Hercules, The Dynamic City on the Bay

I read in this morning’s edition of the Halifax Chronicle Herald that a Rembrandt drawing, stolen from a San Francisco hotel, had been recovered from a church near Hercules, California. Hercules? I did a quick search to find out whence Hercules, CA received its name and was amused to discover that Hercules, CA is a town founded by the California Powder Works, makers of explosives; apparently one of its products was called Hercules, presumably because it was as effective as the demi-god Hercules (also known as Heracles in Greek mythology) at blasting things apart. Remembering how Hercules cleaned the filthy Augean stables by diverting two rivers to flow through the building, I guess Hercules is a good brand name for dynamite.

Ghosts from the Past

Walking my dog Buddy along the road in rural Nova Scotia, I noticed wild cranberries and blueberries growing and then I saw Indian pipes, a plant first identified for me by my father when I was a child. I see them rarely, but after a little research discovered that they do occur regularly in Nova Scotia woods. The scientific classification for this odd plant is monotropa uniflora, a wonderful combination of both Greek and Latin roots. Greek mono is one, and tropa means a turning; Latin uni is one, and flora is flowered. These two words describe the appearance of the little plant, each stalk of which contains a single, down-turned flower. The common names for this plant are a little frightening, and include ghost flower and corpse plant. Almost any article you read about Indian pipes is FULL of scientific terminology derived from Greek and Latin. Here is one from the U.S. Forest Service.

Judging Royalty

Over the weekend I read in Realm magazine an article about the upcoming Royal Wedding, and I was amused to learn that a commentator on royalty is named Dickie Arbiter. In Latin the noun arbiter, arbitrī m. judge can be found in a phrase which has also passed into English; arbiter bibendi is the judge of the drinking, i.e., the person who takes charge at a drinking party. Also an arbiter elegantiae is the judge of elegance, the person who determines acceptable or witty behavior among a group of people. In Roman history Petronius Arbiter is taken to be a member of the court of the Emperor Nero. Attributed to Petronius is a satirical work, an early Roman novel, called Satyricon. One of the sections of this work is called Cena Trimalchionis, and because of its portrait of a wealthy, self-made man, parts of this section are often included in school textbooks.

I do not know whether Dickie Arbiter was born with his name or he acquired it, but it is fun to know the Latin meaning of his name.

Numbers and Remembering

On Sunday at a gas station in Brewster, NY I saw a license plate with the letters II IXXI, and I pondered a little, because I did not immediately derive sense from this combination of letters. When I asked my students if they had any thoughts, after I suggested 2 9/11, one offered that the II could be a representation of the Twin Towers. On my way home this afternoon I saw another license plate that read IXXI-USA, and I now think my student was probably correct; I am always amazed at how much information we can abbreviate in the eight spaces of most license plates.

Roman numerals were on my mind, because I had put a question in the Miscellany category of a Latin 2 Jeopardy game asking how a Roman would express 1776. My students temporarily forgot some of the higher Roman numerals, so I offer here a mnemonic sentence that I have encountered in a few different sources: If Victor's Xray Looks Clear, Don't Medicate. The letters I, V, X, L, C, D, M are the basic Roman numerals standing for one (I), five (V), ten (X), fifty (L), one hundred (C), five hundred (D), and one thousand (M). So 1776 would be MDCCLXXVI, and you can see these numbers on the back of an American one dollar bill.

Electrifying Espresso

Glancing through the April 2011 issue of Unfiltered, the magazine of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, I noticed in a photo some kind of machine with the trade name Elektra. Curious to find out both what the machine was and why it had that name, I started a quick search online, but could find nothing having to do with bottling or distilling. In a second perusal of the photo, I noticed coffee cups on top of the machine and the word ITALY above the Elektra logo, so I correctly deduced an espresso machine. Here you can find the history not only of the Elektra espresso machines but also of the Treviso area in Italy where the company began. In mythology Elektra was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; she helps her brother Orestes bring about the death of both their mother and her lover, Aigisthus.

Things Typographical

While searching online for information about the pilcrow, the paragraph mark with an interesting history based in Latin, I also found information about a font that is destined for the Museum of Modern Art. This font is called Mercury, who was the ancient Roman messenger god; click on CHARACTERS (in the preceding link) and you can see all its beautiful letters and symbols. Also at the Hoefler and Frere-Jones website, you can read about Mercury going to the Museum of Modern Art, and you can find an announcement of a tour being offered in Italy, home to so many famous typographers.

The pilcrow, the actual paragraph symbol, comes from the Latin word capitulum meaning “chapter.” You can read more about the pilcrow at many websites, but I enjoyed this article (at Hoefler and Frere-Jones) with its newly-designed pilcrows.

Vergil in NYC, 2011

Earlier today my colleague sent me an article on the September 11^th Museum in New York City. Clearly visible in the photograph accompanying the article is an English translation of a line from Book 9 of Vergil’s Aeneid. I had not heard that this quotation was being included, but it is very moving. Here are the Latin lines and a translation:

Aeneid IX.446-449

Fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt,

nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo,

dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum

accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.

Happy pair! If my poetry has the power,

while the House of Aeneas lives beside the Capitol’s

immobile stone, and a Roman leader rules the Empire,

no day will raze you from time’s memory.

Translated by A. S. Kline.

Mythological Games

A day or two ago I finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I was amused to read on the book jacket that Stephen King could not put the book down! Well, neither could I; I was consumed by it, and still cannot shake off the lingering effects. I will never be able to look at a dandelion again, especially the first of the season, without remembering this book and its heroine, Katniss Everdeen. Why am I starting a blog post with this novel? To me it is a great mix of influences, first and foremost the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Just as Theseus volunteered to be one of the fourteen tributes to be paid annually to Minos, King of Crete, Katniss volunteers to replace her sister, Primrose, as one of the twenty-four tributes “reaped” annually for the Hunger Games. The story continues to haunt me, but what a heroine Katniss is! Having myself become more conscious of eating better, simply, locally, and not wasting food, I was mesmerized by the constant recitation of meals and survival. I also found the name of the country interesting, Panem. To a Latin student, Panem means “bread,” but someone without Latin might also pronounce this name as “Pain ‘em,” i.e., “Give them pain,” which is certainly what happens in the story. Among other influences I found interesting were references to ancient Roman gladiators and allusions to Harry Potter-type creatures/amalgams or, as they are known in the book, “mutations,” like the mockingjay and the tracker jacker hornets. All in all a chilling story; I’m not sure I will pursue parts two and three. Perhaps after I let this one settle for a while.

Pop Culture

Yesterday on a day trip to Lee, Massachusetts, a friend and I sought out an antiques store specializing in finds from the 1950s. We found the store, but it was closed. Nevertheless outside the shop was a dented beverage cooler with an advertising name of Dirigo. I wished I had my camera, but tucked the name away for further investigation today. Here you can see an old label from a Dirigo Bottling Company product, and here you can read a little about the company. Earlier I had written about Dirigo kayak/canoe models; I guess residents of Maine find their one-word motto (Latin dīrigō, I direct) a handy name for all kinds of things. If you watch on television a news conference that takes place in Maine, you can sometimes see the word on the Maine flag.

I Think I Can

Earlier this evening I attended my first Zumba class, or as I think of it, Zumb-ah-h-h-h-h! I really enjoyed the workout, and was so happy that I did not collapse or pass out. I have a feeling that I will not be able to walk tomorrow without pain, but I feel great right now. While waiting for the instructor I walked around the gym and as always was tickled to discover some Latin, this time on the label of the exercise balls tucked up against the wall of the Zumba room. The labels read VALEO, Latin for “I am strong, I am able, I CAN.” The root of valeō appears in English words like valid, invalid, valence, covalent, prevalent, and countervail, to name a few. It is so nice to know that I can Zumba! For a little more information about the Valeo brand, check here.

ROMA AETERNA

At least a couple of my current students are visiting Rome this spring vacation, so I'll post a few photos from time to time from my last visit in 2008. I love details like sewer grates and covers!

More Than A Hundred Anniversaries

This morning I spied the word quasquicentennial in a recent issue of Real Simple magazine. Familiar with sesquicentennial, observation of a 150th anniversary, I did not know quasquicentennial until I looked it up online, first at the Oxford English Dictionary and then in a back issue of American Speech, via the JSTOR database available through my school’s library. Students who have read the book Frindle by Andrew Clements will be amused by the story of quasquicentennial, which turns out to be a word invented in 1962 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the town of Delavan, Illinois. The Latin roots of the word work out to one-quarter plus one hundred. How wonderful that next year, 2012, will be the fiftieth anniversary of the word quasquicentennial!

Best Car

An ad in the Sunday paper caught my eye, this time for a car manufactured by Kia. The new car is called an OPTIMA, and, following up on yesterday’s post about meliora (better things), the next step in the comparison is optimus, a, um, a Latin adjective meaning very good, the best, excellent. Other English words containing this Latin root are optimist and optimal. So the Kia company modestly believes this new model must be the best, either that it has ever made, or perhaps among all cars available now anywhere. You will have to judge for yourself. I am pretty happy with my Jaguar X-type, which has come out of hibernation, a wonderful way to celebrate this first day of spring!

Ever Better

The young woman who checked out my purchases at Agway earlier this afternoon was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt with the seal of the University of Rochester, whose one-word motto is MELIORA. One of my favorite English derivatives from a Latin word, ameliorate, comes from this Latin word, meliora, which means better things or, as the university translates, ever better. When you ameliorate something, you make it better in some way. Earlier I had written about the motto of Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT: moniti meliora sequamur (having been warned, let us follow better things).

Beautiful Music

Watching reruns of Pawn Stars on the History Channel last night, I was delighted to learn about musical boxes made by Kalliope Musikwerke in the late nineteenth century. Searching today online for more information about Kalliope Musikwerke, I found instead lots of videos of Kalliope music boxes in action as well as, as often happens on the internet, the equally delightful discovery that many nineteenth-century music boxes have Latin tradenames, including Mira (amazing), Stella (star), and Regina (queen). You can hear how beautiful the sounds of a music box are here. Kalliope, we spell Calliope in English, is the German (and Greek) spelling of the name of the muse of epic poetry, one of the nine daughters of the Titan Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and Zeus. The name comes from two Greek words, kalos, beautiful, and ops, voice; if you were going to sing an epic poem like the Iliad or the Odyssey, you would need a beautiful voice. Other English words that contain the root kal- include calligraphy (beautiful writing), calisthenics (beautiful strength), and kaleidoscope (beautiful image seeing). In addition the word calliope, spelled with a lower-case c, is a festive musical instrument, a steam or pipe organ heard at merry-go-rounds or on riverboats. You can hear the Delta Queen's calliope here.

Flying Horses

In the automotive section of this past Sunday's edition of the New York Times, I read a review of the Hyundai Equus, because, of course, I was attracted by the name of the car. The reviewer was puzzled by the logo of the Equus, because he thought the logo was a bird. When I showed the logo (via my new SmartBoard) to my Latin 3 class on Monday, one clever student remarked that the logo is actually Pegasus, the mythological flying horse. Upon closer inspection and when I squinted my eyes, I, too, thought that Pegasus is what the Hyundai designers had in mind. You also may ponder the Equus logo here. For lots of information about Pegasus, his origin and adventures, check the article found here.

Stronger Through Loyalty

The Atlas Football Club just entered my world as I searched for the Latin motto FORTIUS QUO FIDELIUS. I read in the Sunday (3/13/2011) edition (sports section) of the Sunday Republican newspaper from Waterbury, CT that A.J. Burnett, a pitcher for the New York Yankees has a Latin tattoo on his pitching arm, and I serendipitously came across another classical allusion online. The Atlas Football Club in England has such a cute logo that I could not resist making mention of it.

Wired for Sound

At a dulcimer festival in Latham, New York on Saturday, 5 March, I was amused to make a classical connection as I was waiting for the open-microphone afternoon concert to begin. The sound folks were setting up multiple microphones and attaching them to the sound board and amplifiers through a box that was sitting on the stage. I walked up to investigate and laughed when I noticed that the brand name on the piece of equipment was the Whirlwind MEDUSA.You can check out the Whirlwind company and see some examples of the Medusa snake here. In this age of so many wireless devices, it is interesting to see a fully wired one that recalls the ancient world. Medusa was a mortal Gorgon, once a beautiful woman, who was greatly transformed as a result of offending the goddess Athena. In her final incarnation Medusa is most famous for having snakes instead of hair on her head and for being so ugly that she turns anything that looks at her into stone. The hero Perseus slays her and cuts off her head. From drops of her blood the winged horse Pegasus is said to have sprung. More about Pegasus soon.