5.7 A Roman Schoolbook — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read a page of everyday spoken Latin with two speakers and no speaker labels. Work out where a turn of speech ends, using nothing but the grammar. Recognise the vocabulary of ordinary life: doors, stairs, invitations, illness. Say what a Roman school actually did, and why this book existed. Prerequisites : lesson 5.6 — the fables, and with them the past tenses. Everything you have read so far was written to be read: maxims, scripture, verse. This was written to be used . It is a schoolbook — a set of model dialogues for children learning to speak, with the Latin in one column and Greek in the other, and the Greek is why it survived. It is also the closest thing we have to a recording of ordinary Roman conversation. Nobody polished it. People greet each other, ask where somebody is going, invite each other to lunch, go to see a sick friend, argue with a door-keeper. The sentences are short, the vocabulary is small and the effect, after the Vulgate and Phaedrus, is startling. There are no speaker labels. That is the difficulty, and it is the skill this lesson teaches. Read it in the separate document first and see how far you can get before you lose track of who is talking. About this text What this is. One of a small group of texts called the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana — glossaries and dialogues compiled, probably in the third century, for Greek speakers learning Latin and Latin speakers learning Greek. The dialogues are the last part of each collection and they follow a day: getting up, going to school, going to the baths, dining, going to bed. The version here is the Colloquia Monacensia , so called from the manuscript in Munich. Two sections are printed: the seventh, which is nine lines and an invitation to lunch, and the sixth, which is forty-three lines and a visit to a sick friend that does not come off. Why it is valuable. Almost all surviving Latin is literary, written by men with rhetorical training, revised, and aimed at posterity. This is none of those things. Its Latin is what a schoolmaster thought a child should be able to say, which is much closer to what people said than anything Cicero wrote. When you meet a phrase here that looks too plain to be Latin — where are you off to? , not far , come along then — that is the point of the text. The edition. Georg Goetz's of 1892, which is the standard one and is out of copyright. The manuscripts of this text are poor and the editor has supplied words in places; where he has, the supplement is in angle brackets and has been left in, because seeing an editor at work is part of reading any ancient text. Word by word Every line, with a note where something is happening. Many lines need no note at all, which is itself the news: this is the first text in the course most of which can be read straight off. # Latin What is happening Colloquia Monacensia 7 — an invitation 1 Tu ubi vadis? Two words and a question. The verb is the ordinary one for going, and the question word is the one from 4.6. 2 Ad domum festino. The accusative with no preposition is the one from 4.4: homewards . The verb means to hurry. 3 quare inquisisti? A perfect. The spelling with in- rather than inter- is the manuscript's. 4 Si tibi suave est, hodie apud me prande frugaliter. A conditional with the dative of the person, then an imperative with an adverb. Plainly is the polite thing to say about your own table. 5 vino bono domestico utimur. The verb takes the ablative — we make use of — which is one of a small group of verbs that do. 6 Sic fiat. A subjunctive of wish, exactly as in 5.5. Three words: thus let it be done . 7 Temperius ergo veni ad nos. A comparative adverb, a connective, an imperative, and a preposition with the accusative. 8 Quando vis, mitte ad nos; domi sum. A conditional with the present, then an imperative, then the locative of 4.4. 9 Sic fiat nobis. The same formula as six lines above, with a dative added. Colloquia Monacensia 6 — a visit to a sick friend 10 Bono die. An ablative of time: on a good day . It is the ordinary greeting and it is two words. 11 venisti? 12 Veni. 13 Accepisti? 14 dedisti illi? 15 Dedi. 16 Caruisti. A perfect of a verb taking the ablative: you have done without, you have missed out. 17 Numquid aliquid opus habes? The question particle expects the answer no . The phrase means literally have you need of anything? 18 Te valere. An accusative and infinitive with no verb of saying in front of it — [I wish] you to be well . The construction from 5.6, here with the main verb left out. 19 Si vis, veni mecum. 20 Ubi? 21 Ad amicum nostrum Lucium. 22 visitemus <eum>. A subjunctive of exhortation: let us visit . The word in angle brackets is the editor's supplement, not in the manuscript. 23 Quid enim habet? 24 Aegrotat. 25 A quando? 26 Intra paucos dies incurrit. A perfect of a verb meaning to run into something. The preposition takes the accusative for a stretch of time. 27 Ubi manet? 28 Non longe. 29 Sis ambula. An archaic form meaning if you please , worn down from two words, followed by an imperative. 30 Haec est, puto, domus eius. 31 haec est. 32 Ecce ostiarius. 33 Interroga illum, si possumus intrare et videre dominum eius. An indirect question with the subjunctive, introduced by the word for if , which in Latin can mean whether . 34 et ille dixit: Quem quaeritis? A stage direction in the middle of the dialogue. The schoolbook does this whenever a new speaker is not the pupil. 35 Dominum tuum. 36 de salute eius venimus. 37 Ascendite. 38 Quot scalas? 39 Duas. 40 ad dexteram pulsate, si tamen venit; processerat enim. An imperative, a conditional, and a pluperfect with the connective meaning for standing second in its clause, as 4.6 said it must. 41 Pulsemus. 42 Vide, quis est. 43 Avete omnes. 44 Dominum tuum volumus visitare. 45 si vigilat, nuntia me. A conditional and an imperative. The pronoun is accusative: announce me . 46 et ille dixit: Non est hic. 47 Quid narras? 48 sed ubi est? 49 Illuc des