Mythological Games

Here I am in beautiful Rose Bay, Nova Scotia, flipping through post-Christmas sale flyers. In the BestBuy flyer I find a large ad for logitech gaming accessories, and I am amused and provoked by the names of three components: the G810 Orion Spectrum RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, the G502 Proteus Core Tunable Gaming Mouse, and the G933 Artemis Spectrum Wireless 7.1 Gaming Headset. A visit to the logitech website yields much technical information about these components, but I could find no reason for the mythological designations. You may know Orion as a constellation easily visible in the northeastern United States all winter; a mythological giant, Orion was also a famous hunter. A user of an Orion gaming keyboard would feel like a giant, able to control as if with a giant’s eye-view. Proteus was a mythological sea-being, able to prophesy the future to anyone who could catch and hold him. We still use the adjective protean in English to describe something that changes its shape or is difficult to hold. A Proteus mouse changes its configuration shape "to help gamers maximize their victory potential." Artemis, known in Latin as Diana, was the Greek goddess of the hunt, the twin sister of Apollo. She remained unmarried, and she was a powerful huntress, exacting terrible punishments with her bow. A user of an Artemis headset would feel powerful indeed. 

Also on the logitech website was a link to PAX, an acronym standing for Penny Arcade (E)xpo(sition), an annual gaming show that attracts tens of thousands of participants. If you’re a gamer, the next PAX East is approaching in Boston, March 10-12, 2017! I am not a gamer, but I appreciate gaming culture, much of which involves the ancient world. Games are built around ancient civilizations like Rome, and many game and technology developers, like logitech, seek product names from mythology, Greek, and Latin. I am secretly delighted that video games, many of which involve vicarious danger and war, have a conference whose name is the same as the Latin word pax meaning “peace.” 

The Power of Latin

In my local Sunday newspaper on the World and Nation page, I found a story titled “Navy’s new destroyer rides like ‘souped-up SUV.’” The new destroyer is the USS Zumwalt, and it is to be commissioned in Baltimore on Saturday, 22 October 2016.  Here’s a paragraph from the story via the Associated Press:

Kirk says it [USS Zumwalt] generates 78 megawatts of power, 

“enough power to power a medium- to small-sized city.” With 

a motto of Pax Proctor Vim (Peace Through Power), it’s unique 

capability to generate power could be used in ways perhaps not 

even envisioned yet, such as in the testing and use of laser and 

directed-energy weapon systems.

First, in this fiftieth anniversary year of Star Trek, how amazing is it that the commander of this futuristic new destroyer is named Captain James Kirk?

Second, alas, Pax Proctor Vim is in error; the Latin is Pax Propter Vim, literally translated as Peace On Account Of Force, Violence, Power. Pax Propter Vim is an excellent motto for the USS Zumwalt, a marvel of naval technology. The coat of armshttp://www.tioh.hqda.pentagon.mil/Catalog/Heraldry.aspx?HeraldryId=15754&CategoryId=9191&grp=5&menu=Uniformed%20Services of the USS Zumwalt clearly shows the Latin motto.

The U.S. Navy just celebrated its 241st birthday, having been founded on 13 October 1775. Power on, U.S.N.!

P. S. Did you also catch the pronoun error in the AP paragraph? It’s is the contraction standing for it is--no apostrophe needed to show possession. 

Enter Here For Fun

I’ve had a soft spot for Pokemon characters ever since I learned years ago that many of their names come from Latin (filtered through Japanese). Even the word Pokemon comes from a Latin root; it comes from the phrase “pocket monster,” and monster is from the Latin mōnstrum, mōnstrī n. portent, omen, miracle, monster, from a verb mōnstrō, mōnstrāre meaning “I point out, show, appoint.” Reading about the new game Pokemon Go in the Halifax newspaper, I learned that the game was developed by Niantic Labs, a company whose name comes from a whaling ship, the Niantic, built in Connecticut. Connecticut also has a town named Niantic that takes its name from a tribe of native people.

While this background is interesting, what caught my Latin eye was an earlier game developed by Niantic Labs called Ingress, an English word meaning “means of entering” taken directly from a Latin noun ingressus, ingressūs m. entrance, way of entering, beginning, derived from the Latin verb ingredior, ingredī, ingressus sum meaning “I step in, I go in, I enter.” I learned that Ingress the game has been downloaded more than twelve million times, but I think Pokemon Go has far surpassed this number, even here in sparsely populated Canada.

Another wonderful English word from ingredior is ingredient, a thing "going in" a recipe. Surely one ingredient for fun is a mobile video game with Latin roots.

I Am Here

I’ve been reading the obituary pages more attentively in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, because I am always interested in learning about Canadians. In several obituaries I have read that memorial donations can be made to an organization called Adsum House, and I finally got around to investigating this Latin-named shelter. 

The organization takes its name from the Latin verb adsum, adesse, adfuī meaning “I am here, I am present.” The name may also be a reference to a quotation associated with Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, because the founders of Adsum House were religious institutions. The quotation uses aderit, the third-person future form of the verb, meaning "[God] will be present, here." But then the internet leads me on to yet more background information, ultimately to one of my favorite poets, Quintus Horatius Flaccus. You can read about the Delphic oracle, Thucydides and the Peloponnesian war, Horace, and Erasmus in this article from the Harvard Review.

All from one little Latin verb—how powerful one word is, especially in a poem. How impenetrable Latin can be, especially in a quotation. How wonderful to read of writers and poets reacting to the same words in Greek, Latin, English, and Japanese over millennia. And, as always in this world, how astonishing of the internet to put all these connections at our fingertips, as I am here, as I write and think, in Nova Scotia, Canada in 2016.

Ancient Grains

A photograph in today’s Chronicle-Herald newspaper (Halifax) mentioned the Ceres Terminal in the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia.  The port of Halifax is still very busy, but I do not remember encountering this name before.  From a little research I was delighted to find on the company website a history of the name that does, indeed, go back to the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres. Even more interesting: if you click on the YTI flag on the upper right of the history page, you will see a list of working vessels, among which are names from mythology like Argus, Romulus, Aphrodite, and Atlas!

Grain has been on my brain lately, as I get to know some unfamiliar grains. I am happy to report that spelt, an ancient form of wheat, is delicious; this fact delights me, because spelt was the ingredient of much bread consumed by Roman soldiers! From Ceres we get the word cereal; the best cereal I have eaten recently is Spelt Flakes produced by Arrowhead Mills.  

Octogenarian Classics

I read today in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald that Pope Benedict “stole the show” at a ceremony celebrating the 65th anniversary of his ordination. According to the AP article by Nicole Winfield, Benedict gave “an off-the-cuff, mini-theology lesson on gratitude sprinkled with Greek and Latin that showed that the mind of the German theologian is still sharp at 89.” Benedict delivered the lesson in Italian; I could hear the Greek verb eucharistomen meaning “we thank,” and a quotation from St. Augustine, cor ad cor loquitur meaning “heart speaks to heart," a reference to his speaking before the cardinals. Benedict also, in his lesson on gratitude, spoke about how Christ benedixit fregit deditque meaning “he blessed broke and gave” the bread to his disciples, but he also gave to all the bread of true life. Benedict hopes that we will transform, transubstantiate, the world from a focus on death to a focus on life.

Because I was tracking down the “Greek and Latin,” I only watched a little of the ceremony on a website called Crux, a Latin word meaning “cross.” 

Benedict's whole address lasted just under five minutes.

And the whole ceremony lasts just over an hour...

On Work and Leisure

I continue to delight in the unending popularity of Latin! Catching up this Monday morning on yesterday’s Sunday newspaper (abandoned on Sunday in favor of writing letters, napping, and enjoying the mild late-winter weather), I find mention of a restaurant in Los Angeles called Otium. To one who knows Latin and has studied the literature of the first century B.C., the era of Cicero, Catullus, Vergil, and Horace, otium is the prize worth working for! Romans of this era considered otium the time to live free from cares and stress, the time to pursue activities that give pleasure, the time to visit a country estate and enjoy good food, good wine, the company of good friends, perhaps the performing of poems in the works. Otium was the elusive goal we sometimes call the good life.

For Romans the opposite of otium was neg-otium or not-leisure. I, an American, have always found this outlook on the world wondrous. From the time I was small, I was aware that work was important and integral to survival, taking responsibility, and making one’s way through life. I began my working career with babysitting on a small scale in the neighborhood. I graduated to waitressing in a family chain restaurant and then in an independent Greek pizza restaurant; proofreading and odd jobs in print shops; more waitressing this time in a pub, telephone sales, and having finished college, working as a teacher in independent schools. Even then, during summer vacations, I sometimes tried other jobs like groundskeeping at the school and occasionally tutoring. 

Reading literature in college and graduate school, I finally understood the correct relationship between negotium (work) and otium (leisure). I learned to value school vacations, because they were a much-needed break from the intense intellectual tasks of learning and teaching. I understood the difference between leisure activities (playing with dogs, cleaning the house, weeding the garden, reading books, entertaining friends with home-cooked dinners, writing letters, essays, poems, visiting with and listening to others) and work (preparing classes, assignments, projects, evaluations, translations). Although I loved to immerse myself in the details and nuances of Latin vocabulary, grammar, and literature, in the pursuit of work I missed a lot of otium, of opportunities to spend time with family and friends and my own ideas and projects. But the poet Catullus, who died when he was about thirty years old, when Vergil was a college student and Horace a schoolboy, indicated how otium, for a young man, could lead to great destruction:

otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:   [Leisure, Catullus, is troublesome for you:

otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:     in leisure you rejoice exceedingly and run riot:

otium et reges prius et beatas        leisure before has destroyed both kings and

     perdidit urbes.                               blessed cities.]

(from poem 51)

In English the word otiose (“at leisure”) carries also the negative connotations of being “unemployed, indolent, lazy, unfruitful, nugatory, useless” (from the Oxford English Dictionary).  Americans, who derive so much from ancient Rome, have this great difference with Rome; we express work as the positive and unemployed as the negative. But I, now at leisure and older than Catullus, work by reading, writing, gardening, cooking, singing, printmaking, and discovering other creative outlets--otium!

Colossal Savings!

This morning I read an article from the March-April issue of Departures, a magazine that chronicles fashion, travel destinations, culture, and luxury goods of all kinds. The article, written by David Margolick, was called Can This Man (And His Loafers) Save the Colosseum?, and told the story of Diego Della Valle, the CEO of Tod's, a luxury Italian leather brand, and his underwriting, about $34 million, of the cleaning/restoring of the great Flavian amphitheatre in Rome. Mr. Della Valle has set an example for philanthropists throughout Italy, if not Europe; perhaps other philanthropists will provide contributions to stop the crumbling of the extraordinary ruins at Pompeii, and sites that have been closed for years, because the Italian government did not have the money, will be open.

I encourage you to find out more about the colossal restorations to this great symbol of Rome and Roman influence. The project has been ongoing since 2013, and the first stage of the restoration is to be completed in February 2016. Here is the kind of work that is being done:



The Colosseum takes its name from one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Colossus at Rhodes, a huge statue of Helios, a sun god, once located in the harbor at the island of Rhodes. Near the Colosseum in Rome, there was also once a large statue of the emperor Nero; the name Colosseum really stands for the place near the colossus, the great statue. In English we have the words colossus (a larger-than-life person), colossal (really big), and coliseum, a variant spelling of colosseum (an amphitheatre or stadium).