Caveat emptor: a new book on the best lines in Latin misses the bigger picture
The mosaic depicts a chained dog accompanied by the Latin words, CAVE CANEM (“beware of the dog”).
- The mosaic depicts a chained dog accompanied by the Latin words, CAVE CANEM (“beware of the dog”).
- Latin is perhaps most familiar today as the language of practical short-cuts (etc, e.g., i.e.)
- and quotable lines, beloved by creators of school mottos and political speechwriters alike.
- The Best Latin Lines Ever – Harry Mount and John Davie (Bloomsbury) Mount and Davie take the easy way out.
- Yet there is no discussion of why Catullus uses such shocking obscenities or of the purposes of sexual invective in Latin.
Glossing over women’s stories
- This is admittedly, partly the result of the fact that most surviving Latin literature was written by men.
- One cannot but helped be moved by Perpetua’s account of her separation from her baby, whom she was still breastfeeding.
- The resonance of these heartfelt words only increases when Perpetua abandons her child, and her life, for her Christian faith.
- The poetry, panegyric, and pilgrim’s tales of the vibrant world of Late Antiquity are all but absent.