Theseus
¥
Earion gave me a valuable note on the phrase 'the monster with four feet & two backs'. This little snippet seems to me well worth tha ingenuity of the expert translators, since it is relevant to the phrase just mentioned:-
From Rabelais' Gargantua & Pantagruel, translated into English by Thomas Urquhart c. 1693. Chapter 3 re Grangousier, the jester:
"In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon 'gainst one another."
The style of this passage is beyond my expertise to turn onto Greek.
The full passage is:-
How Gargantua was carried eleven months in his mother’s belly.
From Rabelais' Gargantua & Pantagruel, translated into English by Thomas Urquhart c. 1693. Chapter 3 re Grangousier, the jester:
"In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon 'gainst one another."
The style of this passage is beyond my expertise to turn onto Greek.
The full passage is:-
Chapter 3
How Gargantua was carried eleven months in his mother’s belly.
Grangousier was a good fellow in his time, and notable jester; he loved to drink neat, as much as any man that then was in the world, and would willingly eat salt meat. To this intent he was ordinarily well furnished with gammons of bacon, both of Westphalia, Mayence and Bayonne, with store of dried neat’s tongues, plenty of links, chitterlings and puddings in their season; together with salt beef and mustard, a good deal of hard roes of powdered mullet called botargos, great provision of sausages, not of Bolonia (for he feared the Lombard Boccone), but of Bigorre, Longaulnay, Brene, and Rouargue. In the vigour of his age he married Gargamelle, daughter to the King of the Parpaillons, a jolly pug, and well-mouthed wench. These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon ‘gainst one another, in so far, that at last she became great with child of a fair son, and went with him unto the eleventh month; for so long, yea longer, may a woman carry her great belly, especially when it is some masterpiece of nature, and a person predestinated to the performance, in his due time, of great exploits....