The Procurator of Judea

[Fad]

Greetings to everybody,
I'm translating the novella 'The Procurator of Judea' by Anatole France, and I'm facing difficulty with the English expressions used in this novella, as I'm not able to understand those expressions in order to find an equivalent Arabic ones to them, so I really need your help in explaining them to me, and I will appreciate it a lot. As you know this novella is translated from French into English. Here are the sentences; the expressions in bold are the most difficult ones:

1. Intrigues and calumnies cut short my career in its prime, and the fruit it should have look to bear has withered away. (Page 7 – line 10)

2. They fear us and they despise us. Yet is not Rome the mother and warden of all these peoples who nestle smiling upon her venerable bosom? With her eagles in the van, peace and liberty have been carried to the very confines of the universe. (page 16 – line 7)

3. Their priests reported to Caesar that I was violating their law, and their appeals, supported by Vitellius, drew down upon me a severe reprimand. How many times did I long, as the Greeks used to say, to dispatch accusers and accused in one convoy to the crows. (page 21- line 9)



Kind regards,
Merry Christmas

Fadil Elmenfi

[kasie]

Goodness, that's flowery stuff, Fadil - no wonder you're having trouble with it! I'll have a go at making it clearer for you:

1. ...the fruit it should have looked to bear.. I think that should read 'looked' rather than 'look'. This could read something like - My career has not had the rewards I could have expected because intrigues and malicious lies ended it before the fullness of its time.

2. With her eagles in the van: Roman soldiers went into battle with their Standards leading the way; the Standards were representations of the Eagle of Rome held aloft on a pole by a standard bearer and as long as a Roman soldier could see his Legion's Standard, he fought on. (It was considered a great shame for a Legion to lose its Standard to the enemy.) 'Van' in this context is short for 'Vanguard', the front troops advancing in a battle. The expression is being used in a rhetorical way here, to emphasise that the 'benefits' of Roman occupation, peace and liberty, have been gained only after a war of conquest.

3. ...dispatch accusers and accused in one convoy to the crows. For the Greeks, the ultimate curse on a traitor was to leave his body unburied as, until burial, his soul was doomed to wander and could not enter the Afterlife - remember the lengths to which Antigone went in order to bury her brother's body. Bodies left as carrion in the open air were disposed of by birds such as crows. The writer seems to be saying he would like to kill his accusers and himself together and leave all the bodies unburied so as to curse them all for all time.

This is how I read the passages - I may be wrong but I hope it helps.