Latin: What a great student.

 With my one Latin student who's a faculty assistant at school, we recently started translating the prologue to Ovid's "Art of Love", and at our 1st session on the text translated the 1st 4 lines:

Siquis in hoc artem populo non novit amandi,
    Hoc legat et lecto carmine doctus amet.
Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur,
    Arte leves currus: arte regendus amor.

IF there be anyone among you who is ignorant of the art of loving, let him read this poem and, having read it and acquired the knowledge it contains, let him address himself to Love.
By art the swift ships are propelled with sail and oar; there is art in driving the fleet chariots, and Love should by art be guided. 

After we translated (the translation above is someone else's, not ours), I wrote the next day to him:

Something to think about and we can discuss next week:

The gerundive can bear a range of meanings, ranging from an idea of external necessity (a "must") to a strong recommendation (a "should").

Latin does not force you to choose between those meanings, but translation into English does.

A question: if you had to choose an English translation for "arte regendus amor", would you choose "must", "should", or something else entirely, and why?

Keep up the good work and see you next week,

[my name]

He wrote back later that day:

Ah, very interesting.  I’ll look into this and be ready to discuss next week. 

 

I think actually the phrase should be preferably translated "By art love must be guided", but I'm not 100% sure, and in any case it's an interesting subject to talk about.

What a great student!