The Unknown Plant: Botanical Latin and the Issue of Universal Intelligibility
By Erin Petrella (Columbia University)
In 1743, Karl Linnaeus declared that a botanist was anyone who knew how to assign similar but distinct names, which are intelligible to everyone, to similar and distinct plants: Botanicus est ille, qui Vegetabilia similia similibus, et distincta distinctis Nominibus, cuicunque intelligibilibus, noscit nominare (Genera Plantarum
The Latin Vocabulary of Street Intersections
By Matthew D Selheimer (University of Leicester)
Recent archaeological investigation of streets has revealed new insights on their role in the urban fabric of Roman cities (e.g., Hartnett 2017, Poehler 2017, Kaiser 2011, Laurence 2007). Intersections, however, which subdivide urban spaces into blocks, focus attention of passersby, provide a locus for public engagement, facilitate commerce, and more, have received only limited attention and their Latin vocabulary, remarkably, has not been examined. The ancient sources use three terms for intersections: compitum, quadrivium, and trivium.
On Saying Yes in Latin
By Tomaz Potocnik (University College London)
ON SAYING YES IN LATIN
Nothing to do with the ‘head’? Hidden meanings of the caput in Seneca’s Thyestes and Agamemnon
By Vasileios Dimoglidis (University of Cincinnati)
In Latin literature, human body parts are frequently deployed figuratively, and such words as manus, pes, caput, and corpus acquire implicit meanings. Caput as a political metaphor occurs already in Livy (2.22) in order to describe Rome as caput rerum. After the transition to the imperial ages and more concretely during the Neronian period, caput turns into an allegory for the princeps.