Translation Request

[fabricius]

Hello to all,

How could I translate the folowing text:

"Praeteritis rerum, bifrons Prudentia, rebus / Elicio, et cauta pondero mente sagax."

 

Thanks and advance!

[caldrail]

Using Google Translate I get In the past, things bifrons prudence affairs / elicited keen mind and a sound reflector. This is a curious sentence as it appears more medieval than Roman because it refers to ... The Demon Bifrons. Therefore we have someone telling us that Bifrons used to be a source of information and encouraged learning, typical of an older view of sorcery which was magic learned from demons and thus a crime against God.

[caldrail]

Of course without context a simple translation could mean anything. If the latin phrase is something genuinely Roman, then it likely refers to the pagan god Janus Bifrons, normally known as Janus but in rural areas, particularly Etruria, alternatively known as Bifrons which might inmdicate an early example of Roman assimilation of local deities. Note how the Christian church has demonised pagan mythology over the centuries

[guidoLaMoto]

Old thread, but FWIW:

Bifrons (literally two-foreheads, ie- two faced) is often used to describe Janus, but it can also simply mean two-faced...

I, the perceptive (sagax),Two-faced Prudentia (goddess of wisdom), on things of the past, draw out and weigh with a cautious mind.

I think it points out that you have to be careful in interpreting  past events.

Captalization & punctuation is provided by more modern researchers/translators. I'm not sure the commas are placed correctly in this case....and I still can;t figure out why ancient literature is written in such a disjointed fashion-- adjective and nouns, verbs and subjects separated in such a criss-cross, pattern-less way..Who talks like that in any language?