Historia de Grecia y Roma

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  • Kalendae, Idus, Nonae: a very complex way to name the days of the month

    Everything related to the history of the Roman calendar and its transmission until today is very complex, especially for us who are used to a system of nomination of days of the month truly simple, each day is called the number it occupies in the whole month: January 1st, February 2nd or February 15th or March 3rd …

    The Romans named the days of the month  in a much more complicated way. Not in vain the calendar is a religious tool to determine especially religious holidays. This is the reason why the calendar was determined by the priest in many aspects.

    First of all, the month was divided into three periods: Kalends (Kalendae), Nones (Nonae) and Ides (Idus) which correspond respectively with the new moon, half moon and full moon. This means that they did not know the division in "weeks", which actually was not imposed until the Emperor Constantine.

    The kalends, (word that some people relate with Kalare = to call) indicated the beginning of the month, when the crescent moon appeared, and therefore correspond to day 1.

    The nones indicated the first quarter of the moon and corresponded to the fifth day of the months of January, February, April, June, August, September, November and December; and to the seventh day of the months of March, May, July and October.

    The ides indicated the full moon and corresponded to the 13th day in the months when the nones fell on day five and to the day 15th in which the nones fell on seven.

    These monthly milestones were referred in adjectival form; i.e., January 1st was called “Kalendae Ianuariae”; January Kalends, or better say considering the termination for the ablative case of circumstance of time "Kalendis Ianuariis"; February 1st was called "Kalendae Februariae”; February Kalends; January 5th was called "Nonae Ianuariae"; March 7th “Nonae Martiae".

    March 15th (the day Julius Caesar was assassinated) was call "Idus Martiae". "Beware of the Ides of March" is precisely what Caesar was advised by a fortune teller, who Caesar did not listened, and since then the phrase has become a prototype of warning, a prototype of a precautionary statement before a dangerous situation is announced.

    "Ad kalendas graecas" is a Latin sentence that means "for greek kalends", that is "for never", because de greek months do not have "kalends".

    This certainly seems complicated, but it is much more complex how were known to the rest of the days of the month. Well, a day was always called by reference at the prior key day (Kalends, Nones, Ides). That is, they counted the days until a key day would take place.

    For example, January 2nd was the "sixth day before the nones of January", that is to say “ante diem VI Nonas Ianuarias”; January 16th (given that January has 31 days), will be the day "seventeenth before the Kalends of February", Latin for " ante diem XVII (decimum septimum) kalendas februarias "; the 17th will be the sixteenth day before the Kalends of February (ante diem XVI kalendas februarias) and so on.

    Only the day before each milestone (kalendae, nonae, ides) was called "pridie” = the day before) and the next “postridie” = the day after). "Eve", derived from "vesper", Latin for "afternoon", naturally the afternoon before the next day.

  • Habemus Papam

    Jesus Christ was born in the time of Emperor Augustus and, with him, the Catholic Church. Christianity owes many things to the Greco-Roman world.

    A Jew who expresses in Greek, Paul of Tarsus, based on the holy books of the Bible, diffused among the Greeks and Gentiles (non-Jews) the message of another Jew, Jesus, who his followers considered the long-awaited Messiah. That message, in Latin or Greek, using the cultural, social, institutional and administrative Rome structures reaches the far corners of the Roman Empire, and in just three hundred years that religion becomes universal and almost unique.

    On another occasion we will discuss the importance of beliefs, doctrines, philosophy and Greco-Roman religion in the creation and development of Christianity. Today I will discuss only some current linguistic terms.

    After the death of Jesus at the cross, his disciples leave for various destinations as apostles (Greek Απόστολος, "sent") to preach the good news (Greek εὐ, eu, "well, good" and αγγέλιον, angelion “message , new”).

    Christianity is organized administratively into dioceses (Latin dioecesis, from Greek διοίκησις, "administration") name of the administrative units of the Empire, first for the collection of taxes, and then territorial divisions of the province. At the head of each diocese it is a bishop, in Latin "episcopus" (Greek ἐπίσκοπος, episkopos) literally supervisor, watchman (from ἐπί, epi, upon, and σκοπἐω, skopeo, watch or monitor).

    The Bishop of Rome is the supreme authority of the Church; he is called "Papa Urbis Romae, Pope of Rome" (Latin for "papa or papas = father" and this from the Greek πάππας (páppas), "Dad” ), honorary title given to the bishops.

    After the unusual (for unaccustomed, that's what it means etymologically the word "unusual") resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, it is held a conclave, that is, a cardinals meeting where they are "locked" to choose a new one. That is precisely what the word “conclave” etymologically means, from Latin "cum clave (clavis) = with key".

    If anyone thinks that the meeting is locked to prevent outsiders from entering the College of Cardinals and intervene in this important meeting, he or she would be wrong. Actually the "conclaves" began in the thirteenth century; after the authorities got tired of waiting for the election of a new pope, that did not happen, they decided to lock the cardinal electors. The most famous occasion was held in the year 1268 in which elected Pope was Clement IV, once the locked voters "cum clave” receive only bread and water for food to precipitate his decision.

    The pope or bishop of Rome is also called "Pontiff" (Latin pontifex,-ficis, word composed of pons, bridge, and verb facere, that means to make) and therefore the Pope is the one who makes bridges.
    The Pontifex Maximus, president of the college of pontiffs, is the highest religious Roman authority, responsible among other things for the conservation of the first bridge in Rome, the pons sublicius, a wooden bridge over the Tiber river, built exclusively of wood and with wooden instruments, no metal.

    This ancestral taboo evidences the sacred character and the difficulty that the ancients must have had to build a bridge, and evidences as well the respect that rivers inspired to them, in a sense considered deities. Although later, the bridge construction task was easier and Romans themselves made thousands of bridges throughout the empire, the most important priest of religion, then and now, is called "Pontiff".

    The word school or college derives from the Latin "collegium" meaning corporation, group, group of colleagues. Therefore meets the so-called "college of cardinals". Cardinals are the princes of the Church, and therefore very important axes of his administration. The word derives from "cardo,-dinis" meaning hinge, door hinge, polo, cardinal point, line demarcating space for taking auspices or signals sent by the gods. And it also designated one of the two-way or main streets of a town or city that were cut perpendicular: the decumanus running from east to west and the cardo that ran from north to south. Precisely this implies the expression "compass points" or “cardinal points” to indicate north, south, east, west. Cardinals are therefore hinges and essential points of the Church.

    Incidentally, the Latin word "ecclesia"  comes from the Greek word ἐκκλησία  (ekklēsía),  meaning "assembly" or gathering of citizens.

    The Cardinals cover their heads with the so-called "solideo" composed of two Latin words (solo deo = only to God), which is nothing but a hat or cap that covers the crown or tonsure (shaved crown) or top of the head. The Cardinals, according to the etymology, should only remove the cap in front of God, but they also do in front of the Pope as a sign of respect. Usually in all religions the priests and faithful people cover or discover their heads ritually. The color of this “cardinal cap” is red purple, color reserved in ancient times to the kings, princes and top officials. The Pope's solideo is white. The closest object and from which may come is the Jewish kipá, a word meaning "dome", although it is black and their use is mandatory in all sacred space, unlike the use of solideo.

    Also the shoes are special and called "caligas", sandals, Latin calligae, regular shoe name of Roman legionaries. However the popes, cardinals and bishops sandals are rich embroidered with silk. Remember the famous 1968 movie "The Shoes of the Fisherman," based on the novel by Morris West, in which the actor Anthony Quinn plays the role of an Ukrainian bishop prisoner in a Soviet prison who is elected Pope.

    The election of a new Pope takes place in the Sistine Chapel (name derived from Sixtus IV, Pope who ordered its construction), one of the most beautiful places next to St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, whose dome decorated by Michelangelo depicts the Last Judgment, considered the best work of the artist.

    The word “basilica” derives from the Latin basilica and this from the Greek βασιλικὴ, basilike, (royal, belonging to the king) and this in turn from the Greek βασιλεύς, basileus (king). So at first the word meant “the king's palace”, and the word seems to have been taken from the Hellenistic expression βασιλικὴ στοά, basilike stoa, (Royal Porch), that was a public building used as a courthouse, market, changes office and civic center. The plant of the basilicas used to be elongated and rectangular and had several upper galleries at the sides. The same way was adopted by Christian churches and, eventually, the term refers only to temples especially great, usually elongated and some of which also retain their galleries but rarely functional.

    Rome is known as "the city of seven hills": the Aventine, Capitoline, Caelian, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal. But there was more mounds in the area, as the Janiculum, the Pincio and the Vatican, in Trastevere, across the Tiber River, outside the city limits.

    The name "Mons Vaticanus" means place of the "predictions", oracles or prophecies (the gods send signals to mortals), so the meaning may be something like "Mount of predictions or prophecies”. The Vatican is also, according to Christian tradition, the tomb of St Peter, the apostle whom Jesus said foundation and basis of his church, who was bishop of Rome and, as such, papa and pontiff of Christendom. In the fourth century the emperor Constantine ordered the construction of the old basilica of St. Peter. The current, the greatest temple of Christianity, was ordered by Pope Julius II, and starting the building in 1506.

    Today the Vatican is a very small city-state of less than half a square kilometer, the result of the 1929 Lateran agreements.

    Therefore, when a pope or pontiff dies or voluntarily ceases its function (only two cases have been throughout history, one right now), the cardinals and princes of the Church gather in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The color of the smoke from a fire that burned the ballots inform the Christianity about the result: if the smoke is black, i.e. if the fumata (Latin fumus, smoke) is black because of the burning of ballots with wet straw, no successor has been chosen yet, if the smoke is white (white fumata) a new Pope has been elected.

    Finally, Cardinal Protodeacon (from Lat. Protodiacŏnus, and this from Greek πρῶτος, first, foremost and διάκονος, servant, minister) announces to Christianity, under the formula Urbi et Orbi (to the city -Rome- and world), in the official language of the Vatican, the Latin, the election with these words, and rituals:

    Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
    Habemus Papam:
    Eminentissimum ac reverendissimum Dominum,
    Dominum …,
    Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ Cardinalem….,
    Qui sibi nomen imposuit ….

    I announce to you a great joy;
    We have a Pope!
    The most eminent and most reverend Lord,
    Lord [First Name]     Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church [Last Name],
    Who takes for himself the name of [Papal Name].

  • Troy was placed where the poem said

    Troy is a topic that has produced a lot of literature, but for thousands of years its location was forgotten. However the poet told us very clearly where it was buried; we only had to trust on his words.

    The Iliad, Homer's poem, sings the war and destruction of Ilion, Troy. This city really existed on the coast of Asia Minor, now Turkey.

    In fact there were several Troyas, the poem’s one is nothing less than the VI. The ancients did not bother too much to remove the rubble of a city devastated by war or by any natural or unnatural disaster. It was more convenient and less expensive to build on the ruins.

    The site of Troy was discovered by the German Schliemann in 1870, because he had the ingenuity or the brilliant idea to blindly believe in the data brought by the poem itself, which Schliemann regarded as a historical narrative.

    Perhaps this was that way because Schliemann was nothing but a German businessman who forged an enormous fortune, keen on archaeology, who could only go to college at age 44, getting  a doctorate degree three years later.

    This peculiar man, who also made other notable discoveries in Greece at Mycenae, Tiryns, Orchomenus, not only learned Greek, which rhythm and musicality made him fall in love without understanding a word, but also could speak 15 languages at age 33.

  • Demeter and Persephone are personifications of nature

    Greek mythology is very rich and diverse, the result of the own Greek genius and also of the confluence of ancient Asian, Mediterranean, African beliefs (Mesopotamia, Egypt …)

    Many myths are today difficult for us to be understood and interpreted. Others are more obvious. Among this diversity, some of them that specially highlight or outstand are clearly referred to the phenomena of Nature, for which an explanation is sought, explanation that is redundant "mythical", fabulous, yet unscientific.

    Among them one of the most evocative and of easier interpretation in outline is that of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter (Δημήτηρ, mother goddess”,   ἡ Μητὴρ hê Mêtềr = the mother)  (mother of the ground, of  vegetation, agriculture and cereals, protector of marriage and much more) is an ancient goddess. Persephone is her daughter, also known as Kore (Greek word meaning "the maiden, the girl").

    Hades (Pluto to the Romans), god of the Underworld, kidnapped Persephone (Proserpina to the Romans), who was playing with some nymphs, and raped and carried her off  down into hell.

    Her mother looked for her desperately and, meanwhile, she prevented the Earth from giving fruits and new life. Zeus had to interfere, who forced Hades to return her back to her mother, but not before cheating her to eat a few pomegranate seeds. The fact of eating the pomegranate seeds forced her to return to Hell or Hades during a time of year.

    When the girl, Persephone, was with her mother, Demeter, the Earth flourished and gave fruit; but when Persephone lives in Hell with Hades, the land withers, dries and becomes infertile.

    This myth was celebrated throughout Greece with the holidays called "Thesmophoria" in which only women were involved, being forbidden to men.

    The myth, of course, refers to the succession of the seasons: the ground, the whole nature, dies and becomes sterile during a season and, during another, it greens and offers its fruits.

    These myths about death and resurrection, about the cycle of life that is consistently restarted, had a far-reaching importance in the ancient mind and still have among us moderns.

    This cycle of death and resurrection is evident in the plant world in which, beings, dead in winter, rise in spring. Myths relating to the world of vegetation are innumerable; that of Persephone is one of the most beautiful and clear.

    Moreover, the success of many religions was to relate, to identify the cycle of nature with the life cycle of the persons, who also died as evident, but are called to resuscitate.

  • The Roman state helps the starving citizens with the “annona”

    The reality of Rome is much sadder than the topic of the gargantuan feast, which is the result of a literary creativity that always pays attention to the exceptional and anecdotal instead of the ordinary and prosaic: thousands of hungry citizens.

    In contrast to the exaggerated image of the “Dinner of Trimalchio” in the Satyricon by Petronius, or in contrast to the delicacies of the work by Apicius in his cookbook "De re coquinaria", the reality is a mass of citizens without sufficient purchasing power even to ensure their own subsistence. Food shortage crisis are common in Rome, especially when linked to poor harvests and constant civil wars.

    During the Republican era, the subsistence problems are solved only sporadically at first, and then, in a more institutionalized way with Caius Gracchus (123 BC), who proposes the distribution of subsidized grain to the citizens, trying to solve the problem of lack of wheat. But the conservative senatorial class did not support these subsidized deals defended by the popular leaders.

    In 57 B.C. there were serious riots in Rome and thanks to a Senate recommendation, Pompey received the “cura annonae”, the order to victual Rome, for a period of 5 years with a budget of 40 million sesterces; this is the precedent of what will later become the prefecture of the “annona”.

    In time of Augustus (the first written reference dates from 14 A.D.) the "praefectura annonae" is an administrative building and a centralized service responsible for import grain and other products to supply the capital, exploiting and stealing resources from the provinces. Therefore, the hunger and frequent disturbances were common in the city. Seneca tells us that when Caligula was assassinated in Rome, there were only wheat stocks for seven or eight days.


    We have to consider that in the year 270 B.C. Rome would have 180,000 people, 375,000 in 130 B.C. and a million or more in time of Augustus.

    In the year 73 a 5 “modioi” ration is established per person and month (Sallust, Hist., 3.48). In time of Augustus it was distributed wheat to 320,000 people heads of family, then Augustus himself reduced to 200,000. More than 600,000 people benefited in total. If each person received 5 “modioi” (modii) per month (about 36.6 liters per month, the amount to make one kilogram bread daily), 60 modii per person and year, it would be consumed about 12 million a year, about 80,000 tons at the expense of the state. The city needed a total of 200,000 tons to adequate food.

    Wheat came mainly from Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa and especially Egypt, which provided between 100,000 and 150,000 tons of wheat annually.

    The “annona” was therefore an important aid for daily survival and to maintain the social order. Without the "annona" and without the "circus" things could have been very different. (panem et circenses)

  • “Know thyself ( Know yourself)”, γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnóthi seautón), Nosce te ipsum, Conócete a ti mismo, Connais-toi toi-même, Conosci te stesso, Erkenne dich selbst.

    This ancient Greek phrase, “know yourself” is the simplest invitation to reflect on oneself

    This phrase, which has a high ethical value and a religious value for some people, is a forceful and disturbing order, because it makes the men, curious beings, face the fact that we need to know, to understand and to accept ourselves; it also makes us face with the evidence of the lack of that self-knowledge and awareness of oneself.

    Once again are the ancient Greeks, who developed the rational knowledge of nature, who also focused their reflection in man and therefore in themselves.

    Pausanias, the famous tourist of the II century A.D., in his "Description of Greece", in Book X dedicated to Phocis, in chapter 24, paragraphs 1-2, tells us that in the courtyard of the temple of Apollo at Delphi there were registered (Pliny says that in gold letters) useful phrases for the life of men, which are in the mouth of all Greeks (Εν δέ τώ προνάω τά έν Δελφοίς γεγραμμένα, έστιν ώφελήματα άνθρώποις εἰς βίον = En de to pronao ta en Delfois gegrammena estín ofelémata anthropois eis bion), such as:

              "know thyself"  (Γνῶθι σαυτόν, gnóthi sautón),

              “nothing too much” (Μηδέν άγαν,medén ágan).

    According to the same Pausanias, these phrases, receiving those who consulted the oracle, were attributed to the Seven Sages (Cleobulus of Lindos, Solon of Athens, Sparta Quilon, Bias of Priene, Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Periander of Corinth ).

    Already Plato had said in his dialogue Protagoras (343 b), that the Seven Sages showed his admiration for the Lacedaemonian know "when meeting in Delphi, they wanted to offer to Apollo, in his temple Delfico, the first fruits of their wisdom, and consecrated inscriptions  that everyone repeats: Know thyself and nothing in excess".

    Many of these statements have not ceased to be used and to encourage reflection of men from then until today.

    Probably the most successful of them is "know thyself", especially since Socrates himself used it many times, especially as stated in the Platonic dialogue "Alcibiades" when facing the ambitious young Athenian politician with his own ignorance. This is the reason why the phrase is wrongly attributed to Socrates.

    Naturally, the Romans, rulers of Greece but captured by their culture, immediately adopted the maxim in the form "nosce te ipsum" or less used “temet nosce”.

    If there are infinite thinkers and philosophers who take as their own "nosce te ipsum" or one of its variants, there are also infinite ways in which it was used.

    The phrase continues to be an enigma from the beginning. Does it mean just remember the men their vulnerability and deadly?, perhaps the meaning is to tell us that we need to know well ourselves, that we must know our intellectual and rational soul to guide our life right?, or maybe that the phrase owns itself the treasure of treasures, and who knows himself knows the universe and the gods?, as Hermes Trismegistus intended.

    The same idea is expressed by Saint Augustine, directing the judgment in the Christian sense, when he says "do not want to pour out; fall within yourself, because inside of man lies the truth" (From True Religion 39,72), thus inaugurating the so called "Socratic Christian" spoken by Gilson.

    In any case "knowing oneself" is a difficult task, the most difficult, as Thales of Miletus said, according to Diogenes Laertius (Lives and opinions of eminent philosophers, Book I, 12,15) or according to the dialogue of Plato Alcibiades, 130,:

     "I often thought, Socrates, that it was available to everyone, but in other times I also found it very difficult."

    For other authors the task is impossible and the man is doomed not to know "who he is, where he comes from and where it goes" or at least to have a meager knowledge of himself and a slight self-consciousness.

    Actually this "Delphic order" constitutes one of the pillars of philosophical reflection of all time, ethics and mysticism; infinite authors since antiquity, as we saw, through the Middle Ages of Peter Abelard (1079-1142 ), who used it as the title for his treatise "Ethica seu liber dictus: scito te ipsum", or Petrarch.

    Among others, our Spanish moralist Gracián (1601-1658) said in his book Faultfinder, part one, chap. IX entitled "Moral anatomy of man": "He who begins ignoring oneself, badly can learn other things. But what is the good in knowing everything while not knowing oneself? ".

    Closer to our time, the same idea is repeated by many:

    Hegel:"self-consciousness is the fount of truth".

    Fichte: "Look at yourself, shift your gaze from everything around you and direct it to your interior. This is the first request that philosophy makes to his apprentice. You are not going to talk about anything outside of you, but only of yourself ".

    Cassirer: "the autognosis is the supreme purpose of philosophical inquiry".

    Montaigne: "every man contains within himself the entire form of the human condition".

    There is no philosopher who is inspired by the inscription of the temple of Delphi.

    Even today in our hyperactive culture, little given to reflection and peace of mind, the highest Greek inspired numerous self-help books looking for the north in self acceptance or self-identity.

    Necessary books that are not always valuable. Also here the consumer society and the bestsellers found a good opportunity for business.

    I hope this short article is used for guide the reader, in the sense that he considers most appropriate, of course.

  • I hate and I love (odi et amo)

    It seems a contradiction and, however, it is possible to feel these two strong passions simultaneously. At least this is what Catullus and thousands of later lovers admit.

    Some poets sing the facts and glorious feats of men; others expose the most hidden and inner feelings of their hearts. Love, in its myriad forms and hues, is the preferred object of lyric poetry.


    Gaius Valerius Catullus is a young Latin poet who was born in Verona (Italy) between 87-84 BC and died in Rome between 57-54 B.C, when he was 30 years old. Often the extraordinary and divine skill of poetry is followed by a young and premature death.


    Son of a prominent family of provinces, Gaius went to study in Rome. There, he participated in the most well-known literary circle, pejoratively called “neoterics” (Greek νεωτερικοί neoterikoi; Latin “poetae novi”) "new poets" formed by refined Greek poetry lovers looking for concise and formal perfection.


    He fell in love, as so many impulsive young men, with a pretty and  licentious  lady of Roman society, Clodia, called Lesbia  in his poems. Their relationship was a long succession of agreements  and disagreements that embittered the young poet, but we will discuss them some other time.

    Among other many poems, usually dedicated or referred to his Lesbia, Catullus wrote a famous couplet, (Greek δίστιχον , two lines verse or stanza) of two lines.  In this little poem, he masterfully expressed a love-hate feeling so seemingly contradictory and so frequent.


    I offer it in Latin and English, for everyone to enjoy it as possible.


                                Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
                                Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
                                                                        (Catullus, Poems, 85)


                                I hate and I love. Why I do this perhaps you ask.
                                I do not know, but I sense that it happens and I am tormented.

    Catullus knew how to express with all emotion the double feeling that made him suffer. Hundreds of poets have expressed a similar feeling in a thousand ways. Thousands, millions of lovers will never be able to express it poetically (poetry is a gift that the gods only give to a chosen few) but they will feel themselves identified with  these few verses, which put us so close to men and women of the first century BC and of the century XXI AC.

    Indeed Verona, Catullus's homeland, it is also the land of Romeo and Juliet. Will these lands in northern Italy, close to the Alpine border, be, as now, the climate and environment that fuels these romantic and impossible loves?

  • Mosquitoes preserved the temples of Paestum, Italy, a World Heritage Site

    Without any doubt, the biggest agent of destruction is man himself. A kind of Mosquito expelled the man from Paestum, and several Greek temples in the area have lasted until today in a remarkable state of preservation.

    The Greeks from Sybaris founded the city of Poseidonia at the mouth of the river Silarus, in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy) in the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. Parmenides and Zeno, among other philosophers, taught in Poseidonia. In 273 B.C. became a Roman colony called Paestum. Poseidonia or Paestum was famous for its roses.


    There are not many news during the Republican and Imperial Roman era, but we know that in the V century there was bishop, although its decline was evident.


    Perhaps a change in the level of the sea, very close, or the conditions of the mouth of the river, that area became a marshy swamp, a perfect habitat for insect Anopheles, whose females suck blood and transmit malaria.


    Precisely these unsanitary conditions forced the inhabitants to leave the place, and occupied by weeds and vegetation it remained hidden until the eighteenth century, when King Charles III of Spain, then king of Naples, built a road passing through the city.


    There were three Doric temples built in the sixth century B.C. dedicated to Hera, Apollo and Athena, although traditionally were considered dedicated to Poseidon or Neptune and Ceres. They are the best preserved Greek temples. The Romans built a forum or large square and other elements from Roman urbanism as the amphitheater.


    Unesco has declared the whole city World Heritage Site. Its extraordinary state of preservation makes visitors to thrill now, once eradicated the annoying mosquito. This time the poisoned wind preserved the wonder.

     

  • The water preserves wrecks, which are underwater archaeological sites

    The sea has invaded the coasts throughout the centuries and, on the sea bed, thousands of shipwrecks lie and can rescued now.

    If the ashes of the fire of Mount Vesuvius preserved Pompeii and the bad air full of malarial mosquitoes kept us the temples of Paestum, the other primal element, water, has preserved hundreds of archaeological sites.

    The "Mare Nostrum", (our sea), the Mediterranean Sea (in the middle of the Empire’s lands) has been crossed by military or commercial ships since the dawn of time, at least from the second millennium B.C. regularly. These ships were chartered by brave traders or run by valiant leaders, and they almost never lost sight of the coast (navigation from cape to cape).

    These ships were constantly exposed to the wrath of the gods or nature: Jupiter Almighty King of Heaven, Poseidon or Neptune god of the sea, Aeolus who guards the winds in his cave and rules them at will, and so many other divinities who led the ships to their predetermined destiny or projected the ships implacable to the bottom of the sea.

    Marine sediments have covered and therefore protected these wrecks (naufragium, navis frangere: to break or fracture a ship) for hundreds of years. Their study now provides us with interesting information about the movements of our ancestors in the Mediterranean, their trade, their tastes and whims, their expansive longings, their search for metals, the dissemination of their beliefs, their ideas, their knowledge, their culture. All this and much more we realize with wrecks, “pecios” in Spanish, a strange name for non-experts derived from Latin term "petius" related to "pittacium", or piece, fragments of vessels.

  • Tempus fugit – Time Flees

    The people had to try to measure the time very soon, perhaps with the false illusion of catching it.

    The cyclical succession of days and nights, the elapse of the light of a day itself, the perception of one's life and its end, the ephemeral existence of beings, prompted the man to measure, monitor, remember the passage of time.

    Some prehistoric megalithic monuments are certainly related to the solar cycle. The Egyptian obelisks seem to be the index of a large sundial. Ancient myths refer to human desire for immortality, for the denial of the destructive time.

    For measuring time, clocks were invented. Clock is a word derived from the Latin "horologium" and this, in turn, from the Greek "Horologion" (hora = hour and lego = I state). A clock is an instrument that uses a standard measurement unit.

    Indeed, as it is indicated by the division of the day and night into twelve hours (something that still remains), it should be the Sumerians who began dividing the duration of the day in that way. Certainly, this duodecimal system must be related to the appearance of twelve moons along the years. In any case, at the beginning of the second millennium BC the Egyptians already had instruments to divide the day and night in 24 periods.

    The Greeks called these periods "hora", then the word was taken by the Romans, and finally it  was passed on to those who speak a language derived from Latin, and to English as well (hour).
    The most basic clocks are solar clocks, in which the changing shadow of an index projected by the sun light on a surface indicates the intervals of the sun itself. This index, shaft or rod is called gnomon (γνώμων: 'connoisseur, guide,' and by extension 'squad, needle, sundial'). The Greeks called the water clock clepsydra (of κλέπτειν kleptein, 'steal'; ύδωρ hydor, 'water').

    Well, sundials were sometimes illustrated with a Latin phrase referring to the passage of time. This custom and those sentences were then fashioned from the Renaissance and have survived until today.
    Although the number of phrases that may illustrate a clock are endless, the most common ones are very few ones and I will address them because the reader may have noticed them in the current existing sundials, and even in the spheres of pendulum clocks, and even in common wrist or pocket clocks.
    The most common is definitely "Tempus fugit = time flees", with an explicit reference to the swift passage of time. It is a phrase taken from a verse of Virgil in his work Georgicae, III, 284 which says more accurately "Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus", “But flees meanwhile, the time flees irretrievably".

    In some cases the phrase has been expanded  "Tempus fugit, sicut nubes, quasi naves, velut umbra" "Time flies, like clouds, like ships, like the shadows". This is a mixture of several references to the Book of Job in the Old Testament: as the clouds (Job, 7, 9), as the ships (Job, 9, 26), as the shadows (Job, 14, 2); so this is not a phrase by a classical author.

    The ultimate meaning of the phrase tempus fugit is related to the phrase, also prevalent in some watches, "carpe diem" (seize the moment). This is one of the most famous phrases of Horace and of literature, drawn from his Odes (Odes, I, 11, 8). It is blindingly obvious that if “tempus fugit, carpe diem", if time escapes from us, take the opportunity.

    A Latin word that appears in certain modern Swiss watches is Festina, since it is their trademark. The word is the imperative of a verb that means "hurry up."

    Probably the reader knows the full phrase festina lente, oxymoron (combination of seemingly contradictory linguistic elements) that means "hurry up slowly". The Roman historian Suetonius attributes this phrase to Augustus (Suet.Aug.25.4). Incidentally, according to Suetonius, Augustus pronounced the phrase in Greek: "Speude bradeōs" (Σπευδε βραδεως). A newer version is our saying “Make haste slowly”, or as we say in Spain "Dress me slowly because  I have haste".

    Not infrequently occurs mainly in clocks of church towers the haunting phrase "Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat" (all wound, the last kills) referring to hours. Another version of same meaning is "Omnes feriunt, ultima necat" and another more is "Laedunt omnes, ultima necat".

    These are the most common phrases that illuminate clocks and watches, but the chances are very numerous, because it is not only used in Latin. But we must recognize that the expressive power and concision of the Romans tongue is unmatched, even by English, that also adorns the famous clock tower of Big Ben with a Latin phrase, but the phrase does not refer to the inexorable passage of time, but expresses best wishes for Queen Victoria.

    The sentence says “DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VICTORIAM PRIMAM” (Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria I), i.e., this is the Latin version of the famous English phrase "God Save The Queen ".