Horatius Sinensis

In terms of sheer quantity, there is still an enormous disproportion between translations from Chinese antiquity into European languages on the one hand and Chinese renderings of European classical antiquity on the other. With dozens of eminent Western specialists in Egyptology, Assyriology, and European classics, the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations at Changchun University, established in 1984, has made great efforts to remedy this situation; and Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓 (born 1956) constantly encourages the teaching of Greek and Latin at the People’s University in Peking, where the indefatigable Leopold Leeb is basing his teaching of these languages on his own textbooks that are saturated with Christian literature. However, despite these and other meritorious efforts, this discipline is still rather marginal in China, and the readership is rather small in number. After 1949, the Catholic Fu-jen University moved to Taiwan, and the European classical languages were buried for almost forty years in the mainland. However, there is a revitalized interest in European antiquity. One of the most prominent scholars for Latin in China is Li Yongyi 李永毅 (born 1975), professor of English (!) at Chongqing University: Chinese owes him the first translation of Catullus’ Carmina as well as many other renderings of Latin poetry into Chinese. In an account of his scholarly itinerary, Li also reveals the underlying motivation of his studies: