ancient-rome-au:somepoorsod:ancient-rome-au:thornsyblog:Ancient Rome invented chatspeakSpeaking of L
ancient-rome-au:somepoorsod:ancient-rome-au:thornsyblog:Ancient Rome invented chatspeakSpeaking of Latin abbreviations, can someone explain to me the insanely unintuitive abbreviations used in the inscription on the architrave/epistyle of the Pantheon?M[arcus] Agrippa L[ucii] f[ilius] co[n]s[ul] tertium fecitI can understand abbreviation of his first name. Sure, it loses a little meaning but we know intuitively that it’s the initial of his first name. But “L f”??? How are people supposed to know that means “son of Lucius”? Is it because Lucius is the only common praenomen beginning with L? Does the abbreviation “f” commonly signify “filius” (or whatever declension thereof is necessary to make the sentence grammatically correct)?And what about “cos”? I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that’s a trigonometric function. (”The first published use of the abbreviations ‘sin’, ‘cos’, and ‘tan’ is by the 16th century French mathematician Albert Girard,“you protest. Shhhh!) Last, I enjoy how there’s no grammatical object in the sentence. “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, while consul for the third time made.” That’s the whole sentence. Not even “Agrippa made this.” What he made is implied. I guess. Is “facere” not a transitive verb? What the hell. Latin/classics majors, please explain.The praenomina and their respective abbreviations were pretty well fixed in Roman culture - by the time the Pantheon had been built, for some centuries, even. So M. and L. were immediately comprehensible abbreviations, yes. Remember that there were very few praenomina too: Lucius isn’t the only common praenomen beginning with L, it’s the only praenomen beginning with L at all. This is why noble Romans kept acquiring extra names: you absolutely needed the name of your gens to sort yourself out from everyone else called Publius, but since there might well have been a lot of Publii in your own family too - especially if you’d had a famous ancestor with the name whom everyone wanted to model their kids after - you then need the cognomen to sort yourself out from them. Thus, Africanus, Aemilianus, Cicero, or whatever. And then parents starting passing down cognomina too, and you need a second cognomen … it gets messy.The rest of it is just what I can ‘inscription’ language, which you get to learn fairly quickly if you’re studying dedications, coins, and anywhere else the Romans felt like abbreviating things. (Not unlike modern textspeak). F[ilius/a] in this sort of context is very normal: most importantly, for Augustus himself during this very period, Caesar’s heir having long claimed the title DIVI. F. (son of a god, i.e. the deified Julius) as part of his public relations programme. COS, likewise, was well-established.Fecit’s the only slightly unusual part, because quite a few inscriptions do bother with proper transitive grammar and fit in ‘hoc fecit’, but it’s not terribly concerning either.Multās grātiās tibi agō!While we’re talking about Latin inscriptional abbreviations, let’s not forget the time that Pompey got anxious about whether he should put COS TERTIUM or COS TERTIO on his temple to Venus Victrix, because different Roman grammar peevers had strong opinions both ways, so he asked Cicero, and Cicero was like, “dude, just abbreviate it as COS TERT.”(According to Varro, COS TERTIUM is more correct.) -- source link
#inscriptions#latin abbreviations#varro#cicero