'LER ABOUT TOWN
'LER ABOUT TOWN
Prehende tuam
togam,
vulsisti *
Get your tongue around
the lingo of love: Latin.
Everyone's at it these days,
says Gavanndra Hodge
hen is a dead language not
dead? When swaggering
billionaire CEOs are quoting
it at board meetings,
fashionable new classes are
sold out and celebrities are
scrawling it all over their bodies. Mirabile dictu! Latin is
back. As an early-adopting paella. I have long been aware
of the life- and love-affuming benefits of the language of
Caesar. For nearly a decade I have been attending a
hedonistic salon of Latin speakers, all swanky graduates
with MBAs and books published, where we indulge
in the saucier gobbets of Ovid and Juvenal. I even had a
I sc-themed birthday parry, attending as the great virgin,
Diana the huntress.
But my passion for Plutarch no longer seems so
esoteric At the Idler
Academy in Notting Hill,
a new course run by the
Latin mistress Miss Hislop
and aided by parse master
Harry Mount (whose
memoir Arno, Ames,
Amat.. And All That was
a publishing sensation
in 2006) was filled to the
rafters with novitiates
hoping to discipline their
brains. Furthermore,
your toga, you've pulled p legend has it that to celebrate the I
Facebook user, the cool cats in Palo
of all toga panics. Imagine the scent
resplendent in a white sheet. pert n
on either knee, the finest Budweiser
a programmer doing something ern
with a BlackBerry... But who could ham
such decadence? My guess is Marcus
himself, for although he may look like
IT seeks, he listed Latin as one of his
his Harvard application and has a fo
Virgil. Which suggests that the richest
has a wilder, more bacchanalian side
would have us believe.
For this, surely, is the reason for oar
in Latin. Those crazy Romans just
to party lots of wine, girls in flimsy
anyone who has mistakenly flicked
series Spartano: Blood and Sand
Romans liked to do most of all was
'Remember that "Roma" is "amen'
Something the Romans themselves
explains Mary Beard, Cambridge
and media don ccuaortlinaire. And
that Latin is the only language in
verbal paradigm is “amo, amas,
so the erotic dimension is built into
And reflect that without Latin we
such indispensable words as fellatio
Roman history presents us with
most depraved characters: the
who gilded her nipples, wore a
so enthusiastic a whore (brothel
that she wore our her patrons;
swimming-pools with nubile
dived in (Jeffrey Epstein, dream on).
much of their time naked, oiling eacks
then scraping each other off in the
a pre-Christian society and Roman
encourage people to be ashamed of
celebrated beautiful bodies. Ju
the gods, would ravish anything that
swans. So when Chris Martin of
degree in Latin and Greek at liCL)
always trying to work out what He or
know if it is Allah or Jesus or M
But I'd go for Zeus,' knowinge
Of course.
Latin chat-up lines
Succede videquense aliquando
(Come up and see me some time)
Didici hunt ludum in Achim!
(I learnt this trick in Thailand!)
Orgia sunt in tunics mea et invitaris
(There's an orgy in my trousers
and you're invited)
awe trimtsis in sinum tuum, au:
mock pkcet tibi me videte
(Is that a trireme in your pocket or arc
you just pleased to see me?)
arr,*q. greater
Johnson CI war
almost..•
and Greek for
now I am in
bus in
mayor may
cup of rich, bra
to cavort
hot on
talk of
the sta
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