Ancient Roman soldier carved a phallus with a personal insult in this stone

[wyldfire]

Centurion: What is this then? Romanes eunt domus, "People called Romanes they go the house"?

Brian: It..it says, "Romans, go home"!

Centurion: No, it doesn't! What's Latin for "Roman"? [grabs Brian's ear] Come on, come on!

Brian: Romanus!

Centurion: Goes like?

Brian: Annus!

Centurion: Vocative plural of annus is...?

Brian: Anni?

Centurion: [writes] Romani. And eunt? What is eunt?

Brian: "Go"! Let-

Centurion: Conjugate the verb "to go".

Brian: Ire; eo, is, it, imus, itis, eunt!

Centurion: So eunt is...?

Brian: Third person plural, present indicative. "They go!"

Centurion: But "Romans, go home" is an order, so you must use the...?

Brian: The... imperative!

Centurion: Which is...?

Brian: I!

Centurion: [twisting Brian's ear] How many Romans?

Brian: [yelling] I.. Plural, plural! Ite, ite!

Centurion: [writing] Ite. Domus? Nominative? But "go home", it is motion towards, isn't it, boy?

Brian: Dative, sir! [The centurion promptly draws his swords and presses it against Brian's throat.

Brian yells:] No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! The... accusative, accusative! Domum, sir, ad domum!

Centurion: Except that domus takes the...?

Brian: The locative, sir!

Centurion: Which is?

Brian: Domum!

Centurion: [writing] Domum... -um [sheathing his sword] Understand? Now, write it out a hundred times!

Brian: Yes, sir, thank you, sir! Hail Caesar!

Centurion: Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off!

Brian: Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar and everything, sir!

[krylon]

The secondary school I went to taught Latin as the first language, and someone had - before my time - written "Romanes eunt domus" on the school wall next to the main entrance. I did not get the joke until I watched Life of Brian, but when I did, I absolutely loved it. To my knowledge, nobody has removed the graffiti to this day.

[canjobear]

I love this scene because it captures the crazy dissonance between Latin as it was taught for generations (basically a highly structured linguistic hazing ritual) and the fact that it really was a lively living language once.

[nescioquid]

It was funny when I saw the movie because I never expected a movie to wittily touch on such schoolboy Latin troubles. But since the internet became a thing and this scene gets regurgitated at the slightest provocation, a damnatio memoriae wold be a kindness.

[dr_dshiv]

Are they sure it was definitely the same author? Maybe Secundinus saw the insult and carved a big dick in response.

Classically, a phallic representation can disrupt a curse or evil eye. After all, how can you maintain an evil eye when you see a big honking cock in your field of view? It’s like a bad vibe disrupter.

Read more about the “fascinating” magic of big fake dicks in antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus

[seclorum_wien]

>Are they sure it was definitely the same author?

Perhaps there is a better analysis available, but the lines of the phallus appear to me to have been cut by the same author of the letters in the words.

Besides that, having dated an archeology student who left their interesting books around, I seem to remember there being a standard for identifying the cut of these objects. Perhaps it was more easily verified than we might think.

[ncmncm]

What we can be sure of is that, whatever happened, it played out in wood thousands of times.

Somebody had to be really hard-core to do it in stone.

(Apologies for the doubles-entendres! Really, they write themselves.)

[midnitewarrior]

It takes nothing to get a can of spray paint and deface a wall with an insult or any crude depiction. Imagine the commitment required to carve an insult on stone. This man was truly angry.

[sorokod]

The execution could be "delegated" to someone lower on the social ladder.

[aaomidi]

Keep in mind that our expectations of how much effort we should put into things have changed throughout history.

[monkeybutton]

Given the amount of modern day graffiti carved into benches and tables in parks and scratched onto bus windows, probably not that angry?

[drdiego]

It would take about 1 minute to carve the phallus, with a chisel and a hammer. Sandstone is very easy to chisel - try it!

[marcodiego]

> Secundinus cacator, which translates into (ahem) “Secundinus, the shitter."

In Brazil we have the expression "cagão" which can translated as "big shitter" to refer to someone who encourages or announces a firm, dangerous or exemplar behavior but recedes back when need to assume it arrives.

[reggieband]

I don't know if it is the same word but it reminds me of a joke a Brazilian friend told me when we were discussing how it can be hard to translate jokes. He mentioned that someone who shits a lot is a common insult in Brazil.

The joke goes: A young man visits the family of his girlfriend for the first time. At one point the father of the girl pulls him aside and tells him that he is no good for his daughter. The father wants a rich man for his daughter. He tells the young man "you can't buy my daughter a nice house, you can't buy her a nice car, you can't buy her nice clothes, I bet you can't even afford to buy her toilet paper". Later, as the young man and girl drive home she notices he is upset. She asks if her dad maybe said something to him. He said, yes, he told me you are a big shitter.

[hotpotamus]

So my knowledge of Spanish is pretty limited but being in South Texas I do run into it, and I've always thought the word "caca" was more analogous to "poop" rather than "shit"; ie they mean they same thing but one is more offensive. I never know how close Portugese is to Spanish though; it's a language I have next to no exposure to.

Interestingly, in American English, we would refer to someone who lies a lot as a "bullshitter" or "full of shit", but someone who is cowardly is a "chickenshit". It sounds like "cagão" is a bit of a combination. Either way it seems like one of those universal human cultural tendencies.

[marcodiego]

In the real world, it is common to see cultural and intellectual discussion degrade to shit talking. In Hacker News, talking about shit evolves to a cultural and intellectual discussion. I love this!

[kwonkicker]

Dam , here in Turkey "kaka" [caca] literally means "poop" or "to poop". How odd.

[hn_throwaway_99]

My favorite insult: "He thinks he's hot shit, but he's not even a cold fart."

[bawolff]

I feel like nobody should be surprised about crude insults and rome going together.

After all, these are the people that brought us cattulus 16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16

[fileeditview]

Sounds like an early rapper lyric :)

[JorgeGT]

I wonder if the insult carried then the same meaning as in modern Spanish, i.e. «coward». It would make sense that the carver thought that trait to be a grave issue in a military garrison context.

[aiilns]

Could be, it carries the same meaning in modern Greek.

[Group_B]

Secundinus can sec un di nuts

[limbicsystem]

Came for this comment - was not disappointed

[shp0ngle]

Instead of “I love you” Romans said “pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” and I think it’s really beautiful

[dakial1]

> "Among the many other interesting finds: [...]; the remains of a female child between 8 and 10, found in a shallow pit in a barrack room in 2010;"

This small phrase give us clear view that this girl's death was probably in a terrible situation... Poor child.

[JoeAltmaier]

I thought the Romans used that symbol for good luck and fertility? It seems at odds with the message. Doesn't seem so much a 'clever subversion' as confusing.

[kadoban]

In a couple millenia, they'll say that's what we mean by it too, if any of our writing is left.

8==D

[jprd]

I deeply respect this.

Actually, point of fact - this is one of humanity's most honest historical tomes.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Which ones aren’t honest?

[vorhemus]

In previous times you really had to make an effort to insult someone - engraving this probably took some time.

[notahacker]

tbh, if you want your insult to be likely to survive for nearly 2000 years, it takes a bit of dedication even now.

probably Secundinus had insulted him by shouting at him, making a hand gesture or spilling his beer. But whilst such low effort insults can drive people crazy, they're unlikely to achieve results quite as impressive as worldwide media coverage in future millennia, or historians musing on why Secundinus was considered to be a shitter as they figure out a caption for the centrepiece for a new museum.

[amelius]

The internet would be a better place if posting something would take serious effort.

Perhaps this would be a nice starting point for a new version of Twitter or any forum.

[seydor]

you were not distracting yourself in HN.

[uberdru]

The infelicitous image caption should go down in history: "Retired biochemist Dylan Herbert was volunteering at the excavation site when he came across the carved stone."

[thedailymail]

Secundinus should be happy he didn't get the full ostrakon treatment, which involved carving a person's name on a pottery shard and using it for post-toilet scraping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracon

[omega3]

Does anyone know why the second word doesn't exactly match "cacator"? The first letter looks like an "E" but there is an "E" in the first word so the horizontal line might be a later damage. However, the second "A" looks like an "O". Could it be a typo?

[Veen]

If you click through to the original article, it says the stone actually says "SECVNDINVS CACOR", which is an abbreviated form of secundinus cacator. Words are often abbreviated on stone inscriptions.

https://www.vindolanda.com/News/ancient-graffiti

[jelliclesfarm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrcbCW4y9Dw : all the bits of Biggus Dickus from MP’s Life of Brian

[badrabbit]

Imagine people 2k years from now excavating gas station restroom stalls.

[kadoban]

If they have ability to perform archeology on hard drives by that point, that will be an "interesting" job that I would not want to have.

[Tagbert]

The Romans used phallus imagery in multiple ways.

See Fascinus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus

[doliveira]

Funny how "cacator" sounds like the Portuguese word "cagador". I thought the verb "cagar" was recent, turns out we've been saying it for thousands of years.

[pvaldes]

And this is what happens when you refuse to pay your engraver

[christkv]

The ancient version of defacing a clients website.