TheAgitator.com
Libero Mumia
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009Saw this fun page of graffiti scrawled around ancient Pompeii linked in a Reddit comments thread.
No idea how accurate it is. But it’s enjoyable.
If it is real, Pompeii seems to have had a problem with vagrant pooping.
Actually, it’s pretty much par for the course for Roman grafitti.
I love it! It shows that the ancient peoples weren’t all that different from us. The only difference is that they had better freedom of speech!
Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog.
What kind of dogs did they have?
And the words of the prophets are written on the coliseum walls…
If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girl friend
Anyone betting against his girlfriend standing there with him?
I just spent a week in Rome back in December. While there, I made a side trip to visit Pompeii. The graffiti in both places, modern and ancient, is astounding.
And 2000 years from now, who will read our scribblings? The internet is nice, but hard drives and servers fail sooner than stone. I’m sad now. :(
It’s probably for the best, chance. What will future civilizations think of LOLcats and YouTube comments?
I liked the one that said “I was here, Oct 3, 78bc. I wonder how he figured that out ;-)
Now they tell me.
@#8
When I create a LOLcat (and I create a LOT of LOLcats), I always ask “will a person in 2200 find this funny?” It really annoys me when people create LOLcats without really thinking. I find much better quality among the Ihasahotdog crowd.
@#9 HaciendaMike
Reading over the rest of the graffiti it appears to me that whoever did the translations used modern English including slang and I suspect there was a date in the original graffiti (like ‘the third year of the reign of so-and-so’) that was simply translated to a modern date format.
I also got to visit Pompeii and it was amazing. You do see this various writing around (though I don’t recall as much as is in this list…but much is faded and you don’t have time to study everything) and we kept wondering what it all said. These translations are awesome. It wasn’t that big a town, so in many of these cases I imagine the victim knew exactly who wrote it. Many of them read like the ancient world equivalent of sticking an “I’m gay” sign on your buddy’s back, lol.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
It’s been a long, long, time since I took Latin, but I think the headline on this article is mistaken.
Libero comes from the first conjugation verb, liberare, whose imperative form (i.e., “Free Mumia!”) is libera. So, the headline should read: “Libera Mumia”.
Libero Mumia would translate to English as the present, first-person indicative, “I free Mumia.”
I can’t wait to see how many thumbs-down I get for this.
That shit is quality entertainment. What will they think of Mley Cyrus, Paris Hilton, etc.? Celebrities are famous for being famous, not for being at all entertaining.
@ Ben (#14): Libera is the plural present active indicative which I would normally translate as “You are freeing ”
When someone says “Free Mumia,” though, they are using the imperative mood rather than the indicative mood.
You form the present active imperative of a first conjugation verb by droping “re” from the present active infinitive and adding “te” in its place, so for liberare, that’s liberate.
Since Mumia is the object of the verb, the name should be in the accusative case. Assuming that “Mumia” would be treated as a first declension, masculine noun, that would be “Mumiam” (see the forms of agricola, agricolae).
Finally, traditional verb placement has the verb at the end of the sentence (Carthago delenda est!), so I think the full form would be:
“Mumiam liberate!”
I think I will win the thumbs down war :-)
Sad Latin aside: In college I had an argument with one of my friends over translating the lyrics to the Doors The End. One line reads
This translates differently depending on whether you think the author is talking to someone (his only friend) or you think the author is talking to “the end.”
Were the verse originally in Latin, you would know the sense by the way it was phrased, but in English you just have to guess. As far as I know, we never resolved the argument.
John, I’ll concede your excellent points regarding the case of Mumia’s name, and the traditional placement of the verb at the end of the sentence (although I think Cato’s famous use of the passive periphrastic renders that example a little inapt).
On conjugating liberare, though, my salvation in Latin at the University of Michigan, a 1901 edition of Bennett’s Latin Grammar says (on p. 59) that the singular imperative present is formed by adding a simple -a to the verb’s stem. The -ate ending, by contrast, is the plural. Bennett translates the former (using everyone’s favorite, amo, as the model) as “love thou,” and the latter as “love ye.”
Now, I suppose we could debate whether the plea of the author of Radley’s graffito is addressed to a single person (perhaps Ed Rendell or the Emperor Nero), or to more than one person (perhaps the Roman or the Pennsylvanian Senate). I assumed that an imperative in this example would be singular.
I assumed it was plural, as an exhortation to everyone to “free mumia”
Now that I think about it, the right form might be the passive pariphrastic:
Mumia liberanda est! (Mumia must be freed!)
I guess it would depend on whom you are addressing.
I prefer my Wheelock, when I can find it, but you might look at Whittaker’s Words online (http://archives.nd.edu/words.html) which is helpful.
@ John Jenkins and Ben:
Centurion: What’s this, then? “Romanes eunt domus”? People called Romanes, they go, the house?
Brian: It says, “Romans go home. ”
Centurion: No it doesn’t ! What’s the latin for “Roman”? Come on, come on !
Brian: Er, “Romanus” !
Centurion: Vocative plural of “Romanus” is?
Brian: Er, er, “Romani” !
Centurion: “Eunt”? What is “eunt”? Conjugate the verb, “to go” !
Brian: Er, “Ire”. Er, “eo”, “is”, “it”, “imus”, “itis”, “eunt”.
Centurion: So, “eunt” is…?
Brian: Third person plural present indicative, “they go”.
Centurion: But, “Romans, go home” is an order. So you must use…?
Brian: Aaagh ! The imperative !
Centurion: Which is…?
Brian: Aaaagh ! Er, er, “i” !
Centurion: How many Romans?
Brian: Aaaaagh ! Plural, plural, er, “ite” !
Centurion: “Domus”? Nominative? “Go home” is motion towards, isn’t it?
Brian: Dative ! Aaagh ! Not the dative, not the dative ! Er, er, accusative, “Domum” !
Centurion: But “Domus” takes the locative, which is…?
Brian: Er, “Domum” !
Centurion: Understand? Now, write it out a hundred times.
Brian: Yes sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
Centurion: Hail Caesar ! And if it’s not done by sunrise, I’ll cut your balls off.