I’m going to offer my own translation, taking a few more liberties:
Nullus salvator salvatori,
nullus Dominus defensori,
neque pater nec mater,
solum insuper nihilum.
(Backslation: “No saviour for the saviour / no Lord for the champion / nor father or mother / only nothingness above”. Switched “father” with “mother” because the ‘kp’ in “nec pater” sounds cacophonic to me. Note that “insuper” would NOT rhyme with “mater”, since the “u” is short and thus the stress falls on the “i”, which is why I put it in the middle of the line.)
This is also very good. I like the choice of nullus. A couple of quibbles, the first of which I’m more sure about than the second:
neque can’t be postpositive...it doesn’t have the usual word order freedom, it needs to be before whatever it’s negating and joining.
(less sure on this one) insuper is an adverb rather than an adjective, so it can’t be used as a predicate for the noun nihilum. The public-domain dictionary I checked Lewis’ An Elementary Latin Dictionary has it as a qualifier for the verb in all three of the citations it gives for the relevant sense.
Neque: you’re right about this one. I was sure I had seen ‘neque nec’ used contiguously, but I must have misremembered as I can’t find an example of that. Fixed.
I know “insuper” is an adverb; it works here just like “above” (which is also an adverb) does in English, i.e. they predicate an implicit verb “est / to be”. EDIT: Just to be safe, I quickly checked the medieval dictionary I linked before, and it has plenty of instances of ‘insuper’ with ellipses of the verb.
Thanks for the link, that’s a very nice medieval resource. I agree now that insuper here is okay, there were a couple of uses very much like yours. Interestingly, it seems that in the majority of those medieval citations, insuper wasn’t related to location or being used as an adverb at all...it was being used more often as a preposition (with accusative) meaning “beyond” or “in addition to”.
Yes, it works just like the prefix-less super: it can be either an adverb or a preposition, and in either role it can be meant physically (“over”) or metaphorically (“moreover”). The difference between insuper and super is pretty subtle, but I *think* the former fits better for a more ‘static’ meaning.
It sucks having to rely on online resources though, that glossary is great for mass references but it’s very lacking in proper dictionary entries. My paper dictionary is 2000km away, but tomorrow I’ll stop at the library to borrow another.
I’m going to offer my own translation, taking a few more liberties:
Nullus salvator salvatori,
nullus Dominus defensori,
neque pater nec mater,
solum insuper nihilum.
(Backslation: “No saviour for the saviour / no Lord for the champion / nor father or mother / only nothingness above”. Switched “father” with “mother” because the ‘kp’ in “nec pater” sounds cacophonic to me. Note that “insuper” would NOT rhyme with “mater”, since the “u” is short and thus the stress falls on the “i”, which is why I put it in the middle of the line.)
Latin poetry doesn’t use rhyme anyway. It uses meter.
That’s true for classical Latin poetry, but medieval Latin hymns are often rhymed.
Classical Latin poetry doesn’t, but this is supposed to be from the Middle Ages when it was used in most secular works as well as many divine hymns.
This is also very good. I like the choice of nullus. A couple of quibbles, the first of which I’m more sure about than the second:
neque can’t be postpositive...it doesn’t have the usual word order freedom, it needs to be before whatever it’s negating and joining.
(less sure on this one) insuper is an adverb rather than an adjective, so it can’t be used as a predicate for the noun nihilum. The public-domain dictionary I checked Lewis’ An Elementary Latin Dictionary has it as a qualifier for the verb in all three of the citations it gives for the relevant sense.
Neque: you’re right about this one. I was sure I had seen ‘neque nec’ used contiguously, but I must have misremembered as I can’t find an example of that. Fixed.
I know “insuper” is an adverb; it works here just like “above” (which is also an adverb) does in English, i.e. they predicate an implicit verb “est / to be”. EDIT: Just to be safe, I quickly checked the medieval dictionary I linked before, and it has plenty of instances of ‘insuper’ with ellipses of the verb.
Thanks for the link, that’s a very nice medieval resource. I agree now that insuper here is okay, there were a couple of uses very much like yours. Interestingly, it seems that in the majority of those medieval citations, insuper wasn’t related to location or being used as an adverb at all...it was being used more often as a preposition (with accusative) meaning “beyond” or “in addition to”.
Yes, it works just like the prefix-less super: it can be either an adverb or a preposition, and in either role it can be meant physically (“over”) or metaphorically (“moreover”). The difference between insuper and super is pretty subtle, but I *think* the former fits better for a more ‘static’ meaning.
It sucks having to rely on online resources though, that glossary is great for mass references but it’s very lacking in proper dictionary entries. My paper dictionary is 2000km away, but tomorrow I’ll stop at the library to borrow another.