Tag: Vindolanda

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Prompt for January 5, 2014 – Day 5

Another day, another prompt!  If you’ve missed any, feel free to scroll back and check them out, or hit this link to look at all of them at once.

Prompt type: Build a Scene

Prompt: Write a short piece about the events leading up to or occurring subsequent to passage below.  Feel free to modify any gender or terminology (centurion, prefect, overseas, etc) as needed.

I implore your majesty not to allow me, an innocent man, to have been beaten with rods and, my lord, inasmuch as I was unable to complain to the prefect because he was detained by ill-health I have complained in in vain to the beneficiarius and the rest of the centurions of his unit.  I accordingly implore your mercifulness not to allow me, a man from overseas and an innocent one, about whose good faith you may inquire, to have been bloodied by rods as if I had committed some crime.

Passage from Alan K. Bowman, Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier, New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 139.

Got a suggestion for a prompt? Contact Erin at emklitzke (at) gmail (dot) com.

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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.