Latin Moment: Red Rising Book Series

     I have been reading a great series by the author Pierce Brown called Red Rising. The synopsis is that there is boy named Darrow who believes he is one of the first colonists of Mars. He lives with other miners below the surface, and mines a chemical that is supposed to terraform the surface of Mars to be habitable. Darrow then discovers something that changes his world about why they are really mining under the surface of Mars.

     In this book there is an uncanny amount of Latin references and phrases that made me want to talk about them here. For instance, some of the names of the characters in the book have direct meanings in Latin. Pax AU Telemanus means "Peace (gold) Bull", which is ironic in the book because Pax is actually very battle hungry. Nero AU Augustus is another character in the book characterized as being a power-hungry tyrant (just like the real Nero). Octavia AU Lune is the sovereign of the whole solar system, and her seat of power is on the moon (hence the name). There are also positions that date back to the days of Rome in the book. An Imperator commands an armada of star ships, and a Praetor commands one star ship. The main action in the first book also involves a war between the houses of Roman gods (not the actual gods but people who displayed traits) including Proctors for those houses: Jupiter, Dianna, Mars, Ceres, Mercury, Apollo, Minerva, and Pluto. As you can see, there is a huge amount of Latin in this book that I have only scratched the surface of. If you want a really good read, I would suggest this book.

House of Mars Sign:

Red Rising Cover: 

Latin Everyday

Latin is everywhere in math. While Greek letters are often used as shortenings of equations or other things, such as variables, Latin can be found in the names of shapes. A triangle is called a triangle because it has three angles. Quadrilateral meaning having four sides. Pentagon meaning a five sided shape. I could go on for a couple more example, but that's really all i need to write about

Latin Everyday

The other day I was watching a music video by Lil Dicky and im the music video he had a statue of Julius Caesar. The rapper was speaking about power and how one handles having that much power. Paralleling Caesar's abuse of his power and how when one gets famous they can take take advantage of their power. It's interesting to see the parallels still made between ancient Roman life and modern day and how roman life is basically a household known thing around the world.

Latin Everyday

A week ago, I was talking with some friends online about school, and the topic of languages came up. One of my friends mentioned that she took Mandarin. I said that I had a friend who took Japanese, but that I personally took Latin. She said that she really wanted to take Latin, but that her school doesn't offer it.

Latin Everyday

During the week I was re-watching a TV show on Netflix about college students who go to a video game college. During one of the episodes, a student was trying to make a game, then realized her game had no end goal and was "meaningless just like life " in her words. Later she was seen reading a book titled Nihilism, this reminded me of Latin, and especially of the word nihil which means nothing. I was interested in what exactly nihilism meant. I found that it actually mean the belief or study of nothing.

Latin Everyday

I saw Latin when I accidentally summoned Satan. Mind you, it was an accident. I was speaking latin then bam, a goat just died. Any way I I sent satan back for the misunderstanding. The guy is more chill than you would expect.

Blog post

I was listening to the band Ghost and the song He Is came on. There were words that at first I couldn't understand, but when looking at the lyrics, I realized they were Latin. It says Nostro Dispater, Nostr'Alma Mater, which I found translated into "Our father of riches" and "Our nourishing mother". I already liked Ghost, but since they use Latin, the best language, I like them even more.

Caesar

In English we are starting to read a new play by Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. The play is about the assassination of Caesar and the conspirators that were around him. It includes many characters that were Julius' historical contemporaries including Brutus, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Cassius. Although we haven't gotten too far in the story, there are some glaring historical inaccuracy. Most pertinent of winch is that during his triumph Julius Caesar and his Generals participate in a Lupercalia festival in the Colosseum which wouldn't be built for centuries after Caesar's death.

Latin Everyday

I was in chapel and Mother Elena talked about Jesus Christ Super Star and how she was watching it on Easter. Dr. Morgan in latin class brought up that via dolorosa means grief bearing road. She related this to the chapel homily because if you put together what the words means the road that jesus carried the cross on when he was about to be crucified. I thought this was very interesting and it was a really good connection from chapel to latin.

Tempus fugit

The other day, I was listening to a song from the band Yes. The song was very unorthodox but eventually conveyed the motto "time flies". The motto tempus fugit has been consistently used throughout history but was originally written by Virgil the author of the Aeneid. The term refers to the speed at which time moves when not being paid attention too. The American equivalent would be the saying"time flies when your having fun."
Virgil(below)

Via Dolorosa

During chapel one day Mother Alena was talking about her trip to Israel. She talked about how she walked along the Via Dolorosa, which if you break it up. Via= road. Dolor= grief. Osa= way. Putting that all together it means the way of the grief. Looking into where Israel is located it is the way Jesus traveled with the cross before he was killed on the cross. He traveled with the cross om this road and it was later named this in the honor of what happened to him.

Blog Post for Latin Jackson Harris

During this Latin year, we have learned a lot about new things. I have also learned a lot about Latin outside of class. During are Roman Empire project I had to research my assigned Empire. During my research, I found out new thing like that my empire persecuted Christians, I thought to my self how much the times have changed and how weird it would be live at that time.  I also learned how people dealt with there problems in the Roman world. They would just stab each other to death. That is what my empire did to take over. That does not sound like the right thing to do to get something that you want. To finish up I learned that the Latin world of then is different than the world of now.

Apollo and Daphne in Degrassi

I was on Netflix the other day, where I was watching Degrassi Next Class. On one episode, the scene switched to a classroom where a teacher was telling his students about the Apollo and Daphne story, that we learned about in class. While they did not go into much depth, I followed along as they went through the basics of the story. They talked about how Cupid used his arrows to repulse Daphne from Apollo. They even went over how Daphne wished to be turned into a tree!

Europe Trip

When I was in Amsterdam we went to a museum and we saw a lot of religious paintings. On some of these paintings there were latin incripsitons, and I was actually able to understand some of them. On a lot of the paintings depicting Jesus death there were dates that were made using roman numerals and I was able to know the dates because of my mastery of the latin language. I thought that was very cool and it was something in my life that was related to latin.

Latin in Far Cry

Far Cry Primal is a game that takes you back to the stone age. Since it is the stone age the game designers couldn't use English as it wasn't a thing at that time. So when designing the game, the game designers used Proto-Indo-European as their language. Proto-Indo-European is one of the precursors of Latin, German, and many other languages. The game designers modified the archaic language for the purposes of the game, but the base of the language stays the same. It is cool how old languages like Proto-Indo-European still shows up in modern times and that it has a connection to so many of our present day languages.

Best blog post you've never seen

I was listening to Bastille, their song called Icarus. This relates to the Greek myth of Icarus. Who flew too close to the sun and burned his wings, he then fell to his death. They talk about this myth in the song. Telling the story as a song. Also, it's a good song. They also have another song called Pompeii, but I wasn't listening to that song.

Villanova, not just about basketball

When most people see Villanova, they think of basketball and championships. They should also think Latin. Villanova was founded in 1842 in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Villanova means new settlement in Latin. I found this information during March Madness as I watched their basketball team win the championship.
 

Sam O'Nella's ancient Roman animals

Whilst perusing Youtube I found a video by the channel Sam O'Nella Academy. The video is titled "Exotic Animals in Ancient Rome". The video starts off  with Sam talking about the ancient medicine man Galen. Galen was known to do horrible experiments on various animals. One animal that he favored was the Barbary Ape because they were similar to people. Among other things, Galen would squish different parts of the apes' brains to make them go unconscious. Later in the video, Sam begins to talk about Venatios. These are shows put on in coliseums in which people would fight and kill all sorts of exotic creatures. The Roman Empire was able to acquire almost any animal within their borders, and back then there were no animal rights laws. Sometimes the opposite show would occur in which a criminal was executed via animal mauling. This was known as Damnation ad Bestia. I am glad that my miscellaneous knowledge consumption has reared Latin related facts.

Latin in Manga

In the wonderful land of Japan, there lives a man named Hirohiko Araki, and he is the author of a show/manga called Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.  And part 5 of said manga is called Venito Aureo, which translates to Golden Wind from the Latin. Now it is actually italian, but Venito can be traced back to the latin word Ventus, which means wind. Aureo actually also means gold in latin, so this technically qualifies as a Latin Blogpost. This describes the part very well because the main character, Giorno Giovanna, has a stand ability called Golden Expierence. Wowee guys wowee, latin everyday. 

Latin in Math

Recently in math, we were learning about Logarithms and I thought that this word looks like something those pesky Romans would have come up with. I ended up googling it and found out that this word originates from the Latin word ratio meaning reason or proportion. Ratio is actually a Latin word that gave the origins of the word Logarithm!

Finding Old Italian Coins

Over Easter weekend My family and I went over to my grandmother's house. After we had eaten she got out an old metal box full of European coins from the first half of the 20th century. As we looked through we found coins from France, Norway, Spain, Australia, and even the Ottoman Empire. Many of these coins had some Latin phrases and roman numerals. But one of the coins we found the most of was this Italian coin that had a plow and wheat on it. We found out that if it is the right year they can be worth about $25 each.

The Ides of March... on Instagram??

So on Thursday, March 15, 2018, I woke up and began scrolling through my Instagram feed, as I do everyday. To my surprise (sadly, I should have known better) the first thing to pop up on my feed was this meme:

I remembered that it was the Ides of March! From class I knew that the Ides of March was the day that the Roman Senate, including Caesars best friends, Brutus, betrayed him and stabbed him to death before he could take complete control of Rome. He was stabbed 23 times, one stab per person. Supposedly he died saying "Et tu Brute", meaning "And you Brutus?". I kept scrolling and saw that were many memes commemorating the unofficial holiday. Here are some of my favorites: 

Its fun to see that even today, Latin is still relevant not only during school, but also in Pop Culture. 

B-Rizzies A-lit-din Story

So I was watching Aladdin and the Genie (played by Robin Williams) at one point is dressed in a toga and a hand with a knife comes out of a book and Genie says, “Et tu Brute” while this isn’t historically accurate this is a fun connection to Latin as well as Rome.

Harry Potter Latin

So I have never watched Harry Potter before until I went to my friend's house. She decided that I needed to watch all of the movies in one sitting. The Prisoner of Azkaban had this guy named Remus Lupin who would turn into a werewolf occasionally during the movie. I realized that Lupin could be from lupus that means wolf in Latin.

Et Cetera

One day I was writing a paper for world history and I will writing esc. Once done with the paper and when I was reading through it, I thought to myself, what is esc and what does it mean. When I first looked it up on google I saw that it is really written out as et cetera, and I thought that it look like latin. I didn't really trust the internet so I decided to go see Dr. Morgan to find out what it really means. When I saw her she told me that et cetera is latin, et meaning and and cetera meaning others. That is how I learned that esc literally means and others

Amsterdam is punny

When I was traveling on the Parish Abroad Spring Break trip, I had seen multiple things in Latin. While we were in Amsterdam, we had passed by a group of columns that had the words Homo Sapiens Non Urinat In Ventum. It translates to a wise man does not pee into the wind. It was very funny because the headquarters of Heineken was just around the corner.

yay college

Okay so a couple weekends ago I went to visit Southwestern University because I have to start looking at colleges. On their logo, they have some Latin on it and it is "Non Quis Sed Quid." That translates to "Not who but what". That is the motto they go by. I just thought that was cool!

YAY COLLEGE!

Really Old Ovid Translations

Over spring break, I went on the ParishAbroad trip to London, Bruges, Brussels, and Amsterdam. While in Bruges, we went to the Bruges Groening Museum. The exhibitions mainly focused on religious art and a small amount of modern art. However, there was one exhibition that focused on some of the first books printed on the printing press, and it included an entire room on various collections of Ovid translations. We were not allowed to take pictures, but some of the translators and collectors included Charles de Croy and Raphael van Mercatellis.