse is always dependent on who’s got the microphone at the moment, as it were.
可以说，话语总是取决于此刻谁拿着麦克风。
You may not agree with this, but many readers I speak with tend to think that Homer is somehow deeper, more mystical, or just more fun to read than Virgil.
你可能不同意这一点，但与我交谈过的许多读者倾向于认为荷马在某种程度上比维吉尔更深刻、更神秘，或者读起来更有趣。
What accounts for that perception and how might you challenge it?
是什么造成了这种看法？您将如何挑战它？
I think they think that because both of Homer’s epics are not, per se, about politics or governments.
我认为他们之所以这么认为，是因为荷马的两部史诗本身都与政治或政府无关。
They don’t offer etiologies of a state.
它们不提供状态的病因学。
They don’t talk about history.
他们不谈论历史。
They are stories in the true sense.
它们是真正意义上的故事。
They are about heroes in the true sense, not about some guy who’s pushed around the world by the gods, constantly getting into trouble, crying, wishing he didn’t have to go found Rome, etcetera.
它们讲述的是真正意义上的英雄，而不是某个被众神推到世界各地、不断陷入困境、哭泣、希望自己不必去寻找罗马等等的人。
Achilles — figure larger than life.
阿喀琉斯——比生命更伟大的人物。
His pride is everything to him.
他的骄傲对他来说就是一切。
He stops fighting in the Trojan War because he’s been insulted.
他在特洛伊战争中停止战斗，因为他受到了侮辱。
The drama is, what compels him to go back into battle after that insult?
戏剧性的是，是什么迫使他在受到侮辱后重新投入战斗？
Odysseus — a fairy tale of a man wandering from island to island, meeting ever stranger creatures, but eventually making it back home.
奥德修斯——一个童话故事，讲述了一个男人从一个岛屿漂流到另一个岛屿，遇到越来越陌生的生物，但最终回到家的故事。
It’s a great yarn.
这是一种很棒的纱线。
You don’t have to learn history to read these.
你不必学习历史来阅读这些内容。
You get involved in the psychology of the characters, their tragedies and their triumphs.
你会参与到人物的心理、他们的悲剧和他们的胜利中。
Nobody is really interested in getting involved in the psychology of the state and its triumphs.
没有人真正有兴趣参与国家心理及其胜利。
On the one hand, you’ve got a poem that’s an etiology for a particular government.
一方面，你有一首诗是特定政府的病因学。
On the other hand, you have two amazing stories.
另一方面，你有两个精彩的故事。
I can see how reading The Aeneid would be considered duller for some.
我可以理解，对于某些人来说，阅读《埃涅阿斯纪》会被认为更加乏味。
At least superficially, it feels like quite a masculine work, but if you look at the recent reinterpreters, there’s your new translation, which I thought was wonderful; Sarah Ruden’s, which is quite good.
至少从表面上看，这感觉像是一部相当男性化的作品，但如果你看看最近的重新翻译，就会发现你的新翻译，我觉得很棒；莎拉·鲁登的，相当不错。
Margaret Drabble covers Virgil.
玛格丽特·德拉布尔 (Margaret Drabble) 翻唱维吉尔 (Virgil)。
A.S.
作为。
Byatt.
拜厄特。
Ursula Le Guin writes the tale of Lavinia.
乌苏拉·勒吉恩 (Ursula Le Guin) 撰写了拉维尼娅的故事。
Why is it women who are redefining the apparently masculine Virgil?
为什么是女性重新定义了明显男性化的维吉尔？
That’s not very hard to answer.
这并不难回答。
In all these epics, what you see is the silencing of women’s voices.
在所有这些史诗中，你看到的是女性声音的沉默。
You don’t see it surreptitiously, as in women don’t appear, so you don’t think about them.
你不会偷偷地看到它，就像女人不会出现一样，所以你不会去想她们。
You see it explicitly.
你可以明确地看到它。
Lavinia, whom Ursula Le Guin gives a voice to, doesn’t get to say a single word in The Aeneid.
乌苏拉·勒吉恩为拉维尼娅配音，但她在《埃涅阿斯纪》中一句话也没有说。
All she gets to do is blush once.
她所要做的就是脸红一次。
This is the woman who is going to be the mother of the Roman people.
这位妇女将成为罗马人民的母亲。
Dido gets plenty to say, but Aeneas contradicts all of it.
狄多有很多话要说，但埃涅阿斯却反驳了所有这些。
Dido is Aeneas’s lover, and he tells her she’s making a big fuss over nothing and leaves.
狄多是埃涅阿斯的情人，他告诉她她只是无事生非，然后就离开了。
However, if you read the poem carefully, what Aeneas says to Dido — the masculine voice reproving the feminine voice — is actually incorrect.
然而，如果你仔细读这首诗，埃涅阿斯对狄多所说的“男性声音斥责女性声音”实际上是不正确的。
One example: he tries to sneak away from Carthage without her knowing.
一个例子：他试图在她不知情的情况下偷偷逃离迦太基。
She finds out.
她发现了。
She says to him, “Why did you try to sneak away from Carthage without my knowing?” He says to her, “Are you accusing me of being a snake?
她对他说：“你为什么要在我不知情的情况下偷偷逃离迦太基？”他对她说：“你是在指责我是蛇吗？
I’ve never lied to you.
我从来没有对你撒过谎。
Never.
从来没有。
I wouldn’t, ever.” The reader says, “You just did, dude, you just did.”
我永远不会。”读者说：“你刚刚做到了，伙计，你刚刚做到了。”
There are other instances like that.
还有其他类似的例子。
Historically speaking, the male translators of these epics haven’t had a particularly sensitive ear for moments like that.
从历史上看，这些史诗的男性译者对这样的时刻并没有特别敏感的耳朵。
Instead, it’s always Dido being hysterical, Dido being mad because her boyfriend left her, Dido being a woman and a North African — a woman from Phoenicia.
相反，总是黛朵歇斯底里，黛朵因为男友离开她而生气，黛朵是一个女人，一个北非人——一个来自腓尼基的女人。
Those faithless Phoenicians.
那些不忠实的腓尼基人。
There’s an expression in Rome, called “Pūnica fidēs.” It means Punic faithlessness, essentially.
罗马有一个说法，叫做“Pūnica fidēs”。从本质上讲，这意味着布匿人的不忠诚。
For all these reasons, it’s easy to read Dido as a stereotype of the mad Eastern woman or Cleopatra reborn or what have you.
出于所有这些原因，人们很容易将黛朵解读为对疯狂的东方女人或克利奥帕特拉重生之类的刻板印象。
That’s not how Virgil treats her.
维吉尔不是这样对待她的。
Even among the gods, Juno, the goddess of marriage, says Dido and Aeneas are married — even if Venus says “No, they’re not.” When Aeneas says to Dido, “Hey, I never married you.
即使在众神中，婚姻女神朱诺也说狄多和埃涅阿斯已经结婚了——即使维纳斯说“不，他们没有结婚”。当埃涅阿斯对狄多说：“嘿，我从未娶过你。
It was just sex.” Dido says, “What?
这只是性而已。”迪多说：“什么？
No, we were married,” which is a conversation that has taken place through all of history, probably.
不，我们结婚了，”这可能是历史上一直发生的对话。
They’re both right.
他们都是对的。
An important thing for me was to bring out the truth-telling and the authenticity of these women’s voices.
对我来说，重要的事情是展现这些女性声音的真实性和真实性。
Even when a woman actually does go crazy, like Amata, the mother of Lavinia, Virgil shows us the evil forces that come down and penetrate her and make her mad — the Furies, like snakes slithering through her body.
即使一个女人真的发疯了，就像拉维尼娅的母亲阿玛塔一样，维吉尔也向我们展示了邪恶的力量，它们降临并渗透到她身上，让她发疯——复仇女神，就像蛇在她的身体里爬行。
In the end, what you see are women being silenced by the gods, by the narrator, by men, but they’re still there, and it’s almost like they’re waiting to have their voice given back.
最后，你看到的是女人被众神、叙述者、男人压制住了，但她们仍然在那里，几乎就像她们在等待自己的声音被收回一样。
Will newly composed, very long poems ever become culturally central again?
新创作的长诗会再次成为文化中心吗？
No.
不。
Why not?
为什么不呢？
Harry Potter books are very long, right?
哈利波特的书很长，对吧？
They’re often quite boring.
他们通常很无聊。
People read them avidly.
人们如饥似渴地阅读它们。
They read them avidly because they don’t think they’re boring.
他们如饥似渴地阅读它们，因为他们认为它们并不无聊。
I don’t read Harry Potter books because I think they’re great for the imaginations of maybe a younger generation than myself.
我不读《哈利·波特》书籍，因为我认为它们非常适合比我年轻一代的想象力。
Reading poetry is an acquired taste.
读诗是一种后天的品味。
The way education is heading these days, that kind of patience and that kind of sympathy for texts written in other registers — texts that need translations, texts that seem to talk about archaic values or values that are out of date — I don’t see much patience for those coming back in the future unless things change radically.
如今教育的发展方向是，对用其他语言书写的文本表现出的耐心和同情 ——需要翻译的文本，似乎在谈论古老价值观或过时价值观的文本—— 除非情况发生根本性变化，否则我认为未来回来的人不会有太多耐心。
If you had to learn Latin from scratch, which method would you use?
如果你必须从头开始学习拉丁语，你会使用哪种方法？
The method I used.
我用的方法。
Which is what?
哪个是什么？
Which is, I bought a teach-yourself-Latin textbook, and I taught myself Latin.
也就是说，我买了一本自学拉丁语课本，然后自学拉丁语。
Finally, when I started taking a class, it turned out that it went much more slowly than I was going with a textbook, so it was a bit of a disappointment.
最后，当我开始上课时，发现它比我用课本上课的速度慢得多，所以有点失望。
But say you were doing it now, I mean.
但我是说，假设你现在就这么做了。
Would you get online and have Zoom calls with monks or not?
您是否会上网并与僧侣进行 Zoom 通话？
I would not because there’s not much value for most Latinists in spoken Latin or spoken ancient Greek because that’s not how they’re taught.
我不会，因为对于大多数拉丁语学生来说，拉丁语口语或古希腊语口语没有多大价值，因为他们不是这样被教导的。
There are a few people who teach them as spoken languages.
有一些人将它们作为口语进行教授。
I think they’re still spoken on some occasions in the Vatican.
我认为梵蒂冈的某些场合仍然会讲这些话。
But who would I speak Latin to?
但我该和谁说拉丁语呢？
There’s nobody around.
周围没有人。
We’re only taught it as a written, unspoken language, which is why it’s so effective to do it with a textbook, and you don’t need an app on your iPhone to do it.
我们只将其作为一种书面的、非口语的语言来教授，这就是为什么使用教科书如此有效，而且你不需要 iPhone 上的应用程序来做到这一点。
I did take eight years of Mandarin, and there, I would say, do not try to learn Mandarin using a textbook.
我确实学了八年普通话，我想说的是，不要试图用教科书来学习普通话。
You absolutely must be in a classroom with a native Chinese speaker, or what comes out of your mouth will not be Mandarin.
你绝对必须在一个以中文为母语的教室里，否则你嘴里说出来的就不是普通话。
It will be something that nobody will understand.
这将是无人能理解的事情。
Or worst-case scenario, it’ll actually mean something but the wrong thing, and that happened to me many times.
或者最坏的情况，它实际上意味着一些东西，但却是错误的东西，这种情况在我身上发生过很多次。
Before I started classes, and I was just teaching myself by reading, one of the expressions I thought I had learned was “excuse me.” When I said it in China, people would jump and look at me suspiciously.
在我开始上课之前，我只是通过阅读自学，我认为我学到的表达方式之一是“对不起”。当我在中国说这句话时，人们会跳起来并怀疑地看着我。
It turned out, I found out later, that I wasn’t saying, “excuse me.” I was saying, “Please smell me.” That’s the kind of mistake that’s possible.
后来我发现，我并没有说“对不起”。我说：“请闻我一下。”这就是可能犯的错误。
From reading the Romans, what might we learn about the psychology of power that we don’t already know?
通过阅读罗马人，我们可以了解到哪些我们尚不了解的权力心理？
The psychology of power.
权力心理学。
Well, I think the way the Romans brought their religion into the psychology of power was fascinating and perhaps a bit alien to us.
嗯，我认为罗马人将他们的宗教带入权力心理的方式令人着迷，也许对我们来说有点陌生。
Roman religion — religiō — actually represented a kind of binding contract between the gods and the mortals.
罗马宗教 ——“religiō”——实际上代表了神与凡人之间的一种具有约束力的契约。
It was very much a quid-pro-quo relationship.
这在很大程度上是一种交换条件的关系。
“I’ll give you X.
“我给你X。
You’ll give me Y.
你会给我Y。
I will sacrifice 10 cows for you, and take the auspices, and consult with you while I’m doing this about whether or not we should invade Spain.”
我会为你牺牲10头牛，并接受主持，并在我做这件事的时候与你商量我们是否应该入侵西班牙。”
The idea is, if the sacrifices are done correctly, and the auspices are good, what we’re doing in invading Spain is a just war because the gods have allowed it to happen, and they’ve nodded at it.
这个想法是，如果祭祀做得正确，并且预兆良好，我们入侵西班牙所做的就是一场正义的战争，因为众神允许它发生，并且他们对此表示认可。
So, every time before the Romans went to war, they would make sure that they were told by the gods that it was a just war, so that they could proceed with impunity.
所以，每次罗马人发动战争之前，他们都会确保众神告诉他们这是一场正义的战争，这样他们就可以不受惩罚地进行。
If the omens they got after the sacrifices — when they opened the animals up — were bad omens, instead of saying, “Oops, we better not invade Spain after all,” they would simply do the procedure again until they got the answer they wanted.
如果他们在祭祀后————当他们打开动物时————得到的预兆是坏预兆，他们不会说：“哎呀，我们最好还是不要入侵西班牙。”他们会简单地重复一遍这个程序，直到得到他们想要的答案。
I think that’s a pretty interesting way of tying religion to your political bandwagon.
我认为这是将宗教与政治潮流联系起来的一种非常有趣的方式。
There’s also a famous story about a Roman general at a sea battle, who had sacred chicken on his boat.
还有一个关于一位罗马将军在海战中的著名故事，他的船上有一只圣鸡。
He threw grain to the sacred chicken, and how the chicken ate the grain was supposed to be either a good omen or a bad omen as to the upcoming naval battle, but the chickens refused to eat anything.
他把谷物扔给圣鸡，圣鸡吃了谷物，对于即将到来的海战来说，应该是吉兆或凶兆，但鸡却不肯吃任何东西。
He lost his temper and he shouted, “If you won’t eat, then maybe you’ll drink.” He threw them all overboard, and he lost the naval battle, of course.
他发脾气，喊道：“你不吃，也许你就喝。”他把他们全部扔到了海里，当然，他输掉了海战。
When reading Seneca, how is it that brings out something of the performative and perhaps also hypocritical elements in stoicism?
当阅读塞内卡时，它是如何带出斯多葛主义中的一些表演性的甚至是虚伪的元素的呢？
And are those essential to stoicism?
这些对于斯多葛主义来说是必不可少的吗？
Or is it just that Seneca ultimately was a deviant from his own philosophy?
或者只是塞内卡最终偏离了他自己的哲学？
This is such a complicated issue.
这是一个如此复杂的问题。
There’re some reasons people think Seneca was a deviant from his own philosophy.
人们认为塞内卡背离了他自己的哲学，这是有一些原因的。
He was extremely rich, one of the richest men in Rome.
他非常富有，是罗马最富有的人之一。
He practiced in usury and made tons of money off the British at the time, or the island of Britain, I should say.
他从事高利贷活动，从当时的英国人或我应该说的不列颠岛上赚了很多钱。
He was a tutor and then an advisor to the Emperor Nero until Nero advised him to kill himself in 65, supposedly for participating in a plot against Nero, which he probably didn’t.
他曾是尼禄皇帝的家庭教师，后来又担任顾问，直到 65 年尼禄建议他自杀，据称是因为他参与了针对尼禄的阴谋，但他可能没有这么做。
Yet he wrote all these works touting the value of not caring about money, not caring about politics, not caring about influence, not caring about your reputation, and so forth.
然而他写的所有这些作品都宣扬不关心金钱、不关心政治、不关心影响力、不关心声誉等等的价值。
What I like about Seneca is all these things he writes, he never says, “I’ve accomplished them.” He says, “It would be great if we could accomplish this, and I’m trying.” But he never says, “I’ve succeeded.”
我喜欢塞内卡的一点是他写的所有这些东西，他从来不说，“我已经完成了它们。”他说：“如果我们能够实现这一目标那就太好了，我正在努力。”但他从不说：“我成功了。”
People don’t like him because he failed.
人们不喜欢他，因为他失败了。
If you look at another figure, another great moralizing figure — if you look at Jesus Christ, for example — he lives the life he preaches.
如果你看看另一个人物，另一个伟大的道德人物——例如，如果你看看耶稣基督——他过着他所宣扬的生活。
Seneca does not live the life he preaches, but some of the things he says are very interesting and valuable nonetheless.
塞内卡并没有过他所宣扬的生活，但他所说的一些事情仍然非常有趣和有价值。
For example, the idea that too much emotional investment in things that aren’t worthwhile are simply damaging to you.
例如，认为在不值得的事情上投入过多的情感只会对你造成损害。
I have a great example for how to think in a stoic way that isn’t a deep example, but it’s helpful to show how stoicism can help.
我有一个很好的例子来说明如何以坚忍的方式思考，虽然不是一个深入的例子，但它有助于展示坚忍主义如何提供帮助。
I’m not going to talk about the deaths of family or really serious stuff like that.
我不会谈论家人的死亡或诸如此类的非常严重的事情。
Let’s say you’re driving down the road, obeying all the traffic rules and signals.
假设您正在路上行驶，遵守所有交通规则和信号。
All of a sudden, a car comes out of nowhere, and it’s going 100 miles an hour, and it almost takes your door off before it screeches into the distance.
突然，一辆汽车不知从何而来，时速达到了 100 英里，在它尖叫着驶向远方之前，它几乎要把你的车门撞开。
You’re angry.
你很生气。
You’re upset this person almost killed you.
你很沮丧这个人差点杀了你。
You’re shouting.
你在喊叫。
You’re saying, “What kind of a maniac did that?” Then, Seneca says, “If you feel like this, tell yourself a different story.” He says wave the wand of Hermes — actually, it’s Epictetus’s phrase — but wave the wand of Hermes over what just happened.
你会说：“这是哪个疯子干的？”然后，塞内卡说：“如果你有这样的感觉，那就给自己讲一个不同的故事。”他说挥动赫尔墨斯的魔杖——事实上，这是爱比克泰德的短语——但是对刚刚发生的事情挥动赫尔墨斯的魔杖。
In other words, recast it.
换句话说，重铸它。
What you do is, you say to yourself, “In that car, there was a very sick child, and his frantic father was trying to get him to the ER as fast as possible, weeping, half out of his mind.” Then you don’t feel as angry anymore.
你所做的是，你对自己说：“在那辆车里，有一个病得很重的孩子，他疯狂的父亲试图尽快把他送到急诊室，哭着，几乎失去了理智。”然后你就不再那么生气了。
You don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s a possibility.
你不知道这是真的还是假的，但有可能。
The other thing I want to say about Seneca and stoicism is that in his letters and essays, yes, he argues for the benefits of stoicism.
关于塞内卡和斯多葛主义，我想说的另一件事是，在他的信件和文章中，是的，他主张斯多葛主义的好处。
Don’t invest too much in your loved ones.
不要为你所爱的人投入太多。
Learn to separate yourself from worldly concerns.
学会将自己与世俗的担忧分开。
If you go bankrupt, don’t be unhappy, et cetera, et cetera.
如果你破产了，不要不高兴，等等。
In his dramas, it’s a completely different story.
在他的戏剧中，这是一个完全不同的故事。
He repeatedly, for example, in Thyestes, shows people who seem to be trying to be stoic, but they all fail for one reason or another.
例如，他在《提厄斯特斯》中多次展示了那些似乎试图保持坚忍的人，但他们都因为某种原因而失败了。
Thyestes is exiled from power.
蒂厄斯忒斯被逐出权力宝座。
His brother Atreus holds the kingdom.
他的兄弟阿特柔斯拥有王国。
Thyestes is living in the countryside with his children, supposedly eating grubs and sticks and acorns.
蒂耶斯特斯和他的孩子们住在乡村，据说吃的是幼虫、树枝和橡子。
He keeps saying, “Isn’t this wonderful?
他不断地说：“这不是很棒吗？
I love this simple life.
我喜欢这种简单的生活。
Poison is only drunk out of golden cups.
毒药只能从金杯中喝出来。
Nobody puts poison in earthenware.” That kind of thing.
没有人在陶器里放毒。”那种事。
Then his brother invites him to come back and share power, and Thyestes isn’t that interested.
然后他的兄弟邀请他回来分享权力，而蒂耶斯特斯并不那么感兴趣。
He’s learned to be a good stoic, but his kids are like, “Daddy, Daddy, we don’t want to eat acorns anymore.
他已经学会了如何保持坚忍，但他的孩子们却说：“爸爸，爸爸，我们不想再吃橡子了。
We want to go back and have a good life.” So, he gives in out of love for his children.
我们想回去过上美好的生活。”所以，他出于对孩子的爱而屈服了。
He fails in stoicism.
他在坚忍方面失败了。
He goes back and takes up the throne again with Atreus.
他回去并与阿特柔斯一起再次登上王位。
And on that very same evening, he looks around, can’t find his kids, asks his brother over dinner where his kids are.
就在同一天晚上，他环顾四周，找不到他的孩子，于是在晚餐时问他的兄弟他的孩子在哪里。
His brother starts cackling, and he says, “They’re very close to you.” Thyestes says, “What do you mean?” Atreus says, “Ha ha, they’re in you.
他的兄弟开始咯咯地笑，他说：“他们离你很近。”蒂厄斯忒斯问道：“你什么意思？”阿特柔斯说：“哈哈，它们就在你体内。
I just fed you your kids.”
我刚刚喂饱了你的孩子。”
Now, that is a pretty grim story, and the other ones are equally grim.
现在，这是一个非常残酷的故事，其他的故事也同样残酷。
People die horribly.
人们死得很惨。
Nobody gets to live the good stoic life in the dramas.
没有人能在戏剧中过上美好的坚忍生活。
Was Seneca torn between his vision of a peaceful and painless life?
塞内卡是否在和平无痛苦的生活的愿景中左右为难？
Or did some part of him know that, ultimately, no human being is strong enough to actually be a stoic?
或者他内心的某个部分是否知道，归根结底，没有人能够坚强到真正成为一个坚忍者？
On contemporary themes in historic literature
历史文学中的当代主题
Why does reading Lucan’s The Civil War make more sense in 2021 than it might have 30 years ago?
为什么在 2021 年阅读卢坎的《内战》比 30 年前更有意义？
To me, it seems remarkably contemporary — more than Virgil.
对我来说，它似乎非常当代——比维吉尔还要现代。
People are crazy.
人们都疯了。
They’re at each other’s throats, but not really for any good reason.
他们互相争斗，但其实并没有什么充分的理由。
Lucan seems contemporary.
卢坎似乎是当代人。
Lucan is very much after and in response to Virgil.
卢坎非常追随并回应维吉尔。
He reads Virgil as saying the possibility of the good state, the good empire is a real thing.
他读维吉尔的话说，美好国家、美好帝国的可能性是真实存在的。
What Lucan says is, “No, that is never possible.
卢坎说的是：“不，那是不可能的。
There will always be men grubbing for power and killing each other, and civil war is, frankly, a condition of life, a condition of history.
总会有人争夺权力并互相残杀，坦率地说，内战是生活的一种状况，历史的一种状况。
Right now, I’m writing under Nero, who is not a good emperor.
现在，我正在尼禄的领导下写作，他不是一个好皇帝。
I’m writing about the events that led to Nero coming to power, and I hate them.
我正在写导致尼禄上台的事件，我讨厌它们。
They’re terrible.
他们太可怕了。
People lie to each other.
人们互相撒谎。
Brothers killed brothers.
兄弟杀兄弟。
Friends slashed each other in the face, all for political reasons.
朋友们互相砍伤对方的脸，都是出于政治原因。
People use language, again, incorrectly to distort what they meant, and then — here’s the rub — because I’m writing under Nero and because Nero is one of the bad emperors, I can’t complain about writing under Nero.
人们再次错误地使用语言来歪曲他们的意思，然后 —— 这就是问题 —— 因为我是在尼禄统治下写作，而且因为尼禄是坏皇帝之一，所以我不能抱怨在尼禄统治下写作。
I have to praise him.
我不得不称赞他。
Otherwise, I’ll get in trouble.”
不然的话，我会遇到麻烦的。”
So you get this beautiful juxtaposition of a poet starting out his poem with almost over-the-top praise.
所以你会看到一位诗人以几乎过分的赞美开始他的诗的美丽并置。
“Oh, Nero, you’re going to heaven, and you’re going to be a star in the constellations.
“哦，尼禄，你会去天堂，你会成为星座中的一颗星星。
There’s never been anybody so wise as you.
从来没有人像你一样聪明。
Civil war was worth it if you were the outcome.”
如果结果是你的话，内战是值得的。”
Then the rest of the poem is this blistering indictment of the present, which is the present under Nero.
然后这首诗的其余部分就是对现在，也就是尼禄统治下的现在的强烈控诉。
By indicting the present but praising Nero, he effectively shows us that his praise is false, but that false praise is what everybody has to engage in in a world where there’s no freedom.
通过指责现在但赞扬尼禄，他有效地向我们表明他的赞扬是虚假的，但这种虚假的赞扬是在一个没有自由的世界中每个人都必须参与的事情。
Maybe that is what seems topical to you.
也许这对你来说是热门话题。
Or maybe it’s just about fake news, and you see Lucan is writing fake news in the beginning of his epic.
或者也许这只是假新闻，你看到卢坎在他的史诗的开头写了假新闻。
I think the lack of obvious self-interested motivation for the polarization is what strikes me as so contemporary about Lucan.
我认为，两极分化缺乏明显的自利动机，这让我觉得卢坎如此具有当代性。
It’s not primarily about rent-seeking.
这主要不是寻租。
There’s simply some logic of escalation that never stops.
这只是某种永远不会停止的升级逻辑。
Now, maybe at the end of the poem, there’s a return to sanity in some ways, but there’s still this total immersion in violence, and the dynamics of that, the nonrationality or arationality — it struck me if I had read Lucan in 1991, I would have been quite puzzled, like this is something of antique interest.
现在，也许在这首诗的结尾，在某些方面恢复了理智，但仍然完全沉浸在暴力中，以及这种动态，非理性或非理性——这让我震惊，如果我在 1991 年读过卢坎，我会感到非常困惑，就像这是一种古老的兴趣一样。
But I read it today — I’m not so pessimistic about the Western world, but it seems to hit much closer to home.
但我今天读到了它 —— 我对西方世界并不那么悲观，但它似乎更切合我的实际情况。
Why is that?
这是为什么？
Sorry, you’re supposed to be asking me questions, but why does it seem to strike closer to home to you now?
抱歉，你本来应该问我问题的，但为什么现在你觉得这个问题更贴近你的家了？
There seems to be a logic in contemporary politics where people take opposite sides of an issue because other people have taken a side.
当代政治中似乎存在一种逻辑，即人们在某个问题上采取相反的立场，因为其他人已经采取了立场。
They don’t necessarily care anymore what it’s about.
他们不一定再关心它的内容。
This may have moderated in the last few months, but there was a sense, if Trump tweeted some view about Turkey, some people would agree, and other people would take the other side, whether or not they had agreement about Turkey.
这种情况在过去几个月可能有所缓和，但有一种感觉，如果特朗普在推特上发表了一些关于土耳其的观点，一些人会同意，而其他人会站在另一边，无论他们是否对土耳其达成一致。
Absolutely.
绝对地。
The polarization of political views — that is completely in Lucan.
政治观点的两极分化——这完全是卢坎的问题。
Everything is binary.
一切都是二元的。
Both sides are at each other’s throats.
双方都在互相争斗。
The problem is, neither side is good.
问题是，双方都不好。
They’re just both opinionated.
他们只是都固执己见。
Yes, he constantly shows us horrible, meaningless scenes of butchery, which will never lead to anything meaningful.
是的，他不断地向我们展示可怕的、毫无意义的屠杀场景，这永远不会导致任何有意义的事情。
I think in that sense, yes, it’s an interesting comparison to what happens today.
我认为从这个意义上说，是的，这与今天发生的事情进行比较很有趣。
Another interesting thing that he does is that, even though everything has been boiled down into them versus us — or actually them versus them because there’s nobody good in the epic except for Cato, who ends up dying — even as he takes on so serious a subject, he refuses to partake of its seriousness in a way.
他所做的另一件有趣的事情是，尽管一切都归结为他们与我们的对抗——或者实际上是他们与他们的对抗，因为除了最终死去的卡托之外，史诗中没有人是好人——尽管他探讨了如此严肃的主题，但他在某种程度上拒绝参与其中的严肃性。
What I mean by that is that his battle scenes are ridiculous.
我的意思是他的战斗场面很荒谬。
They’re not realistic.
它们不现实。
Here’s an example.
这是一个例子。
You’re fighting for Julius Caesar, and you’re on a boat, and you’re trying to get onto a boat that belongs to Pompey, so you grab it with one arm as it comes by, but the people in Pompey’s boat chop off your arm.
你为尤利乌斯·凯撒而战，你在一条船上，你试图登上一艘属于庞培的船，所以当它经过时你用一只手臂抓住它，但庞培船上的人砍掉了你的手臂。
Then you grab it with your other arm, and then they chop that arm off.
然后你用另一只手臂抓住它，然后他们砍掉那只手臂。
Then you’ve got no arms.
那么你就没有手臂了。
So, what do you do?
那么，你做什么呢？
Well, Lucan says, you just lob yourself onto the boat armlessly and hope that you can make a difference that way.
卢坎说，好吧，你只需无臂地把自己扔到船上，并希望你能通过这种方式有所作为。
There’s arms and legs flying everywhere.
到处都是胳膊和腿。
In Virgil or Homer, somebody stabs you, you groan, blood comes out, you die.
在维吉尔或荷马的作品中，有人刺伤你，你呻吟，血流出来，你就死了。
In Lucan, you just bop around like a puppet losing limbs and legs.
在《卢坎》中，你就像一个失去四肢的木偶一样跳来跳去。
That’s very strange.
这很奇怪。
How do Lucan’s book 6 underworld scenes revise those of Virgil’s book 6 underworld scenes?
卢坎的第六本书地狱场景如何修改维吉尔的第六本书地狱场景？
That’s surely not a coincidence.
这肯定不是巧合。
Not a coincidence, but he makes it grotesque.
这不是巧合，但他让它变得怪诞。
Instead of Aeneas going down to consult his father, you have Pompey’s son going down to the underworld to consult a witch, Erichtho, and she asks one of the dead to speak, but before the dead will speak, she has to feed it blood, and then what it says is completely unintelligible, and then it keels over again and dies again.
不是埃涅阿斯下楼去咨询他的父亲，而是庞培的儿子下到阴间去咨询女巫埃里克托，她要求其中一个死者说话，但在死者说话之前，她必须给它喂血，然后它说的话就完全无法理解，然后它再次倒下，再次死去。
It’s a scene of, what’s the word?
这是一个场景，这个词是什么？
It’s a scene of the grotesque.
这是一个怪诞的场景。
It’s a grotesque reading of the underworld that refuses to put truth, value, prophecy, or anything in there except for decaying bodies.
这是对地下世界的怪诞解读，除了腐烂的尸体之外，拒绝将真理、价值、预言或任何东西放进去。
Now, if we try to map out Roman political thought in our mind, you have a view of Virgil, how Lucan relates to Virgil.
现在，如果我们试图在脑海中勾勒出罗马政治思想，你就会看到维吉尔，以及卢坎与维吉尔的关系。
But Ovid had the Metamorphoses.
但奥维德有《变形记》。
How does that complete the picture?
这如何完成这幅图画？
Put those pieces together for us.
为我们把这些碎片拼凑起来。
This is really difficult homework I’m getting this morning.
这是我今天早上收到的作业，真的很难。
Put the pieces together.
将各个部分放在一起。
Okay.
好的。
Virgil, who very carefully writes an epic that seems to be supportive of power but actually isn’t.
维吉尔非常仔细地写了一部看似支持权力但实际上并非如此的史诗。
Lucan, who writes an epic that’s more obviously not in support of power and who ends up, along with Seneca, having to kill himself, ordered to by Nero.
卢坎写了一部显然不支持权力的史诗，最终他和塞内卡一起在尼禄的命令下不得不自杀。
Either Nero didn’t like the epic so much, or he wasn’t happy that Lucan was conspiring against him, as the story goes.
要么尼禄不太喜欢这部史诗，要么他对卢坎密谋反对他感到不高兴，正如故事所言。
Ovid — between Virgil and Lucan, Ovid just wants to have fun.
奥维德—— 在维吉尔和卢坎之间，奥维德只想玩得开心。
He’s not talking about politics, unlike the other two.
与其他两人不同，他不是在谈论政治。
He’s talking about love, but I don’t mean romantic, gooey love.
他在谈论爱情，但我指的不是浪漫的、粘糊糊的爱情。
He’s talking about Roman love.
他在谈论罗马爱情。
He talks about, in the Metamorphoses, gods raping women or changing them into trees or cows or what have you.
他在《变形记》中谈到，诸神强奸妇女或将她们变成树或牛或其他什么。
He is very irreverent, which is one of the reasons he gets exiled by Augustus and never gets to come back.
他非常不敬，这也是他被奥古斯都流放并且再也回不来的原因之一。
There is one thing he does that might be relevant in this particular conversation, which is that he takes up in books 13 and 14 of the Metamorphoses and also in Heroides 7 — which is a poem shaped like a letter written by Dido to Aeneas — he takes up Virgil’s treatment of the Dido-Aeneas legend and of Aeneas himself, and he pushes back against it.
他所做的一件事可能与这次特定的对话相关，那就是他在《变形记》第 13 卷和第 14 卷以及《英雄英雄》第 7 章中提到了这一点——这是一首形状像狄多写给埃涅阿斯的信的诗——他采用了维吉尔对狄多-埃涅阿斯传说和埃涅阿斯本人的处理方式，并予以反驳。
He refers to the tradition in which Aeneas is actually a traitor of Rome, and he suggests that Dido was right to be angry at Aeneas, and that she wasn’t crazy.
他提到了埃涅阿斯实际上是罗马叛徒的传统，他认为狄多对埃涅阿斯感到愤怒是正确的，而且她并没有疯。
She was, in fact, a very nice woman, feeling terrible things were done.
事实上，她是一个非常好的女人，感觉发生了可怕的事情。
He’s already pushing back against Augustan propaganda in various ways.
他已经以各种方式抵制奥古斯都的宣传。
Then all his books about how to seduce women or people having sex or whatever — all of that goes against the new ethical standards that Augustus was trying to establish with his marriage legislation.
然后他所有关于如何引诱女人或发生性行为的人或其他什么的书——所有这些都违背了奥古斯都试图通过他的婚姻立法建立的新道德标准。
Ovid does not toe the line, and he doesn’t talk about politics.
奥维德不循规蹈矩，也不谈论政治。
He talks about sex.
他谈论性。
He talks about violence.
他谈论暴力。
He overturns Virgilian piety, and out he goes, off to Tomis on the Black Sea, never to be seen again.
他推翻了维吉尔式的虔诚，然后他就离开了，去了黑海的托米斯那里，再也没有出现过。
On things under- and overrated
关于被低估和高估的事情
Okay.
好的。
Are you ready for the easy questions?
您准备好回答简单的问题了吗？
Yes.
是的。
We call these overrated versus underrated.
我们将这些称为高估与低估。
Here’s the first one.
这是第一个。
The food of Fiji — overrated or underrated?
斐济的美食——被高估还是被低估？
Well, I don’t like lobster and shellfish, so I would have to say overrated.
好吧，我不喜欢龙虾和贝类，所以我不得不说被高估了。
Do you like coconut milk?
你喜欢椰奶吗？
It’s fattening.
是发胖的。
Etruscan civilization — overrated or underrated?
伊特鲁里亚文明 — 被高估还是低估？
Underrated.
被低估了。
We don’t know enough about it.
我们对此了解还不够。
It seems to be fascinating.
似乎很迷人。
The Romans probably got their skills of augury — telling the future by looking into animals or observing the flight of birds — from the Etruscans, and a lot more, but there’s so little left of the Etruscans.
罗马人可能从伊特鲁里亚人那里获得了占卜的技能——“通过观察动物或观察鸟类的飞行来预测未来”，等等，但伊特鲁里亚人所剩无几。
Henry Purcell, the English composer — overrated or underrated?
英国作曲家亨利·珀塞尔——被高估还是被低估？
I will say underrated only because I obsessively listen to Dido’s lament from Dido and Aeneas, and every time I get to the line, “Remember me, but ah, forget my fate,” I burst into tears, which I’m about to do now.
我会说被低估只是因为我痴迷于聆听狄多和埃涅阿斯的哀叹，每次我听到“记住我，但是啊，忘记我的命运”时，我都会泪流满面，而我现在正要这样做。
So, yes, that’s a very moving aria for me.
所以，是的，这对我来说是一首非常感人的咏叹调。
I’m not sure of the pronunciation here, but Aconcagua.
我不确定这里的发音，但阿空加瓜。
Aconcagua.
阿空加瓜。
It’s near Mendoza, Argentina, right?
它靠近阿根廷门多萨，对吧？
Mendozan wine is excellent.
门多赞葡萄酒非常好。
My Aconcagua story is that after I climbed Kilimanjaro, I was thinking of doing the Seven Summits when I was a little younger, and Aconcagua is the second mountain after Kilimanjaro that you can climb if you’re doing the Seven Summits.
我的阿空加瓜故事是，在我登上乞力马扎罗山之后，我年轻一点的时候就想过去攀登七大高峰，而阿空加瓜是继乞力马扎罗山之后第二座可以攀登的山峰，如果你去攀登七大高峰的话。
It’s a lot harder than Kilimanjaro.
比乞力马扎罗山难多了。
It’s 23,000 feet, no oxygen.
海拔 23,000 英尺，没有氧气。
Sometimes it gets technical.
有时它会变得技术性。
The wind is coming in off the Pacific at 50 miles an hour, and it’s freezing, and it’s very, very hard to do.
风从太平洋以每小时 50 英里的速度吹来，天气很冷，这非常非常困难。
When I was younger, I was all gung ho to do it, and I trained for a year to prepare.
当我年轻的时候，我非常热衷于这样做，并且我训练了一年来准备。
Then a friend of ours had a child whose kidney suddenly went out of whack, and the child had a very complicated blood type and some antibodies and so forth.
然后我们一个朋友的孩子突然肾脏出了问题，而且孩子的血型很复杂，还有一些抗体等等。
I was, of course, the only match, as it turned out, after they tested a hundred people.
当然，在他们测试了一百个人之后，结果证明我是唯一匹配的人。
So I didn’t go to Aconcagua, I ended up not giving the kidney because the poor young man developed another antibody the day before surgery, and so, they booted me out of the hospital because I was no longer a match.
所以我没有去阿空加瓜，最终没有捐出肾脏，因为那个可怜的年轻人在手术前一天产生了另一种抗体，所以他们把我赶出了医院，因为我不再匹配了。
Somehow, after that, I never went back to planning to climb Aconcagua except about six months ago when I decided I could do it.
不知何故，在那之后，除了大约六个月前我决定我可以做到之外，我再也没有回去计划攀登阿空加瓜。
I wrote to Alpine Ascents, and I’m like, “Hi, I’m Shadi Bartsch.
我写信给 Alpine Ascents，我说：“嗨，我是 Shadi Bartsch。
I climbed Kilimanjaro 10 years ago, and now I’m ready to do Aconcagua.”
十年前我攀登了乞力马扎罗山，现在我准备去阿空加瓜山了。”
They wrote back, and they said, “Lady, you are nowhere near ready to climb Aconcagua.
他们回信说：“女士，你还没有准备好攀登阿空加瓜。
Instead of signing your death warrant with Alpine Ascents, why don’t you go climb some smaller things?
与其在 Alpine Ascents 上签署死亡令，为什么不去攀登一些较小的东西呢？
Bye.” That was my Aconcagua experience recently.
再见。这就是我最近在阿空加瓜的经历。
What is the best ABBA song?
ABBA 最好听的歌曲是什么？
Oh, gosh.
哦，天哪。
I love ABBA.
我爱阿巴。
“Waterloo” just because you can dance around your room and shout “Waterloo.”
“滑铁卢”只是因为你可以在房间里跳舞并大喊“滑铁卢”。
How has it influenced your thought being the daughter of a UN economist?
作为联合国经济学家的女儿，这对您的想法有何影响？
Not just a UN economist.
不仅仅是联合国经济学家。
A UN economist who traveled to a new country every two years, whose specific specialty was in third-world labor economics, and who never made much money because of where and how he worked, but who did a lot of good for the countries he visited: Iran, Indonesia, the Fiji islands, large parts of Melanesia.
一位联合国经济学家每两年前往一个新国家，其专长是第三世界的劳动经济学，由于工作地点和工作方式，他从来没有赚过多少钱，但他为他访问的国家做了很多好事：伊朗、印度尼西亚、斐济群岛、美拉尼西亚的大部分地区。
I was proud of him for doing that.
我为他这样做感到自豪。
It was really hard moving every two years and always being the outsider.
每两年搬一次家，而且总是成为局外人，真的很难。
It was a little bit hard, also, going back and forth from Geneva, which is the UN’s headquarters, to places like Suva in Fiji or Jakarta in Indonesia, where it was like going to a different world.
从联合国总部日内瓦到斐济苏瓦或印度尼西亚雅加达等地来回也有点困难，在那里就像去了一个不同的世界。
You can imagine a pretty little town in Switzerland, where they sell watches in all the stores, and everybody eats chocolate, and it’s heavenly, and you go skiing.
你可以想象瑞士的一个漂亮的小镇，那里所有的商店都卖手表，每个人都吃巧克力，这是天堂般的感觉，你还可以去滑雪。
Then you could imagine an entirely different world, much more crowded.
然后你可以想象一个完全不同的世界，更加拥挤。
People’s standard of living is much lower.
人们的生活水平低得多。
You are exposed to poverty, of course, on a level you are not in Europe.
当然，你所面临的贫困程度与欧洲不同。
It’s a real wake-up call about what the majority of the world looks like.
这确实给世界上大多数人敲响了警钟。
I think that was my main takeaway — just, gosh, the world is not Switzerland.
我认为这是我的主要收获 ——只是，天哪，世界不是瑞士。
Does it make the ancient world seem less strange to you or more familiar?
它是否让古代世界对你来说不再那么陌生，还是变得更加熟悉？
No, because the parts of the ancient world I study, which is basically what we have of the ancient world, unless you’re an archeologist, or unless you specialize in trying to find non-elite information, which again is mostly archaeological — all of that is written by the most educated men of their generation, of their time.
不，因为我研究的古代世界的部分，基本上就是我们所拥有的古代世界，除非你是一名考古学家，或者除非你专门寻找非精英信息，这些信息又主要是考古学的——所有这些都是由他们这一代、他们那个时代受过最高教育的人写的。
They’re not worrying about poverty that much.
他们不太担心贫困。
They’re not worrying about the food supply.
他们不担心食物供应。
They’re not worrying about how their slaves are doing.
他们不担心他们的奴隶过得怎么样。
They’re not worried about where their next meal is coming from.
他们并不担心下一顿饭从哪里来。
They’re not worried about disease, etcetera.
他们不担心疾病等。
So no, not at all, in fact, I would say.
所以我想说，不，一点也不。
On manuscripts from the ancient world
关于古代世界的手稿
Do you think we will still discover significant new manuscripts from the ancient world?
您认为我们还会发现来自古代世界的重要新手稿吗？
The charred papyrus scroll recovered from Herculaneum is preserved in 12 trays mounted under glass.
从赫库兰尼姆回收的烧焦的纸莎草卷轴保存在安装在玻璃下的 12 个托盘中。
Here is PHerc.118 in tray 8.
这是托盘 8 中的 PHerc.118。
The scroll was physically unrolled in 1883–84, causing irreparable damage.
该卷轴于 1883-84 年被物理展开，造成了无法修复的损坏。
(Henrik Knudsen) Credit: Smithsonian Magazine
（Henrik Knudsen） 图片来源：史密森尼杂志
Yes, I think we will because not only are we continuing to dig and to explore in many places where we know that manuscripts continued to exist but have not been found, but also the technologies for reading these papyri has gotten so amazing.
是的，我想我们会的，因为我们不仅在许多我们知道手稿仍然存在但尚未被发现的地方继续挖掘和探索，而且阅读这些纸莎草的技术也变得如此惊人。
Now, you can take a burnt, rolled-up papyrus that you cannot unroll without it just breaking — even though it’s pitch black and fragile, you can actually read it layer by layer, which is amazing.
现在，你可以拿一张烧焦的、卷起来的纸莎草纸，如果它不破裂就无法展开——尽管它漆黑易碎，但你实际上可以一层一层地阅读它，这真是太神奇了。
I’m very excited.
我很兴奋。
I know you’re going to ask me next, what texts do I hope we will recover?
我知道你接下来会问我，我希望我们能恢复哪些短信？
Of course, which is the one?
当然，到底是哪一个呢？
Caesar’s autobiography?
凯撒的自传？
Lost volumes from Livy or Tacitus?
李维或塔西佗的著作丢失了？
Augustus’s autobiography would be a very interesting text that’s lost.
奥古斯都的自传将是一本非常有趣的文本，但现已丢失。
Augustus’s autobiography — he defends himself for a lot of things.
奥古斯都的自传——他为很多事情为自己辩护。
His later Res Gestae — that’s more of a political document.
他后来的《Res Gestae》——更像是一份政治文件。
He doesn’t bother defending himself because all he tells us is the good stuff.
他懒得为自己辩护，因为他告诉我们的都是好东西。
But in the autobiography, apparently, he was admitting some of the things he did.
但在自传中，显然他承认了自己所做的一些事情。
Before he became Augustus, he was apparently a very brutal general, killed a lot of senators.
在他成为奥古斯都之前，他显然是一位非常残暴的将军，杀死了很多元老。
I’d also like to have Ennius, one of the earliest Roman poets.
我还想要恩尼乌斯，最早的罗马诗人之一。
Apart from that, maybe a few tragedies from the Greeks.
除此之外，也许还有一些希腊人的悲剧。
What has survived — how representative do you think it is?
幸存下来的是什么 ——你认为它有多大代表性？
That’s a good question.
这是一个好问题。
I’d say we have a good chunk of what was most popular, as decided by the ancients themselves, for example, the Alexandrian critiques of the 3rd century BC, and then the works that were effectively made canonical by being taught in the schools.
我想说，我们有很多最流行的东西，这是由古人自己决定的，例如，公元前三世纪的亚历山大批评，然后是通过在学校教授而有效地成为经典的作品。
Hard to say how much we’ve lost.
很难说我们损失了多少。
I really, actually, don’t know.
我真的不知道。
I don’t know the answer to that question.
我不知道这个问题的答案。
I would hazard a guess, and I’d say maybe we have a fifth of it, but that’s just a completely crazy guess.
我会冒险猜测，我想说也许我们有五分之一，但这只是一个完全疯狂的猜测。
Why aren’t there novels from ancient Rome that people still care about reading today?
为什么古罗马的小说没有今天人们仍然喜欢阅读的呢？
There are, and they do.
有的，而且确实有。
But who reads them?
但谁读它们呢？
People read Virgil, Homer, Cicero to some extent, but novels?
人们在某种程度上读过维吉尔、荷马、西塞罗，但是小说呢？
You’ve never read Petronius’s Satyricon?
你从来没有读过佩特罗尼乌斯的《萨蒂利孔》？
That’s hilarious.
太搞笑了。
I’ve read it.
我读过。
Does that count as a novel?
这也能算小说吗？
To me, it’s a kind of novella and short stories spilling over onto each other.
对我来说，这是一种中篇小说和短篇故事的相互融合。
They called it a novel, and ditto for Apuleius’s Golden Ass, in which a guy gets turned into a donkey and goes wandering around greater Greece, getting into all sorts of trouble until he’s finally turned back into a human.
他们称其为小说，阿普列乌斯的《金驴》也是如此，小说中一个人变成了一头驴，在大希腊各地流浪，遇到了各种各样的麻烦，直到他最终变回人类。
It’s hilarious.
太搞笑了。
It’s a great novel.
这是一本很棒的小说。
I really recommend it.
我真的推荐它。
Then there are the Greek novels, and for some reason those are all romances.
然后是希腊小说，出于某种原因，这些都是浪漫小说。
They’re always a story about a young man and a young woman who get separated by fate and eventually get back together.
它们总是关于一个年轻男子和一个年轻女子被命运分开并最终复合的故事。
That’s kind of a classic novella situation.
这是一种经典的中篇小说场景。
You have another book coming out soon called Plato Goes to China.
你们还有另一本书即将出版，名为《柏拉图到中国》。
When is that due out?
那什么时候到期？
Yes, isn’t that a silly title?
是的，这不是一个愚蠢的标题吗？
No, it’s a great title.
不，这是一个很棒的标题。
That’s due out in, I think, autumn of next year or autumn of this year, sorry.
我想，这将在明年秋天或今年秋天发布，抱歉。
No, wait — spring of next year.
不，等等——明年春天。
There.
那里。
I got it — spring of next year.
我明白了 —— 明年春天。
Why are so many Chinese intellectuals Straussian?
为什么这么多中国知识分子是施特劳斯主义者？
Aha.
啊哈。
Not so many.
没有那么多。
It’s a very specific group of Chinese intellectuals, and they self-identify as such, and then they have followers, most of whom they’ve taught themselves.
这是一个非常特殊的中国知识分子群体，他们自我认同为这样的群体，然后他们有追随者，其中大多数是他们自学的。
They identify as Straussian because Strauss is extremely useful to them for several reasons.
他们认为自己是施特劳斯主义者，因为施特劳斯对他们来说非常有用，原因有几个。
One is that they like Strauss’s emphasis on the value of classical texts because they think what it means, to some degree, is that both ancient Chinese texts and ancient Western texts are to be treated as valuable.
一是他们喜欢施特劳斯对古典文本价值的强调，因为他们认为这在某种程度上意味着中国古代文本和西方古代文本都应该被视为有价值的。
Then, the next step they make is, these ancient texts are more valuable than modern texts, and they argue Strauss would’ve said that himself.
然后，他们的下一步是，这些古代文本比现代文本更有价值，他们认为施特劳斯本人也会这么说。
Then, they like the fact that if they read as Straussians, they can essentially read for the hidden message, which nobody can find except for them.
然后，他们喜欢这样一个事实：如果他们像施特劳斯主义者一样阅读，他们基本上可以阅读隐藏的信息，除了他们之外没有人能找到这些信息。
So they can say what they want to say about ancient texts, and if other people don’t agree, they can say, “Well, you don’t know how to read as a Straussian.”
所以他们可以说出他们想说的关于古代文本的内容，如果其他人不同意，他们可以说，“好吧，你不知道如何作为施特劳斯主义者阅读。”
Effectively, they have the power to read Western classical antiquity as they would like.
实际上，他们有能力随心所欲地阅读西方古典文献。
This particular group reads it very much as in support of the kind of discipline, order, hierarchy, and some other values that the Chinese state apparatus definitely is in favor of.
这个特殊的群体将其解读为支持中国国家机器肯定支持的纪律、秩序、等级制度和其他一些价值观。
Do they read Rome as a tale of the decline of America today?
他们是否将罗马视为当今美国衰落的故事？
The Straussians?
施特劳斯派？
Not particularly, but there are Chinese intellectuals who actually are more interested.
不是特别感兴趣，但实际上有一些中国知识分子更感兴趣。
They do this, but they focus on Thucydides more than they focus on Rome.
他们这样做，但他们对修昔底德的关注多于对罗马的关注。
They focus on Thucydides’s writings about classical Athens because Thucydides said what happened to Athens was, at first it was a great democracy.
他们关注修昔底德关于古典雅典的著作，因为修昔底德说雅典发生的事情是，首先它是一个伟大的民主国家。
Then demagogues started getting into power, and the demagogues told the people what they wanted to hear as opposed to what they needed to hear.
然后煽动者开始掌权，煽动者告诉人民他们想听到的，而不是他们需要听到的。
After Pericles’s death, they just catered to the Athenian democracy, with the result that bad decisions were made because they were selfish decisions, and eventually, the Athenian democracy collapsed.
伯里克利死后，他们一味迎合雅典民主，结果因为自私而做出了错误的决定，最终导致雅典民主崩溃。
For example, about 10 years ago, there was an op-ed piece in the New York Times by a Chinese businessman who is also fluent in English and very well established in the US.
例如，大约10年前，《纽约时报》上有一篇专栏文章，作者是一位英语流利、在美国很有名气的中国商人。
He’s part of the Aspen Institute and so forth.
他是阿斯彭研究所等机构的成员。
His name is Eric Li, and he actually borrowed from Thucydides to say, just as Thucydides predicted or saw the fall of Athens through demagoguery, so too the United States is going to collapse through demagoguery.
他的名字叫埃里克·李，他其实借用了修昔底德的话来说，就像修昔底德预言或看到雅典通过煽动而垮台一样，美国也会通过煽动而崩溃。
The United States democracy is, in fact, very, very young.
事实上，美国的民主还非常非常年轻。
In fact, it really only dates back to the Voting Act of 1964 if you want to be inclusive.
事实上，如果你想具有包容性，它实际上只能追溯到 1964 年的《投票法》。
The full democracy is 50 years old, and the Chinese Dynasty has been around for 2,000 years, and these guys think that they’re going to be eternal?
完全民主已经50年了，中国王朝已经存在2000年了，这些家伙以为他们会永远存在吗？
Ha-ha, that is not going to happen.
哈哈，那是不会发生的。
He says he’s just waiting for American democracy to go over a cliff.
他说他只是在等待美国民主跌入悬崖。
On Chinese intellectuals
论中国知识分子
The Chinese intellectuals you study — what do they think of what we call the Thucydides Trap?
你所研究的中国知识分子——他们如何看待我们所谓的“修昔底德陷阱”？
That conflict between America and China, at least in some views, is inevitable.
至少在某些人看来，中美之间的冲突是不可避免的。
They’ve talked about it.
他们已经讨论过了。
They see themselves as the aggressed against in that.
他们认为自己是这方面的被侵犯者。
Oddly, they see themselves as — let’s see, I better not confuse this — I think they think of themselves as Athens, and they see the US as Sparta.
奇怪的是，他们认为自己是“让我们看看，我最好不要混淆这一点”我认为他们认为自己是雅典，而他们将美国视为斯巴达。
Sparta is getting anxious because Athens is getting stronger.
斯巴达因为雅典的强大而变得焦虑。
What does Sparta want to do?
斯巴达想做什么？
Sparta wants to squash Athens.
斯巴达想要压制雅典。
They think that the West is very much invested in making sure that China does not become a global power on a par with the West, which I think is inevitable.
他们认为西方投入了大量资金来确保中国不会成为与西方同等的全球大国，我认为这是不可避免的。
Of course, that’s going to happen.
当然，这将会发生。
What is it from antiquity that you think the Chinese value more highly than we do as, say, Americans or Westerners?
您认为中国人比我们（例如美国人或西方人）更看重古代的什么？
Their own tradition.
他们自己的传统。
Right now, we’re in the middle of a reevaluation of our Greco-Roman tradition.
现在，我们正在重新评估我们的希腊罗马传统。
When I say “our,” of course, I’m speaking for a narrow group of European or white Americans whose tradition this literally is, and people who’ve grown up in these cultures for whom it has been their tradition.
当然，当我说“我们的”时，我指的是一小群欧洲或美国白人，这实际上就是他们的传统，以及在这些文化中长大的人们，这一直是他们的传统。
But we find that many of the values of our tradition don’t mesh very well with what we value today politically, liberally, in terms of struggling against racism or sexism.
但我们发现，我们传统的许多价值观与我们今天在政治、自由、反对种族主义或性别歧视方面的价值观不太相符。
At least that’s how a lot of people feel about the value of our Greco-Roman antiquity.
至少很多人对希腊罗马文物的价值是这么认为的。
The Chinese, at this point in time, have no problem with Confucian values.
目前，中国人对儒家价值观没有任何问题。
They like their own tradition.
他们喜欢自己的传统。
There was a brief break with it after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912.
1912年清朝灭亡后，它曾短暂中断。
Of course, there was a break with it after Mao Zedong came to power in 1949.
当然，1949年毛泽东上台后，这种关系出现了决裂。
But most of the other times, they have been very proud to cite and to abide by the Confucian Daoist traditions.
但在其他大多数时候，他们都非常自豪地引用和遵守儒家道教传统。
There was even, for a while, talk of a Confucian economic miracle where people argued that, unlike Weber’s Protestant ethic, it was in fact the Confucian ethic that made a quick rise in economic prosperity possible for China, Singapore, Vietnam, et cetera.
甚至有一段时间，有人谈论儒家经济奇迹，人们认为，与韦伯的新教伦理不同，实际上是儒家伦理使中国、新加坡、越南等国家的经济繁荣成为可能。
You’re studying how the Chinese intelligentsia interprets Western classics.
你正在研究中国知识分子如何解读西方经典。
What insights have you gleaned about their understanding of our liberalism by studying how they read the classics?
通过研究他们如何阅读经典，你对他们对我们自由主义的理解有什么见解？
Excellent question.
很好的问题。
We could start out by saying, “How do they think about democracy and our democracy?” One of the moves they like is to say, “American democracy came out of Athenian democracy,” which is really a generalizing, incorrect statement.
我们可以首先说：“他们如何看待民主和我们的民主？”他们喜欢的举措之一是说“美国民主源于雅典民主”，这实际上是一种笼统的、错误的说法。
Then, they say, “But look at Athenian democracy.
然后，他们说，“但是看看雅典的民主。
What a terrible thing.
多么可怕的事情啊。
They had slaves, They didn’t allow women or foreigners to be citizens.
他们有奴隶，他们不允许妇女或外国人成为公民。
They were very xenophobic and a closed society.” So that’s one argument: American democracy is bad because it comes from Athenian democracy, which is bad.
他们非常排外，社会封闭。”所以这是一个论点：美国民主是糟糕的，因为它来自雅典民主，而雅典民主是糟糕的。
Another tack is to say, “America is not the only democracy.
另一种策略是说，“美国不是唯一的民主国家。
We are a democracy too.
我们也是民主国家。
In fact, we are the largest democracy in the world.” The reason they say that is because on the lower tier of voting in towns and villages, it is a democracy.
事实上，我们是世界上最大的民主国家。”他们之所以这么说，是因为在城镇和村庄的较低层投票中，这是一个民主国家。
Those leaders are voted democratically, and then it becomes more and more of a meritocracy as you go up the system.
这些领导人是通过民主选举产生的，然后随着系统的升级，它变得越来越精英化。
So that’s the claim they make.
这就是他们的主张。
Or they will say, “Everybody had a city-state in antiquity.
或者他们会说：“古代每个人都有一个城邦。
It wasn’t just the Athenians, so they have nothing to boast about.”
不仅仅是雅典人，所以他们没有什么值得夸耀的。”
Or — this is my favorite — there is a Chinese scholar whose name is He Xin, who argues that there was no Greco-Roman antiquity, that in the Renaissance, the Westerners were so embarrassed about the fact that China had this glorious dynastic past.
或者“——这是我最喜欢的”——“有一个中国学者何新，他认为不存在希腊罗马古代，在文艺复兴时期，西方人对中国拥有辉煌的王朝历史感到非常尴尬。
It was the Middle Kingdom.
那是中央王国。
It had all sorts of innovations in technology and civilization that the West didn’t have at that time, so the West decided to invent classical antiquity so they’d have something to boast about to China.
它拥有当时西方所没有的各种技术和文明创新，所以西方决定发明古典，以便向中国夸耀。
All those texts by Plato and Virgil and Ovid that we’ve been talking about — somebody wrote them in the Middle Ages and then stuck a date on them — 12 BC, 400 AD — which is one very interesting way of dealing with the Western tradition.
我们一直在谈论的柏拉图、维吉尔和奥维德的所有文本——“有人在中世纪写下它们，然后在上面标注了日期”——“公元前 12 年，公元 400 年”——这是处理西方传统的一种非常有趣的方式。
Other ways in which they talk about the West is, recently, the intellectuals have been on a war against the concept of rationality as something that’s particularly Western in some of its manifestations, which sounds like a very odd thing to claim.
最近，他们谈论西方的其他方式是，知识分子一直在反对理性概念，因为理性概念在某些表现形式上是特别西方的，这听起来是一件很奇怪的事情。
How can rationality be Western?
理性怎么可能是西方的？
Obviously, rationality is not, per se, Western.
显然，理性本身并不是西方的。
But what they do is, they focus on the emphasis placed on rational thought in Plato and Aristotle, both of whom claim that you’re not fully human unless you’re rational, and that’s why we’re better than the animals, because we can reason.
但他们所做的是，他们关注柏拉图和亚里士多德对理性思维的强调，他们都声称除非你是理性的，否则你不是完整的人，这就是为什么我们比动物更好，因为我们可以推理。
Then, they look back at their own Confucian tradition, which focuses on things like ren, which means humaneness to other people.
然后，他们回顾自己的儒家传统，重点关注诸如“仁”之类的东西，仁意味着对其他人的仁慈。
You have to show ren — that’s one of the things a good person does.
你必须表现出仁——这是一个好人所做的事情之一。
They say, “Well, on one side, people emphasizing rationality.
他们说：“嗯，一方面，人们强调理性。
On the other side, people thinking about ren and being a good citizen and being a good son and father.
另一方面，人们思考仁，做一个好公民，做一个好儿子和好父亲。
Which of these things will make the better society?” They argue that Western rationality has become far too instrumental, by which they mean science for science’s own sake.
这些事情中哪一项会让社会变得更美好？”他们认为西方理性已经变得过于工具化，他们的意思是为了科学而科学。
We don’t ask, “Hey, is this technology going to be good for us or the planet?” We’re just like, “This technology is faster, better.
我们不会问：“嘿，这项技术对我们或地球有好处吗？”我们就像是，“这项技术更快、更好。
Let’s do it.”
让我们开始吧。”
Whereas they claim that in China, the kind of rationality that they were more interested in is value rationality, where you use rational means, but in order to get to a value that is an ethical thing in and of itself.
而他们声称，在中国，他们更感兴趣的理性是价值理性，即你使用理性手段，但为了获得本身就是道德事物的价值。
You might say we’ll use this form of technology to stop malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, and that’s two thumbs up.
你可能会说我们将使用这种技术来阻止撒哈拉以南非洲的疟疾，这是竖起两个大拇指。
But we’re not going to use this kind of technology — this is all theory because, of course, everybody uses all these kinds of technology — but we won’t use this technology that simply produces more effective gases for warfare.
但我们不会使用这种技术 ——这都是理论，因为当然，每个人都使用所有这些技术 ——但我们不会使用这种简单地为战争产生更有效气体的技术。
That is the rhetoric.
这就是修辞。
I’m certainly not making any claims about what’s actually going on, either in China or in the US around instrumental rationality or value rationality.
我当然不会对中国或美国围绕工具理性或价值理性实际发生的事情做出任何断言。
But this is another thing that they’re now using against the West, that we’re missing some kind of moral compass.
但这是他们现在用来对付西方的另一件事，我们缺少某种道德指南针。
Right now, there are no top Chinese economists in China who are recognized as top economists by the rest of the world.
目前，中国还没有被世界公认的顶尖经济学家。
How far off is the year where you think a significant portion of top classics scholars will be Chinese working in China?
您认为距离在中国工作的中国顶尖古典学者的比例还有多远？
Is that right around the corner, or is that decades away?
是指日可待，还是几十年后？
It’s already happening.
这已经发生了。
There are a lot of good Chinese classicists who work and teach in China.
有很多优秀的中国古典学家在中国工作和教学。
They are separate from this group I’m talking about.
他们与我正在谈论的这个群体是分开的。
There’s a group of intellectuals who are more public-facing.
有一群知识分子更面向公众。
They even publish in Chinese newspapers, like the Peking Daily News, about things like Plato or Aristotle.
他们甚至在《北京日报》等中国报纸上发表有关柏拉图或亚里士多德的文章。
They are mostly interested in having a conversation with the government and with the people of China, and with saying things that will show both that they are educated and that they’re able to read Western texts in a way that makes sense for the Chinese beliefs around the world.
他们最感兴趣的是与中国政府和人民进行对话，并说一些话来表明他们受过教育，并且能够以适合世界各地华人信仰的方式阅读西方文本。
Then, there are a group of dedicated classicists who are mostly classics professors in universities, and there’s a little bit of overlap between these groups.
然后，还有一群专注的古典主义者，他们大多是大学里的古典学教授，这些群体之间有一点重叠。
The second group is a number of serious classics professors who read the language as well, who are publishing articles that are read in the US.
第二组是一些严肃的古典学教授，他们也阅读这种语言，他们发表的文章在美国也被阅读。
I think this field will continue to grow as curiosity about the past of the West grows.
我认为随着对西方过去的好奇心的增长，这个领域将继续发展。
I don’t know if the divide between the “let’s read classics to bolster our sense of Chinese identity” versus the “let’s read classics to understand classics” groups — I don’t know if that divide is going to grow, disappear, or stay the way it is now.
我不知道“读经典增强中国认同感”与“读经典理解经典”群体之间的鸿沟是否会扩大，消失，还是维持现在的样子。
Now, we close with a few questions about you.
现在，我们以几个关于您的问题作为结束。
You were a kind of classics prodigy.
你是一位古典神童。
Your undergraduate thesis was published as a well-reviewed academic book.
您的本科论文已作为一本经过严格评审的学术书籍出版。
How did you manage that?
你是怎么做到的？
One word — I am a nerd.
一句话 —— 我是一个书呆子。
But there’re plenty of nerds.
但书呆子也有很多。
What is it you did early on to put you in that position?
你早期做了什么让你处于这个位置？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
I could hypothesize I got a lot of my sense of identity, even when I was young, by reading and writing.
我可以假设，即使在我年轻的时候，我也通过阅读和写作获得了很多自我认同感。
I was not a popular kid or an athletic kid.
我不是一个受欢迎的孩子，也不是一个运动型的孩子。
My favorite thing was to hole up in my room and read.
我最喜欢的事情就是躲在自己的房间里读书。
My parents would do these spot checks at 3:00 am, where they burst into my room, and they’d find me under the covers with a flashlight.
我的父母会在凌晨 3:00 进行这些抽查，他们会冲进我的房间，用手电筒在被子里找到我。
Reading Latin, apparently.
显然是在读拉丁文。
Reading Latin, no doubt.
毫无疑问，读拉丁文。
There’s that.
就是这样。
There’s all the travel, which made me interested in different cultures and different perspectives.
所有的旅行让我对不同的文化和不同的观点感兴趣。
Then there was, really, a maniacal work ethic, which, thank goodness, has calmed down a little bit as I get older.
然后，确实有一种疯狂的职业道德，谢天谢地，随着我年龄的增长，这种职业道德已经平静了一些。
What else?
还有什么？
I like writing, I just love writing.
我喜欢写作，我就是喜欢写作。
I love thinking and writing.
我喜欢思考和写作。
I had a lot of fun doing the China book.
我写中国书很开心。
Who or what was your model for being a classics scholar?
谁或什么是你成为古典学者的榜样？
How did you see or encounter such a model or mentor at such a young age?
你是如何在这么年轻的时候看到或遇到这样的榜样或导师的？
Who is my model?
谁是我的模特？
Not now, then.
那么现在不行。
I didn’t really have one.
我真的没有。
I know that sounds weird.
我知道这听起来很奇怪。
Today, we’re all about mentoring and models.
今天，我们的重点是指导和榜样。
I myself mentor, and I’m glad to be doing it.
我自己是导师，我很高兴能这样做。
In those days — mind you, this is quite a while ago; I got my undergraduate degree in ’87 and my PhD in ’92 — there was much less talk of mentoring, especially at places like Princeton and Harvard.
那时候 —— 请注意，这是很久以前的事了；我在 87 年获得了本科学位，在 92 年获得了博士学位——当时很少有人谈论指导，尤其是在普林斯顿和哈佛大学这样的地方。
I was anti-mentored, in fact, because my undergraduate mentor would mentor me by calling me into her office, sticking her cigarette into her cup of coffee, and walking away.
事实上，我是反对指导的，因为我的本科导师会通过把我叫到她的办公室，把香烟塞进她的咖啡里，然后走开来指导我。
I would wait for her to come back, and sometimes she would come back, and sometimes she wouldn’t.
我会等她回来，有时她会回来，有时却不会。
She’s a brilliant woman, but she’s a .
她是一个才华横溢的女人，但她是一个。
.
。
.
。
What’s the word I’m looking for?
我要找的词是什么？
A quirky mentor.
一位古怪的导师。
My PhD adviser, when I had finished my PhD — which also got published, of course — wrote to me two days before I was due to defend it and said, “I hate your PhD.
当我完成博士学位时，我的博士导师——当然，它也发表了——在我准备答辩的前两天写信给我说：“我讨厌你的博士学位。
It’s all rubbish.” I had to go get another PhD person.
都是垃圾。”我不得不去找另一个博士。
That wasn’t exactly mentoring either.
这也不完全是指导。
I don’t know — no mentor, but you know what?
我不知道——没有导师，但你知道吗？
I mentor other people now, and it’s almost as good as having been mentored.
我现在指导其他人，这几乎和接受指导一样好。
It still makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
它仍然让你感到温暖和模糊。
Which is the physical site of antiquity that you have traveled to that made the biggest impression on you when you saw it?
您去过的哪个古代遗址给您留下的印象最深刻？
Oh, gosh, that’s so hard.
哦，天哪，这太难了。
Of course, I’ve been to Rome, and the experience of seeing ruins juxtaposed to ice cream shops is amazing.
当然，我去过罗马，看到废墟与冰淇淋店并列的体验真是太棒了。
They live in the ruins of Rome, the Romans do.
他们生活在罗马的废墟中，罗马人就是这样。
That is amazing.
这真是太棒了。
Then traveling up through Umbria and seeing some of the old Roman roads that are still being used.
然后穿过翁布里亚，参观一些仍在使用的古老罗马道路。
I guess the presentness of the ancient world in contemporary Italy is, for me, magical.
我想古代世界在当代意大利的存在对我来说是神奇的。
Absolutely magical.
绝对神奇。
Other places that have that kind of patina for me are Jerusalem.
对我来说有这种古色古香的其他地方是耶路撒冷。
This beautiful city of sand-colored stone, which itself dates back to parts of the Old Testament related to Jerusalem.
这座美丽的沙色石头之城，其本身的历史可以追溯到旧约中与耶路撒冷有关的部分。
I find that like time traveling.
我发现这就像时间旅行。
Now, your translation of Virgil is out — that’s great.
现在，你对维吉尔的翻译已经出版了 —— 太棒了。
I loved it.
我喜欢它。
Plato Goes to China is in the works.
《柏拉图去中国》正在创作中。
Last question.
最后一个问题。
What will you do next?
接下来你会做什么？
I don’t know.
我不知道。
It’s got to be something, though.
不过，它一定是有什么东西。
I’m going to write to my agent Wendy Strothman and tell her to tell me what to do.
我要写信给我的经纪人温迪·斯特罗斯曼，让她告诉我该怎么做。
Because I want to do something that’s not just for academics.
因为我想做的事情不仅仅是为了学术。
But you’ve already done things that are not just for academics, right?
但你已经做了一些不只是为了学术的事情，对吧？
We have many listeners.
我们有很多听众。
Most of them are not academics.
他们中的大多数人都不是学者。
Oh, yes.
哦是的。
Plato Goes to China is definitely going to be a best seller.
《柏拉图去中国》肯定会成为畅销书。
This book is definitely going to be a best seller — Plato Goes to China.
这本书肯定会成为畅销书——《柏拉图到中国》。
Although that’s not the cover on it, you’ll be glad to know.
尽管这不是封面，但您会很高兴知道。
No, I’m joking around.
不，我是在开玩笑。
Most of your readers of the Virgil or of Plato Goes to China — they’re already not academics.
你们大多数《维吉尔》或《柏拉图游中国》的读者——他们已经不是学者了。
I guess that might be true, but maybe I’ll write my next book around a question that really matters to us today, more so than whether or not the Chinese are interested in reading our ancient texts.
我想这可能是真的，但也许我会围绕一个对我们今天真正重要的问题来写我的下一本书，这个问题比中国人是否有兴趣阅读我们的古代文本更重要。
Anyway, Shadi Bartsch, thank you very much.
不管怎样，沙迪·巴特奇，非常感谢你。
It’s been a great pleasure.
这是一种极大的乐趣。
Thank you, Tyler.
谢谢你，泰勒。
Those were fantastic questions, and I’ve had so much fun talking to you.
这些都是很棒的问题，我和你聊天很开心。