sedes officii /  by Anthony Gibbins

Both my German dictionary of modern Latin and the Latin translation of Harry Potter - Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis - give sedes officii for office. And here we are, in the sedes officii of Augustus. sedes, from the verb sedeo (I sit), is variously translated as a seat, a throne, an abode, a base or – similar to English – a seat of power. officium as dutiful or respectful action, ceremonial attendance, official employment. So, here we are, with Augustus, in his ‘seat of power of official employment’. His office.

The office of Augustus is located on the second floor of the Brick Bank. I had to pull down a good part of the wall to get this shot. I take all of my photos with an iPhone 5, and while it is nice and thin, it can still be hard to get into small cramped places. There is a little nod here to Caecilius of the Cambridge Latin Course, who is of course a banker and loves counting money.

Meanwhile, Augustus is sitting in his office counting money. A message of great importance but not yet read lies on his desk.

The Reveal /  by Anthony Gibbins

I love that moment when you are reading a book or watching a television show, and you think that you have the story pinned down, know exactly where it is going, and then suddenly it takes you someplace you weren’t expecting. It may not be a major plot twist, just a small surprise detail that catches you off guard. I love that moment.

I wanted the reveal that Miranda was a police officer to be a surprise – despite the subtle pun to her name. What I didn’t expect, and only realised when I began to read the story with students, was how many readers would assume that Miranda was the woman from the rooftop in the first episode. One boy even accused me of ‘making the primary female character a criminal’.

Students in a classroom like to make their predictions out loud. ‘She’s the bank robber,’ they exclaimed as soon as it was announced that she had to work through the night. They seemed excited to have predicted where the story was going. But they always seem more satisfied when we get to this page, and they realise (or at least think) that they are wrong.

Soon, the door having opened, Miranda exits. She is a police officer (custos publica). That is the reason why she must work through the whole night.

domi /  by Anthony Gibbins

There is something special about home. The Latin word for home is domus and it gives us all sorts of English words like ‘domicile’, ‘dominate’ and ‘domestic’. Just like English, home is one of the few places that you can get to without a preposition. You go ‘to the park’, but you just ‘go home’. Latin is the same. domum means ‘to home’ and domi means ‘at home’. Other than the names of towns, cities and small islands, there are only two other Latin words that behave like that. They are humus, ‘the ground’ and rus 'the countryside'.  

Miranda is now putting on her uniform vestitum uniformem at home. Our Marcellus is still sitting on the balcony. In my opinion, he looks anxious.

So far, on Legonium /  by Anthony Gibbins

A Sunday morning seems a good time for a leisurely recap, especially for those who have only recently arrived in Legonium.

So far we know that there is a bank, a laundromat, a French restaurant (that sells a surprising amount of pizza) and a bar called the Montanus, or Highlander. There is an apartment above the restaurant and an attic apartment above that.

The attic apartment houses Marcellus, a painter, who enjoys painting and walking in the street. He dabbles is a range of styles, from modernism to abstract expressionism. He has a painting of a ship on display in the Montanus, which he hopes to sell for $100.

The larger apartment is inhabited by Miranda. She sleeps late into the day, because she has to work all night. We don’t know why, but I have a feeling we will find out. She has a friend called Claudia and they like to meet in the Montana, play pool and eat at the restaurant. Claudia likes to talk about ancient monuments, but that’s all we know about her for now.

Augustus is the manager of the bank. He wears a nice suit and has a pocket watch.  When we meet him he is cleaning the bank’s clock. And speaking of the bank, what about that woman, dressed all in black, who was looking down through the skylight one dark night?

And then there is Pico the cat who, and I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, is the star of Legonium pars tertia, which releases in October. He is pretty damn awesome.

After the game, Miranda and Claudia are hungry. They go to the restaurant to dine. Soon it is time for Miranda to prepare herself for duty.

'vendibilis' and some more on verbs /  by Anthony Gibbins

In yesterday’s post we met the four forms pingo, pingere, pinxi, pictum. I also teased that today’s post would reveal the meaning of vendibilis.

According to our narrator: pictura vendibilis emi potest.  That is, a vendibilis picture is able [insert here the meaning of emi].

The four forms of emi are emo ‘I buy’, emere ‘to buy’, emi ‘I bought’ and emptum, the supine. Reading from the page*, then, we might interpret emi in this sentence as ‘I bought’, but we would be wrong. The emi here is formed from emere (to buy), by swapping out the -ere for –i, giving us ‘to be bought’. A vendibilis picture is able ‘to be bought’, i.e. is for sale.

vendibilis comes from another Latin verb vendo, vendere, vendidi, venditum meaning ‘to sell’, the root of the modern vending machine. The future form of ‘to sell’ is, of course, ‘to be going to sell’. It is formed in Latin from the supine and is venditurum esse. Our Marcellus hopes that he is ‘going to sell’ this picture.

One last thing. We also saw yesterday how the supine pictum gave us pictor, a person who paints. In the same way venditum gave the Romans venditor, a person who sells, and emptum gave them emptor, a person who buys. I only mention this because you might be familiar with the saying caveat emptor, ‘Let the buyer beware’.

*Reading from the page, because we would not make this mistake in conversation. The letter e at the beginning of ‘to buy’ is pronounced short and sharp, whereas the e at the beginning of ‘I bought’ is pronounced long. Hence, no confusion.

Do you know what vendibilis means? A vendibilis picture is for sale. Marcellus hopes that he will sell this picture for one hundred dollars.

pingo pingere pinxi pictum /  by Anthony Gibbins

Here is a quick lesson for budding Latinists on looking up verbs in a Latin dictionary. Try looking up pingo. You will see the heading of this post, followed by a definition, in this case something like ‘to paint a picture, represent pictorially’. So what is with these four words?

Well, firstly, they aren’t really four words but four forms of the same word. pingo means ‘I paint’, pingere means ‘to paint’, pinxi means ‘I painted’ and pictum is the supine, which in the right circumstances might mean ‘in order to paint’, but is more commonly useful for forming the participle pictus, picta, pictum which means ‘having been painted’. Of course, someone beginning Latin doesn’t need to know all of this at once, but it is handy to know why the dictionary gives you so many forms of the same word.

On this page we see the word pinxit, meaning ‘he, she or it painted’, formed by changing the –i at the end of pinxi to -it. pinxisti means ‘you painted’, pinximus ‘we painted’ and pinxerunt ‘they painted’. You get the picture. Moreover, we can change the –um on the end of the supine to –or to get pictor, ‘someone who paints’. It really is a beautiful system.

Are you able to see the picture hanging on the wall? Marcellus himself once painted this picture. This picture is vendibilis*.

*Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post for the meaning of vendibilis. Hint: it has something to do with vending machines.

 

The Bechdel Test /  by Anthony Gibbins

The Bechdel Test is named for the cartoonist, Alison Bechdel, who first introduced the idea in one of her strips. Bechdel herself prefers the name Bechdel-Wallace Test, which credits the woman, Liz Wallace, who helped develop the idea.

The Bechdel-Wallace test can be performed on a work of fiction, in order to find out something of the way it portrays female characters. A large amount of fiction, including about half of all films, fails the test. bechdeltest.com offers a useful list.

To pass the test, a work of fiction must meet the following three criteria; 1. It has to have at least two women in it 2. who talk to each other 3. about something other than a man. Deadpool fails, but Batman vs Superman passes. Zootopia passes, but Kung Fu Panda 3 and Monsters Inc. do not. Fightclub, Train Spotting, Forrest Gump, Groundhog Day, The Princess Bride, Stand By Me and Raiders of the Lost Ark all fail. The Life of Brian, Inglourious Bastards, Amelie, No Country for Old Men, The Dark Knight, Sin City, The Incredibles and V for Vendetta all pass. So do Pulp Fiction and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I’m happy to say that Legonium, pars secunda passes. partes prima, tertia, quarta and quinta, sadly, do not. But partes sexta and septima do, as will many more to follow. It’s no great achievement to pass the Bechdel-Wallace test, but its problematic that so much of our fiction does not. I’d like to think that Legonium would have passed even if I’d never heard of the test, but I am glad I had heard of it, and that it is in my mind as I write these stories.

A bit about the Latin. I took quolibet from the wonderful Latin podcast, quomodo dicitur. They bill their show as ‘A Weekly Podcast about Anything’ (Colloquium Latinum hebdomadale de quolibet). I highly recommend a listen. The translation for pool, ludus tudicularis, I found in a German dictionary of modern Latin. It truly is a book de quolibet.

They play pool for two hours talking about anything. It often pleases Claudia, a learned woman, to talk about ancient monuments.

Claudia Mirandaque /  by Anthony Gibbins

Here we encounter Claudia for the first time. We also see the inside of the Montanus, or Highlander. The Highlander is part of the set called The Detective's Office, which was released at the beginning of 2015. In this shot you can see something of the inside detail, the trophy case, dart board and pool table.

comiter is an adverb with connections to the noun comes. The Oxford Latin Dictionary defines comes as 'one who goes with or accompanies another, a companion, friend or comrade, a partner or associate', among other things. When I think of someone greeting a person comiter, I just think of how one tends to greet a comes. For the sake of translation, however, I will translate comiter as 'in a friendly manner.'

Claudia, a friend of Miranda, is waiting for her in the Montanus. She greets her as-she-enters (present participle) in a friendly manner. Miranda responds in a friendly manner.