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Loose Ends
In this chapter I will try to clear up some
of the confusion, misconceptions, and general ignorance shared
by many people about some of the more common Words of the Day.
Most—if not all—will be familiar to you. You will find that you
have been using many of them without any real idea either of
what the word means, or how it got that way. But not to
worry—probably no one has noticed because chances are most
everybody else has been doing the same thing!
Latin 101
First, a little technical stuff. Latin is an
inflected language—that is, nouns have different endings called
“cases” to indicate how words function in a sentence. The
“nominative” case is always the subject; the “accusative” case
is usually the direct object, the “dative” case the indirect
object, etc. English still retains some remnants of this
system—though very few. “Who,” for example is “nominative”
whereas “whom” is “accusative.” There is also something called
the “genitive” case, which shows possession. In English we would
say “whose” as the “genitive” of the pronoun “who.” The
“genitive” case is also important because in Latin it contains
the root of the word, whereas the “nominative” may not.
For example, if you looked up the word for
“law” in a Latin dictionary, you would be given the “nominative”
and the “genitive” cases: lex, legis. The way you
get to the root of a noun in Latin is to go the genitive form
and drop off the last vowel and anything after it. The root then
would be leg,
taken from the genitive. So all our derivatives are built on the
root: “legal, “legislature,” etc. The same thing is true for all
other words in Latin. Take the Latin word for “night,” nox.
If you looked up nox in a Latin dictionary you would find
the entry: nox, noctis, “night.” So the root is
noct, where we
get words like “nocturnal.” The Latin word nox is
actually a rip off from the Greek word νυξ (say: “noo-cks”),
whose root, after transliteration, is
nyct and it is
where we get terms like “nyctophobia” for people who are afraid
of the dark.
Whew!
Just remember: when you look up a noun in a
Latin dictionary, you are always given the “nominative” and the
“genitive” cases because it is the “genitive” case that contains
the root of the word. How did we get this far into the book
without having to tackle this? Because usually the nominative
and the genitive are so similar that I was able to spare you the
gory details. But we’re about to discuss Jupiter again, and the
nominative and the genitive of “Jupiter” don’t look anything
alike. Always leave it up to old Jupiter to cause trouble!
1) Jovial
Most people know that “jovial” means
“happy,” or “joyful,” but they don’t know why. The “genitive”
form of the Latin noun Juppiter is Jovis, so boil
it down and we get to the root of the name of the King of the
Gods as he was known by the Romans:
jov.
So why is Jupiter always “jovial?” Not just
because it is the root of the genitive of his name, but because,
as we have already discussed, he had this obsession with
ravaging young Earth girls (and, as we’ll see, boys), which I
suppose beat hanging around Mt. Olympus all day watching “Wide
World of Αθλητης.” Also, if you notice above, in Latin, Jupiter
is spelled with two “p”s, but in its anglicized form, it is
spelled with only one “p”—don’t ask me why.
(Astronomical note: the planet
Jupiter is named after the King of the Gods because it is the
largest planet in our solar system. Although Jupiter has some
twelve moons that circle it, all but four are so small that they
barely qualify as “moons,” so we will concern ourselves with
these, the four main Jovian moons which were first observed by
Galileo in the 16th Century and so are referred to as
the “Galilean Moons.” Fittingly enough, they were named after
four of the more well-known sexual conquests Jupiter enjoyed
down on Earth.)
ganymede: The largest of the Jovian moons, larger
even than the planet Mercury, was named Ganymede after a young
boy of extreme beauty with whom Jupiter fell madly in love.
Taking the form of an Eagle, he swooped down to Earth, snatched
him up, and carried him off to Olympus where he made him his
personal “cupbearer.” Now I don’t know what, exactly, a
“cupbearer” did up there on Mt. Olympus, but I’m sure at some
point it involved knee pads!
io:
The second largest of the Jovian moons was named after Io. As
one version of the story goes, Jupiter saw Io walking near a
river and fell madly in love with her. He told her to meet him
in the woods at noon. When they hooked-up, he spread a huge dark
cloud over them so that his wife, Juno, wouldn’t be able to see
what was going on. But Juno, by now used to her husband’s feeble
attempts at concealing his extracurricular “amusements,” came
down to disperse the cloud and expose the lovers. Acting just in
time, Jupiter turned Io into a heifer, hoping to fool his wife.
Now Juno was no fool, but she could play
dumb with the best of them, so she compliments her husband on
the beautiful heifer he must have found “for her” and so asks if
she can have it as a gift. What could Jupiter do but give it
up? She then sent Argus, a character with a hundred eyes, to
keep a constant watch over the heifer in case Jupiter tried to
sneak back and free Io from her bondage as a cow. Io remained a
heifer for many years, but eventually escaped the watchful eyes
of Argus and wandered all the way to Egypt. Jupiter felt so bad
about all of this that he pleaded with his wife to turn her back
into a woman again, which she did on the condition that Jupiter
keep his hands off. From then on Io was worshipped as the
Egyptian goddess Isis.
europa: The third largest of the Jovian moons was
named after Europa. Jupiter saw Europa playing with her friends
in a meadow by the sea and fell madly in love with her. This
time, he took on the form of a big, white, muscular bull and
started to prance around in the meadow over near where the
little girls were playing in order to attract their attention.
Which, of course, he did. Over they came and he lay down and let
them stroke his belly. Then, one by one, he started to give them
rides around the meadow. When Europa’s turn came and on she
climbed, he bolted straight for the sea where he transported her
to the island of Crete. There, under the shade of a Plane tree,
they made crazy love. She must have been some piece of ass,
because old Jupiter had such a good time that he named an entire
continent after her.
callisto: The fourth of the Jovian moons was named
after Callisto (whose name in ancient Greek really does
translate to τη καλλιςτη—but don’t tell Aphrodite!). Callisto
was a follower of Demeter, the virgin goddess, and vowed to
remain a virgin for a life of service to the goddess. But
Jupiter fell madly in love with her and put an end to all of
that nonsense. Having learned from the Io episode, after he was
done with Callisto he turned her into a bear so that Juno
wouldn’t find out (why a bear is any better than a cow is
anybody’s guess). But you can’t fool your wife even if your name
is Zeus, so Juno convinced Demeter to shoot the “bear,” on the
grounds that Callisto had to be punished for breaking her vow of
celibacy. Jupiter felt so bad about all this that he turned
Callisto into the constellation Ursa Major. Juno was so pissed
off that Callisto had been given this honor, that she persuaded
Ocean never to let her touch his waters, so that Callisto would
have no rest. She was doomed to circle the pole star without
ever setting.
2) Idiot
In ancient Greece, if you wanted to vote,
you had to appear in person in a large city center like, say,
Athens, and vote there. There were no polling stations or
absentee ballots. So if you were a farmer living out on your
spread some five or ten miles from town and you wanted to vote,
you first of all had to drop everything you were doing on the
farm—and there was always plenty to do down on the farm—and make
what was probably a two to three day round trip journey while
you left you wife and children at home alone to fend for
themselves.
Travel in the ancient world could be a
brutal experience. Remember, this was before there was anything
like a police force or a highway patrol, and so there were
plenty of people out there just waiting for you to come riding
down the road so they could beat you over the head and rob you
blind—and that was if you were lucky! And what if you had
to spend the night along the way? Motels back then just weren’t
what they are today—which still isn’t saying much. The
technology of the lock and key had been invented, but far from
perfected, so there was a good chance that if you spent the
night at an “inn,” you’d wake up to find not only your shoes and
clothes and money stolen, but also your horse, or donkey, or
mule and whatever was hitched onto the back of it. A good mule
and wagon—let alone a horse—could bring a lot of drachma on the
black market. And people didn’t ask too many questions when the
price was right.
So many farmers living out in the boonies
just figured the heck with it and didn’t bother to risk getting
robbed or worse just to drop a pottery shard into an urn with
someone’s name on it. Besides, what did he care who was the
ruling Archon in Athens any given year? Did it really affect
him? As a result, a lot of these people just kept to themselves
and didn’t get involved in politics simply because it was so
impractical—not to mention dangerous—for them to try.
In ancient Greece, a person who kept to
himself and out of public life was referred to as an idiotes
(ιδιοτης: say “id-ee-oh-tase). The noun derives from the
adjective idios (ιδιος: say “id-ee-ohs”) meaning
“private,” and the “occupational suffix “–της” (remember αθλητης?),
meaning “person who…” Now over time, it began to take on a
pejorative meaning because people who did not get involved with
public life were seen as “ignorant” or even “simple-minded.”
Imagine a person who never picked up a newspaper or watched a
single news broadcast, and you can see how the word began to
change. To say “He’s an idiot,” was to say that that person
didn’t know what was going on. By the mid 14th
century it could mean anything from simply an “uneducated
person” to a “feeble-minded fool.”
Plato Was An Idiot?
An interesting note: before it began to take
on the pejorative social baggage that it has today, the ancient
Greeks often used the word ιδιοτης of a writer who wrote prose
as opposed to poetry, since poetry was written to be read aloud
and performed in public, but prose, such as the philosophical
writings of Plato, were generally intended to be read silently
and contemplated in private.
(Historical note: the way you voted
in ancient Greece worked like this: you were handed a small
piece of broken pottery—called a shard—on which you wrote, or
scratched, the name of your candidate, and then dropped the
shard into an urn. The Greek word for this kind of a pottery
shard was ostrakon (οστρακον: say “oh-strah-con). And
because this was the same process that the Greeks used to remove
someone from office—or even from society if they felt the person
had committed a crime and needed to be exiled—our term “to
ostracize” derives from this ancient custom.)
3) Money
Way back in the 5th century B.C.,
Rome was still little more than just a wide space in the salt
road—the pathway that the people living in the mountains
followed to get to the salt pans at the mouth of the Tiber—and
its economy was based on the tolls these early Romans charged at
their bridges so people migrating from the hills to the sea
could cross the river. Sometime around in there, the Romans also
started setting up little shops and stalls along the road
leading up to the bridge, in case someone wanted to buy a spare
rib or a hot dog or grab a beer along the way. These migrating
people paid in sal the Latin word for salt, hence the
term “salary.”
Eventually the Romans established an economy
that, like the Greeks before them, was based on three basic
metals: bronze, silver, and gold. They developed “coinage” and
assigned value based on the weight of the metal in the coin.
Obviously bronze coins were worth less than silver coins, which
were worth less than gold, and so on. To strike coins you needed
a secure place to store and weigh the metals, strike them into
individual coins, etc., and so the Romans set up a “mint” in the
Temple of Juno on the Capitoline Hill, which had the steepest
slopes of the original seven hills of Rome and thus was the most
easily defended.
Then, sometime around the turn of the 4th
century—approximately 390 B.C.—just as the Romans were getting
their shit together, they were suddenly invaded by the Gauls. So
the Romans took up a defensive position on the Capitoline hill
and the Gauls surrounded it. The siege lasted for a few days
until one night the Gauls tried to scale the steep slope of the
hill in order to catch the Romans off-guard. Unfortunately for
them, they chose the side of the hill where the Temple of Juno
stood. What the Gauls didn’t know was that all around the temple
the flock of the Sacred Geese of Juno were sleeping, as were
most of the Romans. As the first of the Gauls reached the top of
the hill they awoke the Sacred Geese who started quacking up a
storm. The quacking of the Sacred Geese in turn awoke the Romans
who were then easily able to fend off the Gauls from the top of
the hill.
As it turned out, the Gauls weren’t all that
interested in occupying Rome, they were just curious about these
strange people who wore togas and had long beards, and had come
down to have a look. So after that little skirmish on the hill
they said the heck with it and went back home.
Because the Sacred Geese around Juno’s
temple had warned the sleeping Romans of the stealthy approach
of the Gauls, they renamed it the Temple of Juno Moneta, her new
nickname taken from the verb monere, which means “to
warn.” So from then on her temple was known as the Temple of
Juno the “Warner.” Because it was also in the Temple of Juno
Moneta that the Romans continued to coin their money, the coins
that were struck there were referred to as moneta in
Latin. This “nickname” is obviously also where we get words
associated with money, such as “monetary,” etc.
(Historical note: the early Romans,
as the Greeks before them, didn’t shave and were known for their
beards. Until Alexander the Great, that is. Alexander had a
quarrelsome relationship with his father, Philip II of Macedon,
who also wore a beard. Alex and daddy didn’t get along because
Philip slept with everyone but the family mule—not that he
probably hadn’t tried, as he was also a notorious drunk—which
upset Alex’s mother Olympias so much that she started sleeping
with snakes in her bed, hoping that Philip would remember where
it was and show up one night. He never did. But because Philip
was a mean guy, and an even meaner drunk—which he was most of
the time, there wasn’t much Alex could do in the rebelliousness
of his youth but shave and then go on to conquer the world.
Right before leaving to do that, Philip was murdered. Most
scholars agree that Alexander had absolutely nothing to
do with it whatsoever.
As Alexander conquered the world, he had to
pay his army and so he struck a lot of coins that bore his face
on one side and an image of Zeus on the other. These coins
circulated quickly throughout the Mediterranean world and
eventually fell into the hands of the Romans, who were so
impressed with Alexander’s military conquests that they all
wanted to be just like him and the trend of shaving became all
the rage. Whether or not Alexander “conquered the world,” one
thing is certain: he set a new vogue for the men of ancient Rome
that would endure for centuries!)
4) Orgy
Our word “orgy” derives directly from the
Greek noun orge (οργη: say “or-gay), which was their word
for “anger.” But the ancient Greeks didn’t differentiate between
emotions quite the same way we do. They saw any emotion that
caused you to loose control of yourself, that caused you to do
something completely beyond the realm of your normal behavior,
as a manifestation of οργη. When, for example, you read in the
paper about the latest “road rage” incident in which someone
otherwise calm and reasonable suddenly turns into a murderous
maniac after being cut off by another driver—that would
be a good example of how the Greeks understood the word orge.
Our word “anger” severely limits the scope of orge. It
could be any emotion—“anger,” “passion,” “lust”—that caused you
to loose your ability to think clearly.
Many of the Greek gods and goddesses were on
one level simply metaphors for these strong, passionate
emotions. Zeus obviously represented “power,” whose seductive
sway the Greeks were very aware—and wary—of. It was, for
example, the aspiration of being king that seduced Oedipus and
brought him to his ruinous end. Aphrodite embodied the carnal,
sexual passions. Artemis, the opposite. She was a virginal
goddess, who represented the power of abstinence which, when
taken to extremes, could turn to sanctimony, another no-no. Read
Euripdes’ play Hippolytus if you want to see what happens
to someone whose disdain for sex causes his downfall. Each one
of the gods and goddesses represented a potential orge
which, if taken too far, could destroy you. The idea was to
“worship” each god and goddess equally, but not to extremes and
not to the exclusion of one or another, but treat them all
equally. In other words, lead a balanced life.
It’s hardly news that the Greeks were very
fond of wine and were very proud of their vintages. But they
were also aware of how powerful and dangerous the effects of
drinking too much of it could be. The god Bacchus (also known as
Dionysus) was the god they invented for this particular orge.
His followers were called the Bacchae—a troop of women who
followed him around in the woods along with these creatures who
were half men and half-goat, whose leader was named Silenus. It
was a secret cult. You could be initiated into it only after
“spiritual purification” by being allowed to take part in one of
their “orgiastic” rituals that involved, first and foremost, the
consumption of wine until you had lost control of your senses.
And then anything could happen. Usually, it was sexual in
nature, but things could also get a little rough. There is a
“rough” side to raw, sexual, aggression. A very “physical”
aggression.
Today, our word “orgy” simply retains the
“group sex” idea for most people, but for the Greeks, the sexual
aspect of the cult was only incidental, secondary. It was the
loss of control that was “orgiastic” about these sorts of
activities. The root
org is also where we get our word “orgasm,” which is,
literally, a loss of control, isn’t it? Sometimes it happens
when—ooops!—you least expect or even want it to.
Sometimes, it just doesn’t “come” at all.
(Etymological note: our expression
“to come” meaning to experience orgasm, derives from the Latin
verb venire, which means “to come”—primarily in the sense
of “arrive”—but still, the root of the word is
ven, and it is
from this root that the Roman goddess Venus derives her
name. Venus was the Roman counterpart of the Greek goddess
Aphrodite, and like Aphrodite, was a metaphor for the power of
raw sexuality. Venereal diseases are sexually
transmitted, contracted through the “sexchange” of bodily fluids
when you “come.”)
5) Pornography
It was a sad day for all who strive for
precision with words when, in 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter
Stewart tried to explain the word “pornography” when concurring
in Jacobellis v. Ohio by saying he could not define it:
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of
material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand
description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly
doing so. But I know it when I see it.” Justice Stewart
obviously should have consulted his Greek lexicon, where he
would have found that the word “pornography,” derives from the
Greek root porn
(from the noun πορνη: say “por-nay”), which was their term for
“prostitute” or “whore” and
graph which
comes from the Greek verb γραφω (say “grah-foe”), and can mean
anything along the lines of “to write,” or “to paint,” or “to
draw.”
(Etymological note: some of the most
beautiful artifacts to survive from ancient Greece are the black
and red figure terra-cotta vases, pots, and cups we have
discussed before. Generally, the artist who painted the pot was
a different individual than the man who made the pot. Often one
or the other—or both upon occasion—would sign the pot. The
painter would use this verb—γραφω—when he signed the pot. The
man who made the pot, who “threw” the clay upon a wheel turned
by a crank-like device either operated by the foot of the maker
himself, or by an apprentice, used the verb poieo (ποιεω:
say “poi-eh-owe”) which means, literally, “to make.” The noun
ποιητης (say “poi-yey-tase”) that derives from this verb is
where we get the word “poet,” which means, literally, anyone who
makes or creates something. But by the time the Romans got a
hold of it and transliterated it into the Latin poeta, it
was used primarily as we use it today: of one who creates
verse.)
So the definition of “pornography” is the
“depiction of a prostitute.” Period. The small seaside town of
Pompeii, for example, began as an early Greek settlement and
became a resort town for wealthy Romans by the 1st
century B.C. Pompeii was destroyed in the year 79 A.D. following
the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and is still being excavated today.
It is the oldest ongoing archaeological site in the world. In
its heyday, at the time of its destruction, it had a population
of about 20,000 people, give or take. And even though there are
still large parts of the city that have yet to be excavated, to
date they have found evidence of 174 houses of prostitution.
That’s a pretty large number for such a small town, and there
are doubtless others yet to be discovered.
The Latin word for “prostitute” is lupa
(which, interestingly, also means “she-wolf”) and the word for a
whorehouse is lupinar. When you entered a lupinar,
you were presented with a “menu” as it were. This menu was
usually painted on the walls, often near the entrance, and
showed the various sexual “specialties of the house” that were
available, and what each one cost. These pictures were,
literally, pornographia, because they showed what sorts
of prostitutes plied their trade their, as each usually had his
or her own “specialty.” One lupa might specialize in
fellatio, another might take it up the ass. The price varied
from one type of “service” to the next, and from one lupinar
to another, depending upon the quality of the work, so to speak.
(Historical note: unlike our modern
society, where prostitution is looked down upon and—with a few
exceptions—criminalized, this wasn’t so in the ancient world.
And, also unlike today, was not a service offered primarily for
by women for men. A woman could also be “serviced” at a
lupinar. And many often were. Most a lupinaria
featured a “cunnilinguist” for their female clientele. There was
apparently one man who was extremely skilled at it and he seemed
to work on a “fee lance” type basis as archaeologists have found
his name featured in advertisements painted on the walls of
several of these establishments. It would seem from the evidence
that the Romans considered “cunt lapping” an art that took great
skill to master and perform correctly!)
6) Fornication
If the ancient Greeks were known for
anything—and what weren’t they known for?—it was for
their skill as master architects. They knew how to move stone.
Like the ancient Egyptians, they were famous for their ability
to design great monuments out of stone—often quarried and hauled
overland for hundreds of miles—carved and erected using a
technology that today we would consider little more
sophisticated than toothpicks and bobby pins. And yet many of
them are still standing today, albeit in one state of ruin or
another, as a testament to the enduring effort of man. Why they
chose to spend their lives toiling in this way, instead of, say,
just going to the beach—and Greece has some beautiful
beaches!—we will never know. Like the pyramids of ancient Egypt,
the temples of ancient Greece stand like silent sentinels to the
legacy of the persistence and endurance of human industry.
But for all that they achieved with chisel
and mallet, the Greeks were forever locked into what is known as
“post and lintel” architecture. That is, erect a column, erect a
second one next to it, and connect them by lowering a
rectangular block of stone across the space between them. Simply
repeat this process over and over and you have the beginnings of
your standard Greek temple. Just think of it as framing a house
only using marble instead of maple.
The “post and lintel” technique was fine for
your traditional Greek style temple—such as the Parthenon, which
still crowns the summit of the Acropolis in Athens and
represents perhaps the pinnacle of Greek architectural genius.
It is, along with the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the
Colosseum and the Sphinx that guards the pyramids on the Giza
plateau along the bank of the Nile, arguably one of the most
universally recognizable man-made structures in the world.
At first, the Romans copied the Greek style
of “post the lintel” architecture. Many of the early temples in
the Roman forum, such as the Temple of Saturn and the Temple of
Castor—two of the oldest temples in Rome dating back to the turn
of the 5th century B.C.—were built using the post and
lintel design. The only problem with the post and lintel style
is that no matter how close you arrange your columns—no matter
now narrow the intercolumniation, no matter how thick and sturdy
the lintel that spans it—you can only put so much stress on that
lintel before it will crack.
This inherent design flaw prevented both the
Greeks and the early Romans from building much higher than a
first—or in some limited cases a small, lightweight second
story—not much more than a terrace really—simply because the
post and lintel design could not bear the weight of any
substantial superstructure. It was the Romans who developed the
solution to this problem, around 100 B.C.: the arch. They had
actually been already using the arch for over a century, but for
a different purpose.
Aqueducts And Arches
For most of its life a Roman aqueduct is
simply a pipe buried underground that carries water from the
Apennine mountains to Rome and other urban centers. It is only
when the pipe gets close to its destination that it begins to
rise out of the ground. The reason for this is simple physics.
By the time a great volume of water has traveled some three or
four hundred kilometers downhill, it has built up a great amount
of velocity that must be dissipated somehow, otherwise the water
pressure would be uncontrollable and impossible harness. The
easiest way to alleviate the pressure was by using the natural
force of gravity—by reversing the slope that carried the water
downhill and created all the pressure in the first place.
This is where the arch becomes instrumental.
By using the arch to raise the pipe out of the ground and then
bumping up the height of each arch by small increments, the
Romans could carry the water into the city on a row of arches
marching in advancing height to slow the flow of the water down.
In this way Roman engineers created and maintained a water
pressure that was controllable so that by the time it reached
its destination it could be put to practical use.
(Historical note: because the Romans
used lead pipes, many people labor under the misconception that
by consuming the water carried by these lead pipes the Roman
populace was exposed to lead poisoning, which led to madness and
precipitated the fall of the Roman empire, because everyone went
nuts from drinking the water. This is simple nonsense. The
Apennine mountains, which the Romans tapped for most of their
water supply, are of limestone composition. Limestone is a very
porous type of sedentary stone, and therefore the water that
flows out of them contains a high concentration of lime that
would quickly glaze the interior of the pipes, providing a
natural protective veneer shielding the water against the toxic
effects of the lead.)
Amphitheatres And Arches
But constructing an arch to carry the weight
of a pipe full of water was one thing. Its purpose was to
elevate and cover distance—not necessarily to support a lot of
weight. Were it not for the arch, engineering feats such as the
Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, not to mention practically
every other theatre the Romans built would have been possible.
The Roman were running water over arches for over a hundred
years before it dawned on them that the arch was capable of
much, much more.
Terracina
It would not be until the turn of the first
century before Christ that—at a remote site some fifty
kilometers south of Rome on the Via Appia, a town by the sea
called Terracina—that Roman engineers realized the true
versatility of the arch and its importance as a structural
device. The way the arch works—the reason it can support such
loads—is that the voussoirs (wedge shaped blocks at the curve of
the shoulders of the arch) were held in place by the
keystone—also wedge-shaped—so that the thrust of any weight
placed on top of it would be transferred equally through the
shoulders of the arch and down each side to be absorbed by the
foundation.
While Romans were exploring the
possibilities of the arch they stumbled upon something else—that
if they mixed a little sand, gravel, water, and some Pozzuoli
volcanic ash together it would harden into something called
concrete. And with a little more time and refinement of the
process they eventually could get their concrete to set
underwater! By constructing wooden frames in the shape of arches
and pouring concrete over top of them they could manufacture a
substructure of arches that could carry a superstructure as high
as their imaginations allowed them to—and do it very quickly as
well.
It was the design of the arch, along with
the invention of concrete that enabled the Romans to build on a
scale not even dreamed of by the Greeks. Ironically, at
Terracina, the Romans used the marriage of these two newfound
technologies in order to construct a level platform on the top
of a mountain in order to build a traditional post and lintel
style temple on top of it.
Caesar The Architect
It wouldn’t be until about fifty years later
that none other than Julius Caesar recognized the arch for
something more than simply an architectural apparatus that
enabled the Romans to build sturdy foundations. Aside from being
a brilliant military commander, Caesar was a man of true vision
and saw the aesthetic beauty in the simplicity of its shape, and
designed a building on a grand scale that—instead of hiding the
arches under the building as a support system—featured them by
stacking three tiers of open arches on top of the other. Once
completed, the building would end up accommodating 150,000
people. That building was the Circus Maximus—rightly named as
the greatest arena for chariot racing in the entire ancient
world. Charioteers would travel from as far away as Egypt and
Syria, just for the experience of competing there.
Chariot racing in the valley between the
Palatine and Aventine hills in Rome dates back at least to the 7th
century B.C. Probably spectators sat on the surrounding hills,
or erected make-shift wooden bleachers to watch the teams of
four-horse chariots—called quadrigae—race around the
valley.
But it was Julius Caesar who transformed the
place from a field surrounded by wooden bleachers on the
hillsides encircling the valley, to a monumental stone structure
that was 700 meters long, three tiers high, and could seat up to
150,000 spectators. And he did it all using the arch and
concrete.
Going “Arching”
Now the Romans loved Caesar for building
it—especially since he funded for the whole project personally
from the “killing” he was making in Gaul.
Watching a chariot race was about as much
fun as you could have in a city like Rome—twelve teams of four
horse chariots charging through the dust, lap after lap,
crashing into each other, bodies flying everywhere. But chariot
racing didn’t go on every day, but rather only on festivals. And
the Circus Maximus, due to the nature of its construction with
all those open, exposed archways, invited people to move in and
set up shops in the archways, often with the shopkeeper living
above his shop. It wasn’t long before the place became a virtual
outdoor mall. One of the most popular commodities sold in these
archways was sex, and some scholars estimate that one out of
every three to five archway shops was a house of prostitution,
or was home to some other lewd activity to be had for a price.
This was probably the reason why so many of Rome’s fires began
in the vicinity of the Circus Maximus thanks to some old whore
knocking over a lamp and setting her straw mattress on fire.
So if you were in the market for that kind
of thing, the arches of the Circus Maximus was where you went.
Well, the Latin word for arch is fornix, and the root is
fornic. So
if you’re going to go “fornicate” literally you are going to go
“arching,” and if that was the case, chances were you were
looking for one thing and it wasn’t a head of lettuce!
7) Sinister
The New Oxford American Dictionary,
2nd Edition (2005) lists as the primary meaning of the word
“sinister”—and I’m quoting here—“giving the impression that
something harmful or evil is happening or will happen, wicked or
criminal.” It isn’t until you get to the second definition that
the authors of the dictionary get around to telling you what the
word actually means. And on top of that, they call it an
“attributive meaning” as if it were a meaning that the word
didn’t originally posses, but somehow “acquired” or “took on”
over time. But what can you expect from a dictionary, the root
of which, dict,
comes from the Latin verb dicere which means “to say” or
“to speak.” So when you look in a dictionary, don’t necessarily
expect to find what a word actually means, just expect to
find recorded there how people use it in their
“diction”—that is, how they use it in everyday conversation. And
if you’ve ever listened to people talk, it can get scary to hear
the way they use some of the words that come out of their
mouths. So you don’t go to a dictionary to find out what words
mean, you go to a dictionary to find out how people use them
while striking up a conversation on a bus or waiting for the
elevator to reach their floor. Hey, they don’t call it “small
talk” for nothing!
The word “sinister” comes into English
directly from the Latin adjective sinister which means
“left-handed” or of anything “occurring on the left.” As opposed
to the adjective dexter, which means “right handed” or
anything “occurring on the right.” Now the idea of left-handed
people being considered unlucky or ill-omened is no longer a
modern concept, but it was in antiquity and that particular
connotation dates back to the earliest of the ancient Roman
days. The reason for this is that the ancient Romans—like the
Greeks before them—were extremely superstitious creatures. They
didn’t so much as drink their morning orange juice without
taking omens first, or interpreting some naturally occurring
phenomenon as an omen. The gods spoke in mysterious ways:
sometimes you had to call them, sometimes they called
you. Either way, you checked with them before you did just about
anything.
Liver Spots
The Romans had many ways of reading the
gods’ minds. Sometimes they would examine the liver of a
sacrificial animal and look for spots. Spots were a bad omen. A
little advice: if you’re buying meat at the local grocery stores
and you see spots on the meat—that’s a bad omen. Go with
the fish instead.
Bird Watching
Another way the Romans took omens was a
process called augury—or bird watching. Augury was performed by
—you guess it!—Augurs. An Augur was a special kind of priest who
was skilled in the ways of our winged friends and who knew how
to interpret bird signs. The way it worked was the Augur took
his magic stick (called a lituus) and inscribed a big
square box in the dirt on the ground, roughly five feet square.
Then he quartered the box into four equal sections and in one of
the boxes on the right side he wrote the word “yes” and in
another on the same side he wrote “definitely” and then on the
left side, in one box he wrote “no” and in the other he wrote
“don’t even think of parking here!” The he would
cross-legged on the intersection of all four boxes, in the
center of the big box, and gazed skyward and in his imagination
project the outlines of the box up into the sky. Here he would
sit and wait and watch until a bird flew through one of the
boxes, which would give him his answer. As you can see, this was
a system that could, and often did, lead to extreme corruption
and manipulation.
The Left-Handed Legion
So this was how the Latin term sinister came
to be “bad, or “unlucky,” or “ill-omened.” The Romans were so
superstitious about the left side of life that even left-handed
people were shunned. In the Roman army, for example, they took
all the left handed soldiers and placed them into a single
legion and sent that legion as far away from Rome as
possible—all the way to the northernmost boundary of the empire:
Hadrian’s wall in Scotland. And to this day, if you go to visit
the wall, the locals will tell you that the ghosts of the
Left-handed Legion still haunt the Scottish moors around the
ruin of Hadrian’s wall.
8) Testicle
You’re probably wondering why we didn’t deal
with this word when we “dissected” the etymology of the human
body earlier. But the word has such a bizarre story to tell,
that I didn’t want it to “fall through the crack” as it were.
The word “testicle” is made up of the Latin
noun testis, which means “witness” as in someone who is
called into court to give testimony in a trial. Once we extract
the root test,
then all we have to do is add the diminutive suffix
“-cle” onto it. So literally, a “testicle” is a “little
witness.” So how does this technically legal term come to be
used for a particular part of a man’s genitalia. Well, there are
two prevailing theories on this, and you’ll find as many people
who cling to the first as to the second.
Theory #1
In ancient Rome, when called to testify at a
trial, a witness had to swear an oath that he would tell the
truth—similar to our practice today. But because the ancient
Romans didn’t have a bible—or any document like it—on which a
witness would have to place his hand while he swore his oath
dicere veritatem, omnen vertitatem, et nihil sed vertitatem,
it was custom that the witness grab his balls and swear by them.
If you think about it, this was a very effective way of ensuring
that someone would tell the veritas and only the
veritas, because if it were found out that he hadn’t, he
stood the chance of losing something quite near and dear to him!
Theory #2
In ancient Rome, since a man’s household
slaves enjoyed an intimate relationship with their masters—often
making them privy to their comings and goings, when, and with
whom—overhearing little things muttered in dark corners meant
for ears others than their own—the testimony of a slave could be
very powerful stuff in the hands of a wily prosecutor. But
because many slaves were also quite loyal to their masters, or
might be reluctant to testify against them in open court out of
fear of repercussions should his master not be convicted, it was
Roman law that a slave could only testify against his master—or
any member of the household in which he worked, for that
matter—if that testimony was extracted under physical torture.
This is quite the opposite of the way our legal system works
today. Today, any statement given under any force of duress, be
it physical or otherwise, is almost always ruled inadmissible
without exception. Not so for the Romans, at least when it came
to the testimony of slaves.
The way it worked was the slave was called
in and strapped down to a chair. And then a court
official—usually some big, brawny, mean-faced brute with large
muscular hands—would then stand next to the witness with one
hand under the slave’s tunic gripping the poor fellows nuts and
beginning to apply pressure as the questioning began. Then, as
the interrogation proceeded, if it was the opinion of the court
members that the slave was not forthcoming to their
satisfaction, they would give the nod to man with his “hand on
the switch” so to speak, and he would turn up the pressure. A
lot of testimony probably went much like this:
Slave: “…I think I heard him say…he
wanted to learn to please her…”
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!
Slave “..I mean I think I heard him
say he wanted to murder Caesar!”
There is some truth to the old adage—for
which this might very well be the origin: when you’ve got them
by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow!
9) The “F” Word
If there are two theories on the history of
“testicle,” there probably more than you can count for the
etymology of “fuck.” Frankly, we’re all just guessing.
Grammatically, “fuck” can be anything. It
can be a noun (“That was one screaming fuck I got last night!”);
or a verb (“I fucked the shit out of that bitch all night
long!”); it can be an adjective (“She says he’s a virtual
fucking machine!”); it can be an adverb (“That’s one fucking bad
haircut you got today at the mall.); it needn’t even have
sexual connotation (“That’s a lot of fucking crap you’ve got
there!”); it can mean something good (“I really got fucked last
night!”); or something bad (“I really got fucked last night!”);
it makes for a great interjection (“Fuck! I can’t find my keys!)
as well as an interruption (“Outfuckingrageous!” or “I
underfuckingestimated what an ass-hole you can be!”). All this
tells us nothing about the etymology of the word; it is just a
commentary on the impressive range of usages the word has
acquired over time. To cover all the theories on the history of
this word would be to write its own book, which I’m sure has
been done, and probably done badly. It would be hard—if even
possible—to do it well.
The Dictionary of American Slang
(1960) gives as the primary meaning of the word…“[taboo] To
Cheat, trick, take advantage of, deceive, or treat someone
unfairly.” It goes on to offer this as an explanation of the
relationships between fraud and sex: “All slang meanings of
‘fuck’ and all ‘fuck’ expressions, of course, derive consciously
or unconsciously from the old and standard but taboo ‘fuck’ =
sexual intercourse. All slang meanings and expressions were
widely used in W.W. II military units, became part of the slang
vocabulary of many veterans, and spread from them to students
and friends. This coupling with the lessening of moral standards
and taboos, including linguistic taboos, during and after the
war, has contributed to…” blah, blah, blah.
From the New Oxford American Dictionary,
2nd Edition (2005) we learn that “fuck” came into the English
language by slipping through the Indo-European back door and
surfacing as the Germanic word fuk. It goes on to explain
that the word took its derivation from the classical Latin root
pug, from
the verb pugnare, which means “to fight”—generally with
one’s fists, scrapping it out in the dirt, as it were (which
can’t help but put one in mind of the old Lennon/McCartney song
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road). This is an interesting
theory and we might give it some (though cautious) credence. At
the very least they are correct in that the root of the word
“fuck” is classical, but it’s not Latin, nor pugnacious in any
way.
The simple truth is that “fuck”—obviously
one of the oldest words in the language—if not the world—dates
back to nearly the birth of writing, back when our ancestors
were barely up on their feet, still hunting and gathering. It
comes from the Greek verb φυω (say: “foo-owe”) and its root is
phu. It’s
an agricultural term. It means, literally, to plant seeds—what a
farmer does—dropping seeds into a furrow of soil. When adopted
by the Romans, its Latin root changed from
phu to
fu and the
noun fututio soon became part of Roman vernacular.
The “Old In Out”
Fututio is an example of what
linguists refer to as a “frequentative.” That is, a word that
describes repeated action—which is the nature of “fucking”— if
you’re doing it right! It takes often considerable repetition
to get those seeds to spurt out. Soon the Roman elegiac poets
got a hold of it at a time when erotic love poetry was all the
rage in Rome and fututio became a metaphor for planting a
particular kind of “seed” in a specific kind of “furrow.” This
literary debauchery—what the American Dictionary of Slang
calls “linguistic tabooism”— began with Catullus and then was
taken up by his successors, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. Among
the many books of poetry that Ovid wrote was one called the
Ars Amatoria or the “Art of Love,” a poem whose main
these is how to pick up chicks in ancient Rome. It’s really a
scream, but it, and others like it that came from Ovid’s stylus,
were considered too vulgar and ultimately offensive to the
emperor Augustus (who was certainly not one to preach about
promiscuity given his own reputation!), so he had poor Ovid—who
at the time was already in his mid fifties—exiled to an army
camp on the southern Steppes of Russia by the shores of the
Black Sea, where he would spend the rest of his life.
Fish Story
If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in
traffic or stopped at a red light and noticed that attached
somewhere on the rear of the car in front of you is a small
chrome fish—more the outline of a fish, quite simple, about six
inches long—you probably realize that you know something about
the people who own that car: they’re Christians. Because the
fish is one of the universal symbols for Jesus. Not as popular
as the cross—hell no, not by a long shot. But if you live in The
South—which, for my sins, I happen to—then you see plenty of
them. Fish, I mean. On bumpers, that is. Sometimes the word
“Jesus” appears inside the little oval shaped body of the fish;
sometimes, there is simply a little cross near the front where
the eye would be; often, it’s left blank. A chrome-plated fish,
six inches long, stuck onto the back of your car tells the
world you’ve found Jesus—or maybe by putting the symbol on the
back of your car, you’re making it easier for Jesus to find
you. Either way, one question remains: why a fish? The cross
is a no-brainer, but a fish? We know it was used as a
secret symbol by the Christians so that they could identify each
other in public, but still: why a fish? There are three
theories on this question. Whenever I ask my class about this, I
always get some version of the first two—both of which are
incorrect.
Theory #1
Somewhere in the Bible there is the account
of Jesus feeding the multitudes with two fish and a few loaves
of bread—or was it a few fish and two loaves of bread? Either
way, it went down as one of his “miracles” because basically a
“multitude” is a hell of a lot of people, and there just was not
very much food to go around—besides, who knew Jesus was a Sushi
chef on top of everything else? But somehow Jesus made everyone
happy. It sort of puts one in mind of Woodstock, about day
three, after the concert had run too long and all the acid
dealers were running out of purple haze and blotter tabs, but
somehow, everyone managed to cop a buzz. It was a miracle,
really. Maybe it was because Jesus was there as well—certainly
plenty of people claim to have seen him there!
Theory #2
Let’s not forget that most of Jesus’
disciples were fishermen. Out there on the sea of Galilee one
day they were having a hard time getting a nibble until Jesus
walked on out there—let me say that again, walked on out
there—you know, what you do when you go fishing on the sea of
Galilee without a boat—and told them to cast their nets
“over there.” So they did, and hauled in more fish than they
could even carry back. No fools, they realized this guy knew his
fishing and maybe they could learn something from him. Hence the
term “disciple,” whose root,
disc comes
from the Latin verb discere, which means “to teach.” But
when you add the diminutive suffix “–cle” onto it, you form the
noun “disciple” which means “student.” So the disciples were
following Jesus around because they wanted to be better
fishermen—asking him questions about bait and nets and tackle
and lures—until he told them, “Follow me, and I’ll make you
fishers of men.” This wasn’t exactly what they
had in mind, but what the hell, Jesus had this hot babe with him
named Mary and word was for a few sheckles she’d put out.
Theory #3
It’s actually quite simple. The Greek word
for fish is ιχθυς (say “ick-thuse”). And the letters of the word
are an acronym for Jesus’ name and title:
ι χ θ υ ς
η ρ ε ι ω
σ ι ο ο τ
υ σ υ ς η
ς τ ρ
ο
ς
ιησυς = Jesus
χριστος = Christ
θεου = (of) God
υιος = (the) son
σωτηρ = (the) savior
“Jesus Christ, son of God, the Savior”
Some people ask why
they needed the symbol of the fish in the first place. Wasn’t
the cross enough? That’s a problematic issue because the
earliest (we think) recorded use of the cross as a religious
icon representing Christianity dates to (we think) the 4th
century. But cross or no cross, why did the Christians need a
“secret symbol” at all? Simple: survival.
The Fire of 64 A.D.
It was during the
reign of Nero, in 64 A.D., that one of the worst fires in Rome’s
history occurred. Like most fires it began in the vicinity of
the Circus Maximus, probably because some old whore knocked over
a lamp in her archway brothel while getting the high hard one
from some Centurion out on the town and looking to blow a few
denarii (a denarius was a silver coin and the
currency favored by the military for paying their soldiers) on a
good time. It lasted for nine days (the fire, that is) and
thanks to the prevailing winds it spread quickly north, toward
the heart of the old city, consuming much of the Imperial Palace
on the Palatine Hill as well as many of the buildings and
temples of the old Roman Forum in the valley just beyond that,
not to mention damaging much of the architecture of grand
Imperial Fora nearby.
Nero, My Hero
Many stories have
circulated about Nero and that fire. One was that Nero played
the fiddle while Rome burned (actually it would have been a
cithara or lyre, as the violin had yet to be invented); another
was that while viewing the conflagration from the terrace of the
Imperial Palace he recited the passage from the second book of
the Aeneid in which Vergil describes the burning of Troy.
This last story is especially hard to believe because Nero’s
Palace was right in the path of the fire and knowing Nero he
would have been the first one out the fire exit! There were even
rumors that it had been Nero himself who started the fire in
order to clear ground for the building of a new imperial
residence he had been planning, the famous Domus Aurea, or
“Golden House.”
The truth is that
Nero was not even in Rome at the time of the fire, and although
he acted quickly in providing emergency shelters for the
homeless, and men and resources for the reconstructive efforts,
his already waning popularity took a nose dive. Despite the fact
that Nero was hundreds of kilometers from Rome when the fire
broke out, the inescapable fact of the matter was that it
happened on his watch and the denarius stopped with him.
What Nero needed was a scapegoat, and he needed one badly—and
quickly—so he launched an “official inquiry” into the cause the
of the fire—an obvious sham whose only purpose was to finger
somebody—anybody—to feed to the mob, thereby taking the
“heat” off himself.
He ended up blaming
a small, obscure religious cult from the eastern province of
Judea whose followers worshiped a man who had gone by the name
of Christ. It was a shrewd move on Nero’s part. Rome had always
had trouble with the province of Judea—Romans, being
polytheists, despised the monotheistic Jews, who in turn
returned the favor—so the Roman Mob was quick to embrace the
Christiani as those who had put their beloved city to the
torch. Nero dispatched one of his most trusted generals,
Vespasian (who would later go on to succeed him as emperor), to
sack Jerusalem.
This marked the
beginning of what would become the famous Roman persecution of
the Christians, a systematic, methodical slaughter that was as
relentless as it was abominable, and that, once set in motion,
would not cease for several centuries. Before the fire, the
presence of Christians in Rome was at least tolerated by the
Romans enough so that they could perform their devotions openly.
In fact, by the first century A.D., Rome was home to dozens of
eastern cults, the Christiani simply one of the pack. But
after Nero’s very public condemnation the Christians were forced
underground—literally—causing them to build the famous catacombs
where they could practice their devotions and rituals in
relative safety, as well as hide out whenever they heard the
Praetorian Guard trampling by on their well-groomed steeds in
search of fresh lion fodder.
They had good
reason to hide, the Christians did, for if caught, terrible
fates awaited them. One of Nero’s favorite forms of torture and
execution was to crucify Christians at major intersections
throughout the city and then at night set them on fire to amuse
drunken Roman aristocrats while helping them find their way
through the dark city streets as they caroused from party to
party. Thousands were also martyred in the Circus Maximus as
well, many more there, in fact, than ever were in the Colosseum,
once it was built some fifty years later. A fact not widely
known.
Nero did not
confine his cruelty to the Christians. Some of Nero’s greatest
hits include the murder of his mother, Agrippina, whom he had
his freedman Anicetus club to death in her home after a botched
attempt at doing the “wet work” himself—literally. One spring
day Nero planned a little picnic for himself and his mother on
his private yacht. The plan was a complicated little venture
involving a false bottom and a tent with roof beams that should
have collapsed but didn’t. Even when you’re emperor you can’t
expect to have everything go your way all of the time.
Still, tough as she
was (she reportedly swam over a mile to shore following the
fiasco on the yacht) Agrippina simply had to go as she had been
interfering with Nero’s plans to divorce his first wife,
Octavia, in order to marry his mistress, Poppaea Sabina. With
his mother finally out of the picture, love found a way and he
married Poppaea in the year 63, only to murder her two years
later by kicking her to death while she was five months pregnant
with their second child. You could write a book about the black
reign of Nero (that happens to be a pun, by the way, but it only
works in Italian), and many have, beginning with the Roman
biographer Suetonius, who was born in the year 70 A.D., two
years after Nero committed suicide on 9 June, 68 A.D. He reigned
for only fourteen years—but hey, it was fun while it lasted.
So back to the
Christians and our fish. Naturally, they avoided public
gatherings in large groups, and were often terrified of even
showing their faces on the open street for fear of being found
out. So in order to identify themselves to each other in public,
one Christian would draw half of the outline of the symbol of a
fish in the dirt with the edge of his sandal, and if the man
next to him, completed the image, then they knew they were among
friends. It was sort of their version of a “secret handshake”
as it were.
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