The layered storytelling between the maps, chronology of songs, and the prose from a disembodied figure is so rich, I've flipped between pages over and over, back and forth.
It was easy enough to find the reference to Pliny the Younger's letter to Tacitus:
“But if such desire drives you to know our disasters,
and hear in brief the final trial of Troy,
although my soul shudders to remember and once more shrinks from grief,
I shall begin.”
I'm still breaking my brain trying to translate the first excerpt:
"Akrys anem kerym kunam / Prota valka Valkynarum Kruda kaloquorom ota / Vasavayu kenyt pota"
The text makes reference to husvalk, meaning housegirl, giving one segment a very latin feel if taken as evidence. "Prota valka Valkynarum"... "First woman of womankind"??
I'm dying for more clues as to what it says, and completely thrown by the "Riddle Song" if the author sees this.
In any event, this is awesome. Thanks for making it!
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Aw! This comment made me smile a lot, thank you :)
"Akrys anem [&c.]" is meant to be the first line of the long 'translated' poem underneath. It's been a while but iirc it was something like:
Akrys anem kerym kunam
[(Presently and for a long time, some kind of stock poetic formulation) (dat? old) (dat? war) (to be told of 1st p. plr.)]
Prota valka Valkynarum
[(Nom. pl. first) (nom. pl. girl) (loc. proper noun constructed from Vala + kynara = eldest + ford not Valk / girl)]
Kruda kaloquorom ota
[(nom. pl. recalcitrant) (loc. summer-dusk compound) (emphatic final to-be like you get in e.g. pali)]
Vasavayu kenyt pota
[(nom. ash-wind compound) (blew 3rd. p. sing. some kind of past tense) (nom. great force or power, identified with the first word in the nominative)]
So I guess more literally like -- Long of the old war we are told: the first girls at Lastford, recalcitrant in summerdusk. Ashwind blew; Ashwind was a force.
It is awfully Latin, you're right! Or Pali, which is what I actually studied. I wanted it to look structurally indo-european, to work with the mythology. Mostly it's there to give a sense for the imagined meter, so the prose translation can notionally respond.