Category: Academia

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Latin Phrase of the Day #6

So, I missed yesterday for various reasons (including a popped bike tire on the way to work and then staying an extra 45 minutes at work) but it’s time to get back on track.  Today’s phrase is from the Vindolanda tablets.Map of Hadrian's wall vs. the Antonine Wall  For those that aren’t aware, the Vindolanda tablets were found near Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain.  They are the records, it seems, of a Roman outpost there, at the edge of the empire, dating to roughly 100AD.

habeas cui des commeatum Córis Messicus rógo domine

Let’s break it down.

habeas (habeo, habere, habui, habitus) – verb; have, hold, consider, think, reason, manage, keep, spend/pass (time)

cui – pronoun; who, that, what, of which kind/degree, person/thing/time/point that, who/whatever, everyone who, all that, anything that, any, anyone/anything, any such, unspecified some

des (do, dare, dedi, datus) – verb; give, dedicate, sell, pay, grant/bestow/impart/offer/lend, allow, make, surrender/give over, send to die, ascribe/attribute, give birth/produce, utter

commeatum – noun (acc.); supplies/provisions, goods, voyage, passage, convoy/caravan, furlough/leave

Córis – proper noun

Messicus – proper noun

rógo (rogo, rogare, rogavi, rogatus) – verb; ask, ask for, invite, introduce

domine – owner, lord, the Lord, also a title

My lord I ask you to consider giving to this one Messicus furlough to Córis.

The official translation I have seen for this same section is a bit more…flowery, I guess, than mine (and probably better to be honest, since I’m still so bad at this).

I, Messicus, ask my lord that you consider me a worthy person to whom to grant leave at Coria.

This is probably due to my failure at the subjunctive, which always made me want to hurt myself a lot.  Stupid subjunctive.

Translation (and the tablet fragment) is from Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier by Alan K. Bowman.

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Latin Phrase of the Day #5

Today’s quotation is drawn from Classical Latin repeated in a medieval source.  It is from Virgil, as quoted in Gerald of Wales’ Description of Wales.

Tales casus Cassandra canebat.

Tales – adj.; such, so great, so excellent, of such kind

casus – noun, accusitive case (direct object); fall, overthrow, chance/fortune, accident, emergency, calamity, plight, fate

Cassandra – the tragic Seer and former lover of Apollo, Cassandra, who was of Troy

canebat (cano, canere, cani, canitus) – verb; sing, celebrate, chant, crow, recite, play music, sound horn/instrument, foretell

Cassandra was singing of the great calamity.

Clearly, this refers to Virgil’s Aeneaid; it’s from the section on the fall of Troy.

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Latin Phrase of the day – #4

Another bit of medieval Latin today, this bit is from the Chronicon Johannis de Reading.

Postea, transiens per patrias latitudine XX miliarium omnia devastavit.

Again, let’s break it down.

Postea – adv.; afterwards

transiens (transeo, transire, transivii, transitus) – verb; go over, cross

per– acc. prep.; through, during, by, by means of

patrias – noun;  fatherland, country, nation

latitudine– noun; width, breadth, extent, latitude

XX – This is the number 20

miliarium – thousands OR a roman mile (1000 paces); another meaning for this is milestone

omnia – all, totally, completely

devastavit (devasto, devastare, devastavi, devastatus) – verb; devastate, lay waste (to a territory or people), ravage, slaughter

In this case, I’m taking transiens per as an accusative phrase, “crossing through.”

My translation of the phrase?

Afterwards, passing through our homeland he destroyed totally the breadth of twenty miles.

Now…this is probably a little hinky.  If you find it to be so, please let me know!  This one gave me some trouble and I’m still very rusty at this, but I find it to be good practice, at least!  Parsing phrases properly has always been hard for me…so are cases of words, to be honest.  In English, for some reason it’s very easy to construct language…probably because we lack endings the way Romance languages have.  The only case that’s really easy for me to remember is the genitive possessive!

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Latin Phrase of the Day – #3

The phrase of the day is another header out of a medieval source; this time from the Continuatio Chronicarum of Adam of Murimuth.  Are we sensing a theme here?  Oh, maybe.  I have a selection of Latin sources floating around my room and hard drive thanks to thesis research.

“Robertus le Bruys castrum Berwici cum villa acquisivit.”

Robertus le Bruys is a phonetic Latinization of “Robert the Bruce.”

castrum – noun; fort/fortress, camp (in its plural form), army, war service, a day’s march, a castle, fortress, fortified town

Berwici – noun; Berwick

cum – adv; with, together with

villa – noun; manor, house, farm/country estate, village

acquisivit (acquiro, acquiere, acquisivi, acquistus) – verb in its perfect active third person singular form; acquire, obtain, gain, get, add to stock, accrue

Robert the Bruce obtained the castle at Berwick with the village [at Berwick].

Strangely enough, this was hard to find in the text–almost everything was very long.

Stay tuned tomorrow!

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Latin phrase of the day – #2

This one was kind of a pain, I’ll admit.  You’ll see why.  It’s from the Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough.

Scoti inierunt fedus cum Rege Francorum

Scoti – noun, nom. plural; Scot, Scotsman

inierunt (ineo, inire, inivii, initus) – verb, third person perfect; enter, undertake, begin, go in, enter upon

fedus – noun, nom. singular; kid, young goat OR two stars in the Charioteer constellation – this a really strange and unusual word.

cum – adverb OR ablative preposition; with, together with OR jointly, uner the command of, at the head of, having, containing, inlcuding, by means of

Rege – this one is tricky.  It could either be a dative or ablative form of the noun rex, regis, which means King, or it could be the present active imperfect form of the verb rego, regere, rexi, rectus, which means to rule, guide, manage, or direct

Francorum – noun, gen. plural; the Franks, the French (though some will translate this as neoLatin “franc”)

The Scots enter upon….something to do with a goat?

Yeah, that doesn’t make sense.  The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the transcriber or the author himself made a mistake and the term that should be where fedus is is actually a form of foedus, foederis, which means “treaty, league, formal agreement OR, between states, Alliance, peace, amity.”

That would make a lot more sense, wouldn’t it?

That would mean the phrase is really

Scoti inierunt foedus cum Rege Francorum

Which would translate to

The Scots having entered upon an alliance with the King of the Franks

…yeah, there’s no really good translation for the past perfect into English sometimes.

And there you have it!  Stay tuned for more….

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Latin phrase of the day – #1

Today’s Latin phrase of the day is a fragment from a manuscript in the British Public Records Office (PRO E32/30, m. 14) found in Peter Coss’s 1994 article, “Knights, Esquires and the Origins of Social Gradation in England” from Transactions of the Royal Historical Society sixth series, Vol. 5, published in 1995 by the Royal Historical Society.

qui tunc fuit armiger eius et modo est miles

Let’s break this down.

qui – pronoun; who, that, which, what

tunc – adverb; then, thereupon, at that time

fuit (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; to be, exist (this is the verb to be and gives students of Latin fits until they figure it out)

armiger – noun; armor bearer, squire

eius (also appears as ejus in some texts – is, ea, id)- they, them (this is he/she/it)

et – and, and even, also

modo – adverb; just now, recently, lately, presently, only, merely

est (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; the verb to be again, this time in the third person singular form.

miles – noun; knight

My translation?  “who at that time had been squires and presently are knights.”

Whew!  I’m rusty at this…

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It’s summer, and I should be writing

I think the title says it all:  It’s summer, and I should be writing.

I don’t know what it is about the summertime that makes me…well…less inclined toward writing.  It’s strange, but the dim days of winter tend to inspire more, the sun-dappled leaves of fall tend to encourage more.  But coming up is one of the best times for me to write: the annual family outing to Elkhart Lake, WI, where the women of the family camp out by the pool and take long walks and the men go off to play golf.  It’s an absolutely beautiful place and I get an amazing amount of reading and writing done while staking out pool space for the family as soon as the pool’s unlocked in the morning.

This year, it will be thesis reading, thesis writing, re-reading Brent Weeks’ amazing Night Angel Trilogy (as I get increasingly excited for the August release of his new book, The Black Prism (I am of the opinion that he should be dressing up as a hot mystery author for ComicCon, too) and working on my own fiction, in this case, more than likely a continuation of The Last Colony or perhaps Epsilon.  I don’t think fantasy will be figuring much into the equation unless something like Princes of the Universe decides to rear its fair head and demand my attention.  While I adore some of the things I was doing with Princes, the more I think about it, the more I realize that it will likely be left to languish for a long, long time without revision and replanning.  I’ll probably return to the storyline for Preserver long before I get back to Princes.

I’d like to have the thesis draft done by the third week of July.  Apparently, between three solid weeks of mega hours at the store (which I’m biking to for most of the summer, which will hopefully help with the belly problem I seem to be having in every bloody picture I’m in that’s not me in garb), having most of my research books in boxes (something I should attempt to remedy after vacuuming and such tomorrow), and family in town for my baby sister’s high school graduation…methinks perhaps my hope to have the draft done by the 16th was a titch too ambitious, given circumstances.

But damnation, I want to fully switch bedrooms, paint, and be able to use the beautiful desk Dad made me!  Of course…being able to do anything organizational up there would require my brother to actually not sleep until 2 in the afternoon.  Ahhh well.  Some things you can’t control.

The upshot of him sleeping until 2 in the afternoon is that I can steal time to play Assassin’s Creed…instead of writing.

I did, however, find time to impress my grandparents with my sewing and clay-playing prowess while they were in town (in part perhaps because I found it difficult to consistently be on my laptop, which is a bad habit of mine but perhaps a good habit for someone who should be writing all the time).  I finished cutting out the 2.5×2.5 inch squares I needed for an absolutely insane quilt that I’m making, a pattern based on one found in a stash-busting quilt book (and believe me, I have quite a stash of cottons for quilting!).  I have a quarter and then a few rows of the quilt top sewn together as a result of my grandparents’ visit for Kendall’s graduation…and then I also go some more pendants made of sculpy, at least two of which are intended to be for earrings (and I think they’ll look cool after I sand them).