Basileia

I’ve decided to challenge myself to-day. Since I’ve been spending this Christmas vacation brushing up on Latin for the second-semester class that I’m about to jump into in January (my first formal Latin instruction since I was 13), I thought it would be nice to find a recognizable but Christmas-appropriate quotation from the beginning Chapters of Wheelock’s to share along with my progress towards New Years and establishing blog identity. That was a great idea.

There was an adaptation from Livy on the Rape of Lucretia. I was excited to get to that, let me tell you! What a great story. A woman, in keeping with traditional gender roles, upholding her honor and that of her family, brings about the end of tyranny in Rome. Beautiful. Of course, she dies. But what a tragic, beautiful figure in Roman history. Always a favorite. While the overthrow of tyranny is a joyful theme, however, it doesn’t seem to do, since self-sacrifice is more for Easter. Moving on.

Then I found a good one to ruminate on through the season of Advent: “Possumusne, O di, in malis insidiis et magno exitio esse salvi?” (n.b. never, but never will macrons appear on this blog. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.) -Cicero. Problem: “di”. I suppose we should avoid anything that flies in the face of monotheism if we really want to stay in the Christmas spirit.

Aha! Something that truly speaks to my situation sitting at home over break with schoolwork to do! I’m delighted to think that Seneca might have come through for me: “Otium sine litteris mors est.” Maybe I can cite Seneca when explaining to everyone why I insist on doing schoolwork year-round, and always seem to find something of an academic nature that I need to be doing over the breaks. Appropriate to the moment, perhaps, but not festive.

But there, at the bottom of that save page of “Sententiae Antiquae” in Chapter Seven of the 6th edition of Wheelock’s Latin is my saving grace, straight out of Luke:

Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

Now I don’t mind that I have been wasting my time, or that I’m perfectly absurd with a mess of a silly mind. I have a Christmas quote. I feel like a real Latin student already. Redemption for having dropped it so callously upon entrance to highschool seems finally at hand. Nevermind that I’m in beginning levels; I have a Christmas quote! I can’t even tell you whether this is the Latin from the Vulgate, another Latin version, or a translation by the editors themselves from Greek or English. But I don’t care. It is my Christmas Quote. Tra-lala! In my exceeding (and increasingly boring) joy, I will share with you the lyrics to Adeste Fideles, just in case you had forgotten some of them, and need to know for your carolling:

adeste fideles laeti triumphantes
venite, venite in bethlehem.
natum videte, regum angelorum.
venite adoremus
venite adoremus
venite adoremus, dominum.

deum et deo, lumen de lumine,
gestant puellae viscera
deum verum, genitum non factum
venite…

cantet nunc io chorus Angelorum
cantet nunc aula caelestium
Gloria in excelsis Deo:
venite…

Ergo qui natus, die hodierna
Jesu, tibi sit gloria
Patris aeterni Verbum caro factum:
venite…

Resolution: Actually memorize the damn forms this time around.