Attius Labeo

Attius Labeo (active 1st century AD) was a Roman writer during the reign of Nero. He is remembered for the derision that greeted his Latin translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which came to epitomise bad verse. He translated the original Greek into Latin hexameters. The satirist Persius poured scorn on Labeo. Later his name was used by English poets of the Elizabethan era to attack each other's verse.

Work

His writings have not survived, but a single line of his translation has been preserved in scholia: "crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos", which was Labeo's translation of the words - ὠμòν ßεßρώΘοις Πρίαμον Πριάμοιó τε παîδας (Iliad, iv, 35). On the basis of this surviving line, it has been suggested that the translation was considered to be vulgar, since the words 'manduces' and 'pisinnos' would have "undoubtedly struck Romans as exotically 'low'". In English the line means, roughly, "Raw, you'd chew both Priam and Priam's kids."

Persius

Persius, a contemporary of the translator, refers to Labeo in his Satires as the epitome of a bad poet, mentioning him in his discussion of his reasons for taking up his pen: