[HN Gopher] Ancient Roman soldier carved a phallus with a person...
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Ancient Roman soldier carved a phallus with a personal insult in
this stone
Author : diodorus
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-06-17 23:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| mseepgood wrote:
| Wow, he even used serifs on the letters.
| midnitewarrior wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The execution could be "delegated" to someone lower on the
| social ladder.
| drdiego wrote:
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Given the amount of modern day graffiti carved into benches and
| tables in parks and scratched onto bus windows, probably not
| that angry?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Keep in mind that our expectations of how much effort we should
| put into things have changed throughout history.
| seclorum_wien wrote:
| Yes indeed, and let us not forget that the Romans had slaves.
| xwdv wrote:
| A necessary evil in a world lacking technology.
| pharrington wrote:
| No no, you get the slaves to serve you the wine and grapes
| while _you_ carve the phallus.
| Group_B wrote:
| Secundinus can sec un di nuts
| limbicsystem wrote:
| Came for this comment - was not disappointed
| dakial1 wrote:
| > "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.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Instead of "I love you" Romans said "pedicabo ego vos et
| irrumabo" and I think it's really beautiful
| caymanjim wrote:
| For those wondering, Google translates this as "fuck you and
| fuck you."
| SapporoChris wrote:
| DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator, had no
| idea how to translate it.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's the opening line from Catullus 16, actual humans have
| translated it as "I will sodomize and face-fuck you"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16
| christkv wrote:
| One of my favorite slam poets of antiquity.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| And also, he who gave us "hail, brother, and farewell".
|
| Man had _range_
| djitz wrote:
| Ahh, the language of love.
| caymanjim wrote:
| That's so much better. It was clear Google wasn't
| translating it literally.
| jprd wrote:
| I deeply respect this.
|
| Actually, point of fact - this is one of humanity's most honest
| historical tomes.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Which ones aren't honest?
| effingwewt wrote:
| The ones with more than two words?
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Secundinus cacator, which translates into (ahem) "Secundinus,
| the shitter."
|
| In Brazil we have the expression "cagao" 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.
| kwonkicker wrote:
| Dam , here in Turkey "kaka" [caca] literally means "poop" or
| "to poop". How odd.
| kgeist wrote:
| Kaka means poop in many unrelated languages. It's baby talk:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk
|
| Another example is "to eat" or "tasty": English yum, Russian
| nyam etc.
| xeromal wrote:
| Lots of baby words are shared amongst languages even if
| they're not related. The most obvious one I see are the
| variations of baba, papa, dada, etc for dad.
|
| My iraqi friends say baba and arabic is certainly not
| originated from latin.
| robonerd wrote:
| There are certainly some Latin loan words in Arabic; that
| part of the world was well within the Roman sphere of
| influence for a long time. For instance: the Arabic sirat
| and English street both come from the Latin word strata.
| xeromal wrote:
| Oh, I'm sure that. I just meant as a root language I
| don't believe they share a common ancestor
| geuis wrote:
| Similar root words somewhere in the past. Caca in Spanish
| means the same thing.
| mseepgood wrote:
| "Secundinus der Kacker" in German
| schoen wrote:
| But the oddity is that Turkish isn't related to the Romance
| languages.
| Tagbert wrote:
| No, but several of the earlier languages in Anatolia did
| have Into-European roots as did some of the surrounding
| languages, such as Persian. It could easily be a loan
| word.
|
| *kakka- also kaka-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to
| defecate." According to Watkins, "imitative of glottal
| closure during defecation."
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| My favorite insult: "He thinks he's hot shit, but he's not even
| a cold fart."
| hotpotamus wrote:
| 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
| "cagao" is a bit of a combination. Either way it seems like one
| of those universal human cultural tendencies.
| reggieband wrote:
| 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.
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| It's a fat one too, nice.
| hk1337 wrote:
| "Romani ite domum"
| wyldfire wrote:
| 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!
| canjobear wrote:
| 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.
| krylon wrote:
| 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.
| nescioquid wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| galgot wrote:
| Was intended to Secundinus Biggus Dickus.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Could be, it carries the same meaning in modern Greek.
| bawolff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Sounds like an early rapper lyric :)
| [deleted]
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| graffiti was a big deal in Ancient Rome. I remember the opening
| sequence of HBO short lived and much missed Rome series and the
| depiction of graffiti. Ancient Rome had a rich history of
| expressing opinions via graffiti.
| robg wrote:
| Love how this trolling is HN appropriate.
| uberdru wrote:
| 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."
| omega3 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| vorhemus wrote:
| In previous times you really had to make an effort to insult
| someone - engraving this probably took some time.
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| I don't think you'll get effort. But you might get quality by
| limiting the posting rate. Something like 1/day. That's not
| enough, so you also need to encourage the community to highly
| regard quality posts, rather than just evocative ones.
| Imagine Twitter where only moderating, calming tweets are
| liked. It would be a different place!
| vkou wrote:
| It would be a brave, new world. :)
| elcapitan wrote:
| It just means that we would have Dickcarving-as-a-Service by
| tomorrow afternoon.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, the internet would be a better place if posting spam
| costs money.
| seydor wrote:
| you were not distracting yourself in HN.
| notahacker wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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
|
| That result might impress you, but I think everyone involved
| would have considered the insult a bigger success if, say,
| Secundinus' engagement fell through and no one in the future
| ever heard about the dispute.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrcbCW4y9Dw : all the bits of
| Biggus Dickus from MP's Life of Brian
| doliveira wrote:
| 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.
| leephillips wrote:
| These romance languages are called thus because of Rome: they
| are variations of Latin. Look up the etymology of most words in
| Spanish or French and you'll find the Latin origins. Even the
| naughty bits. Spanish pedo - Latin pedere.
| doliveira wrote:
| Yeah, I know. It's just that specifically "cagar" sounds so
| informal and slang-like, those words tend to vary a lot
| through generations.
| jobigoud wrote:
| In French we have an equivalent verb, "caguer", but it's
| not used that much, "chier" is more common in this register
| and is the one used in most expressions.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 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.
| prox wrote:
| The article mentions this at the end!
|
| In this case, the author wasn't sending Secundus good luck :)
| seydor wrote:
| Also apotropaic. My fav is a fascinus cumming on the evil eye
| from Leptis magna
| kadoban wrote:
| In a couple millenia, they'll say that's what we mean by it
| too, if any of our writing is left.
|
| 8==D
| Tagbert wrote:
| The Romans used phallus imagery in multiple ways.
|
| See Fascinus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus
| badrabbit wrote:
| Imagine people 2k years from now excavating gas station restroom
| stalls.
| thedailymail wrote:
| 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
| pvaldes wrote:
| And this is what happens when you refuse to pay your engraver
| christkv wrote:
| The ancient version of defacing a clients website.
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(page generated 2022-06-19 23:02 UTC)