Deeds of the Romans, Story #130

    Of course this story may have another number in another collection but I feel like translating one of the shorter stories that probably does not get much attention on the world wide web.

      Refert Valerius, quod Fabius praefectus redemerat captivos Romanorum promissa pecunia. Quam cum senatus dare nollet, ipse fundum unicum habens vendidit et pretium promissum solvit volens se portius patrimonio privare quam propria fide inopem esse.

     "Valerius relates how Fabius, Prefect (or Governor), had paid the ransom for Roman captives with the agreed on money. How, when the senate was unwilling to pay, he himself having one piece of property, sold and paid the promised price, more willing to deprive himself of his inheritance than to be poor in personal faith."

Presumably this story is told about  Fabius Maximus(ca. 280-203 B.C.), who paid the ransom for captives taken by Hannibal. Virgil names him as one of the greatest of the Fabii in the Aeneid, whom Anchises mentions in the trip to the underworld. He practiced a 'scorched earth' strategy against Hannibal which did not endear him to the Romans but after more conventional methods of warfare failed and a number of Senators were killed at Cannae, they called him back and he was named "The Shield of Rome".

Valerius is presumably Valerius Maximus, a Latin writer from the reign of Tiberius. The story itself may have come from Livy but it is also reported in Plutarch's biography of Fabius, chapter 7.

The Other 'F' Word: Fart

     One thing that people often find more fascinating than where common phrases and words come is where the naughty words or 'not polite' words come from. After all, 'passing wind' can be referred to by its medical name (another 'f' word) flatulence, which comes from the Latin (as do many medical terms when they are not derived from Greek) flatulentus(a slow wind?) by way of the French or by its common name 'fart'.
      Flatus, the Roman word , is a masculine noun meaning blowing or wind and flatus emittere means sending out wind or farting (which appears in Suetonius as a synonym to crepitus ventris.). However the Romans also had another name for farting: the verb pedo, pedere, pepedi and the part participle, which also could be used as a noun for the thing, peditum. (which the French use commonly, peter)  Clearly the word 'fart' did not come from the Romans.
     As modern German has a similar sounding equivalent 'furz' which sounds like 'farts', our word must be derived from the Germanic Old English. Indeed, one glance at the Oxford English Dictionary shows the OE equivalent is 'feortan' and the earliest reference to it is as 'feorþing' in Aelfric's Glossary, which is very difficult to find in its entirety. I have been unable to find out why Aelfric included it in his glossary which he glossed as 'pedatio' but Bosworth Toller defined as 'crepitus ventris', due to Suetonius, which is idiomatic as 'fart' for the Romans, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary (and Suetonius). My, they had a lot of words for this! Crepitus ventris is loosely 'a clattering, groaning or noise of the belly'. I would really love to see Aelfric's Glossary to see if he really wrote 'pedatio' because Lewis and Short does not contain this word and the Oxford Latin Dictionary does not either. So, it was not a Roman word, they used peditum, but it could have been a regional Medieval variant.
     The Cleasby-Vigfussun Old Icelandic Dictionary has a related word in it because you know the Vikings would have a word for fart and it is 'fretr' a masculine noun and a verb 'freta'. It also includes a nice compound for a vagabond: fret-karl, fart-man.
     I have wind on my mind since I am sitting here awaiting the arrival or effects of Hurricane Sandy.

The Name of the Rose, A Review

     It has taken me a while to read this 502 page novel. Not because it is not interesting. It certainly is but Umberto Eco's passion for medieval history and language are very evident in this book. First off, like any Eco novel, it is well researched and the atmosphere feels authentic. You cannot fault him with any anachronisms or misinformation but he does go on a bit too long about the various heresies of the 13th and 14th centuries. However, some of this information is important to the back story of why William of Baskerville is at this Abbey in the mountains of northern Italy waiting for a delegation from the Pope when a young monk suddenly dies.
    The Abbot approaches William and asks him to investigate, although everyone believes it is a suicide, because William had been an Inquisitor for the Church at one time. William duly begins asking questions in the Scriptorum where the recently dead had worked and finds that there was indeed something mysterious about the young man's death. When another monk is found dead, soon after, it becomes clear that there is a murderer on the loose at the Abbey and William is engaged in a race against time to solve the murders before the Papal delegation arrives with the formidable and sinister Grand Inquisitor Bernard Gui at its head while the body count rises. Since the Abbot will not allow William to enter the Library, in the day or night, William must resort to stealth by night in the labyrinth of the Aedificium as it quickly becomes clear that the murders involve some forbidden book that is hidden in the library.
      The story is told from William's helper, the young novice Adso of Melk in the form of a memoir that Adso writes as he is nearing the end of his life. I recommend the book but, if anyone finds the discussions of medieval heresies or philosophy a bit wearying, they can easily be skipped over without losing anything essential to the story.

      Eco has written a nice introduction to the book, explaining his inspiration for the novel and he has also written a fairly lengthy postscript including a discussion of the source for the name.  He does not come out and say who or what is the 'Rose' of the title as he believes that, once the book is published, the reader is free to interpret the book as they see it. He writes that it is not the authors's job to tell the reader how to interpret the work and any interpretation could be equally valid. That being said, he does offer up the source for the Latin with which he ends the story: "stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus." as I translate it, "The pristine rose stands rose by name, we hold the name as evident." It is indeed a mystery.

     It is an odd little line because, in the source that Eco names, De Contemptu Mundi by Bernard of Morlay, available here in the original latin, the line is "Nunc ubi Regulus aut ubi Romulus aut ubi Remus? Stat Roma pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus." line 951-952.  "Where now is Regulus, or Romulus or Remus? The original Rome stands Rome by name, we understand the name."

In Book 1, line 177, there is a line about a rose "Tunc rosa sanguine, lilia virgine mente micabunt, gaudia maxima te pia lacrima te recreabunt." translated by me as "then, the lily gleams like the virgin mind, they recreate for you the great joy of your pious tear with the blood colored rose."

line 455 "Mox rosa fit rubus, ipseque cras pia, nunc rosa, cras fex." "Soon the rose will become red, Hereafter itself good, the rose is thereafter dregs."
line751 " O caro lactea, nunc rosa, postea sarcina vilis, flos tibi corruet et rose defluet haec iuvenilis....quid rosa? Foenum. " O milky flesh, now the rose, afterwards a burden of little value,the flower is corrupting to you and the rose proves unfaithful to the youthful of her......what is the rose? Hay."

The piece that Eco referred to is, in his own words, a variant on the ubi sunt theme. That is where have they gone?
It would be too easy to say the Rose is the girl who Adso meets in the kitchen one night and has sex with.  However the rose has so many meanings in medieval literature, one cannot be certain an event that was merely a footnote in a murder mystery was the most important event in the entire story that Adso tells about the Abbey. Perhaps it was the most important thing to Adso, but he never knows her name. The film with Sean Connery deviates a little from the book in the fate of the rose, although the novel is truer to what would have been her likely fate, which is more satisfying to a modern audience. Finally, I am not sure if Eco himself has a clear vision of who or what he meant the Rose to be.

The Death of Geoffrey Chaucer

       Having criticized one theory about Chaucer's death, I feel I should offer some other theory as to how he died and it should be more plausible than the one I criticized.

      The facts as we know them:
     The only date we have - October 25, 1400 - appeared on his tomb in Westminster Abbey in 1556 when his bones were possibly moved to the current position by a Nicholas Brigham who was moved to honour the poet.The Dean of Westminster, Arthur Stanley, made conflicting reports about Chaucer's body, finally placing a note on Abraham Cowley's tomb that Chaucer was buried near this stone.
     William Camden wrote that the poet's bones had been moved to this new tomb in 1600.
     Chaucer had been born about 1340 (alternate date had been 1328) in London. His father was a vintner, who had attended on Edward III.
    Chaucer had been a trusted civil servant to Richard II (last position was Forester) when Richard was deposed in 1399.
    Chaucer began his career in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, before attracting Edward III's notice. He was ransomed by the king when he had been captured by the French in the Hundred Years War. John of Gaunt became his patron and Gaunt's third wife was sister to Chaucer's wife, so Chaucer was step-uncle by marriage to Henry IV and Richard II.
      Thomas Chaucer, Butler and trusted inner circle of Henry IV, is believed to be Geoffrey Chaucer's son on the evidence of Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford in the early 15th century. Thomas Chaucer's coat of arms has elements both from his mother 's (Roet) arms and his father's arms.
     In 1399 Henry of Bolingbroke marched into England while Richard was fighting in Ireland. He took over the country and captured Richard II, holding him prisoner until Richard's death a few months later.
     September 30, 1399 Henry of Bolingbroke becomes Henry IV. Chaucer has lost all his previous royal appointments but Henry confirmed his annuities. These appear not to have been paid and Chaucer, feeling the sting of poverty, writes a poem in complaint to Henry.
     Christmas Eve 1399, Chaucer took out a 53 year lease on a house at Westminster Abbey where he is believed to have moved to. He was approximately 59 years old and in apparently good health.
     February 17, 1400, Richard II's body was displayed at the old St. Paul's cathedral.
    If Chaucer died in October of that year, as a resident of Westminster Abbey, he was entitled to burial at the abbey cathedral. As a member of Richard's inner circle, a famous writer, and related by marriage to the royal family, he was probably entitled to burial inside the cathedral.
    He did not leave a will (that we know of) but this was not unusual.
    By September 28, 1401 his apartment had a new tenant: Master Paul, most likely a former royal physician.
    William Caxton, who published his first edition of The Canterbury Tales on a printing press circa 1476, wrote in his epilogue to Chaucer's translation of Boethius that he placed a plaque at the site of the poet's burial at his own expense.
    The stone over Chaucer's burial place is reputedly sawn up to place John Dryden next to him in 1720.
      According to an article written by Henry Troutbeck, in 1889 the original burial site was disturbed for Browning's burial. At that time Troutbeck thought he examined the bones of Chaucer and calculated his height at 5'6" but they could have been Dryden's or any other person buried in the south transept. There are no Abbey records of Chaucer's body being exhumed after 1556.
    No one is certain who is in the current memorial to Chaucer, whether it is Chaucer, Dryden or perhaps even no one.
    No one is certain who was in the old burial place.
    1400 was a plague year. Adam of Usk reported that it was hard on the young as usual.
    Chaucer survived the Black Death of 1348 and all subsequent waves of plague which were always harder on the young, as reported by chronicles of the time. Most smaller waves arose in the spring and subsided in the fall. As Chaucer is reported to have died October 25 (no one knows where Brigham got this date from) this would be late for the plague season. As such, burial at Westminster Abbey might not have been possible and burial would have then been a plague pit. The last written record of him is him signing a receipt for wine on September 29, 1400.
     There is no report from contemporaries or writers in the following years who report any rumour of anything sinister in Chaucer's passing except to say he had died.

      I do not think it is likely that Chaucer died of the plague because it tended to kill young people who had not been exposed to it before. If the date of October 25 is correct, it is past the plague season.
At approximately 60 years of age, he could have died from so many things. Upper crust people seldom ate vegetables, which is why so many had gout. Drinking water was not safe so people, including children, drank 'weak beer' or wine. What would a lifetime of drinking alcohol and eating meat do especially to an old man?
     Chaucer had four children, it is not known what happened to any of them except Thomas. None of them erected a memorial on his tomb but, as a resident of the abbey, his body belonged to the abbey which should have wanted to keep it since it would likely attract visitors and money to the cathedral. And it is likely it was Chaucer's intention to be buried there. When Peter the Venerable gave Abelard's body to Heloise, he was under no obligation to do so and Abelard's fame as a philosopher and a teacher would have meant donations to Cluny Abbey. Peter's gift of Abelard's body to Heloise was very, very generous.

    So what do I think he died of? Old age. Heart attack, aneurism, stroke. All three are sudden enough and can be not preceded by any feelings of unwellness. Maybe he died in his sleep. There does not appear to have been anything traumatic or violent in his passing. One would hope some rumour would have sprung up immediately but there are none.