Servius 4 Maximus

Servius 4 Maximus

Those of us who were exposed to the rigours of high-school Latin study will remember the short phrases and aphorisms whose memorization constituted such an important part of the first lessons: "Sextus sits in the chair", "Quintus runs to the market", "Cicero talks too much", and so on. Recently, I came across a book entitled Roman Homosexuality, which makes me wonder why we never got the chance to rote-learn such illuminating and memorable statements as the following, which were scratched -- for posterity? for posterior? -- on to the walls of Pompeii:

hic ego cum veni futui, deinde redei domi
When I came here, I fucked. Then I went back home.

Charming! And then there's this philosophical insight:

nam nihil est quisquam sceleris, quo prodeat ultra,
non si demisso se ipse voret capite.
For there is no wickedness to which he could descend further, not even if he were to lower his head and eat himself.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? And finally, there's this splendid piece of oracular wisdom:

qui lego felo; sugat qui legit.
I who reads this sucks dick; may he who reads this suck.

It goes to show that even the most private and, it seems, commonplace aspects of Roman culture can reveal the distant roots of modernity.