Did you know…? (I)
Posted on 25. May, 2012 by leire in Latin Language, Roman culture
A.M. and P.M.
Did you know that A.M. ant P.M. time abbreviations come from Latin?
In fact, “A.M.” comes from the Latin Ante Meridiem expression and means “Before Noon” and “P.M.” comes from Post Meridiem and means “After Noon”.
Corruption in Rome
Did you know that in ancient Rome during the Republic, state officials convicted for corruption were cut off the nose and were put into a sack and thrown into the sea?
The Zodiac
Did you know that the zodiacal system was created by Chaldean and Egyptian astronomers and expanded by greeks, who called it “Zodiac”, which means “circle of animals”?
The Romans adapted and transmitted the zodiac to us as we know it nowadays. Ancient astronomers selected key groups of stars and they created their legends, identifying the shape of the constellation with the bodies of the respective animals or mythological characters. The names of constellations that we know come from Latin. (Cicero, Ovid and other ancient writers told us about them, explaining how the horoscope can be determinant and related to the different characters of people and their signs). The ancients did not distinguish between the objective study of the stars (“astronomy”) and the influence they could have on the character or destiny of people (“astrology). Also the word “horoscope” was created by greeks and it means “prediction through stars”.
Via Lactea (Milky Way)
This tasty designation is related to the birth of one of the most famous and popular heroes of classical mythology: Heracles, who the Latins called Hercules.
In Greek Heracles means “the one that serves Hera to enlarge her reputation” (Hera was Juno among Romans). Hera hated Heracles because her husband, the almighty Zeus God, had fathered Heracles out of the matrimony with a mere mortal woman. However, Zeus forced his wife to breastfeed Heracles to make him immortal through her breast milk. Hera then had to obey the Almighty God. But Heracles, in a moment she took her eyes off the child, squeezed whit his prodigious strength the breast that was nursing him and left a stream of milk, which immediately became a string of stars: the “Milky Way”.
“Familia” (family)
Did you know that in origin the word family among the ancient Romans was not applied to the married couple and their children, but only to the slaves?
“Famulus” meant “domestic slave” and “familia” meant the “totality of slaves belonging to the same man”. Romans invented this word to denote a new social organism, whose head, the Pater Familias, had under his power women, children and a number of slaves, parental rights and the right of death upon them all. Thus, among other things, in that way he ensured that his legacy (properties and possessions) would be left to their rightful children.
Apparently, the word “familia” was born among the Latin tribes when adopting agriculture and legal slavery.
I don’t think that the sentence “quando omni flunkus moritati” is real Latin. It is a jumble mumble of words which make no sense. There is no Latin word “flunkus”, for instance. “Moritati” is incorrect Latin, and ‘omni’ is the Dative case of omnis (to everyone).