Fiona’s Reviews > Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin > Status Update

Lucretius was an Epicurean. Epicureanism in Greece and Rome was much more complex than hedonism, with which it is often confused today.the Greek philosopher Epicurus believed pleasure was the highest good, but pleasure meant living a simple, austere life, without anxiety, without fear of death and the afterlife. The goal of life was to avoid pain, and one avoided pain by avoiding desire and attachment.

Calendar from Antium (Insc. Ital. 13.2) the largest Fasti (calendar) unearthed so far.

The ancient agricultural calendar was lunar and included only ten months--winter was not counted (there was no agricultural activity during what would become January and February). Each year's calendar started anew at planting time in March. The empty spaces in winter obviated the need to line up solar and lunar months.

At that time there were two forms of marriage: cum manu and sine manu. In a cum manu marriage the wife was placed under the legal control of the husband. In a sine manu marriage the wife remained under the legal control of her father and ostensibly gained control of her property at the death of her father, though she was required to have a guardian, whether husband or male relative.

Decimate comes from the Latin verb decimare and means “to select one in ten for punishment.” In English, the meaning of the word has changed over the years. The American Heritage Dictionary defines decimate as: “1. To destroy or kill a large part of (a group). 2. To inflict great destruction or damage on. . . Ought a proper Latinist eschew the modern mutations of Latin word meanings?

Disce quasi semper victurus; viví quasi cras moriturus.

Learn as though you will live forever; live as though you will die tomorrow.

—St Edmund of Abingdon

The old calendar, which Julius Caesar replaced, had comprised 12 lunar months and 355 days. That calendar had begun at the spring equinox in March (Martius, after the god of war). . .

There were three fixed points in the month from which they counted: the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides. The Kalends was the first day of the month; the Nones (named such because they were nine days before the Ides) were either

Over the next two days, there followed an e-mail exchange between Curtis and me. “Would Bona placenta est edere” (Cake is good to eat) be a proper example of the epexegetical infinitive?” (Ye, friends, placenta means “cake” in Latin!)

Latin is even au courant with the new categories of gender. Clearly the neologism cisgender comes from the Latin preposition cis meaning “this side.” It must have been inspired by the Roman concepts of cisalpine and transalpine (our side of the Alps, and the other side of the Alps). So a cisgender identifies with the genitals she or he is born with, while a transgender identifies with the opposite.

Nonne, a double negative, expects a yes answer, while num, which seems more indifferent, expects a no. And there is no single word in Latin for no either. One might say minime (leastly), nullus (none), haud (not at all), or non est (it is not). Non means not in Latin, it does not mean no. And while I’m at it, there is no independent word for hello: Salve, which is the greeting for hello, means “be in good health

there is no word for yes in Latin. One might say ita, which means “the same,” or sic (thus) or sane (indeed, of course, to be sure) or oppido (exactly, very much) or certe (certainly) or even est (it is). The best way to answer in the affirmative is simply to repeat the question without the prefixes nonne, num, or the suffix ne, all of which signal a question.