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Ancient Roman soldier carved a phallus with a personal insult in this stone
- jprd 4y agoI deeply respect this. Actually, point of fact - this is one of humanity's most honest historical tomes.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoWhich ones aren’t honest?
- effingwewt 4y agoThe ones with more than two words?
- Group_B 4y agoSecundinus can sec un di nuts
- limbicsystem 4y agoCame for this comment - was not disappointed
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoI 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 4y agoThe article mentions this at the end! In this case, the author wasn’t sending Secundus good luck :)
- seydor 4y agoAlso apotropaic. My fav is a fascinus cumming on the evil eye from Leptis magna
- kadoban 4y agoIn a couple millenia, they'll say that's what we mean by it too, if any of our writing is left. 8==D
- JorgeGT 4y agoI 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 4y agoCould be, it carries the same meaning in modern Greek.
- vorhemus 4y agoIn previous times you really had to make an effort to insult someone - engraving this probably took some time.
- amelius 4y agoThe 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 4y agoI 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 4y agoIt would be a brave, new world. :)
- elcapitan 4y agoIt just means that we would have Dickcarving-as-a-Service by tomorrow afternoon.
- amelius 4y agoYes, the internet would be a better place if posting spam costs money.
- seydor 4y agoyou were not distracting yourself in HN.
- notahacker 4y agotbh, 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.
- pvaldes 4y agoAnd this is what happens when you refuse to pay your engraver
- christkv 4y agoThe ancient version of defacing a clients website.
- shp0ngle 4y agoInstead of “I love you” Romans said “pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” and I think it’s really beautiful
- caymanjim 4y agoFor those wondering, Google translates this as "fuck you and fuck you."
- quickthrowman 4y agoIt’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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16
- djitz 4y agoAhh, the language of love.
- christkv 4y agoOne of my favorite slam poets of antiquity.
- hprotagonist 4y agoAnd also, he who gave us “hail, brother, and farewell”. Man had range
- caymanjim 4y agoThat's so much better. It was clear Google wasn't translating it literally.
- SapporoChris 4y agoDeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator, had no idea how to translate it.
- extrememacaroni 4y agoIt's a fat one too, nice.
- galgot 4y agoWas intended to Secundinus Biggus Dickus.
- midnitewarrior 4y agoIt 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 4y agoThe execution could be "delegated" to someone lower on the social ladder.
- nescioquid 4y agoThis is your rebuttal for "This man was truly angry"? That he might have hired it out to a sculptor (doesn't really look like it, frankly) and _therefore_ wasn't truly angry? Your surmise depends on whether some random provincial soldier at the shit-end of the empire would really be socially superior to a skilled craftsman, that this was the work of a skilled craftsman, that the soldier could afford the sculptor's commission, that this sort of act really was delegated sometimes, and finally, that he wasn't truly angry because he could afford to hire out the curse? Or -- said soldier had status to compel some aliquis to inscribe an insult and therefore wasn't really angry? Your idea sounds like an aborted Plautus plot. To paraphrase a Brian (not the one mentioned in the top comment), I hope you stood up before pulling this out of your ass. Pardon me while I scrape something into the nearest concrete.
- ncmncm 4y agoNo. Assigned it to a slave. Yes, soldiers could have slaves, and did. Often enough, claiming slaves was the point. Slaves were very frequently much more literate than their keepers. An enormous amount of what is attributed to famous authors was written or compiled by their slaves. I take the serifs as evidence for the surmise. Even a slave can have pride.
- nescioquid 4y agoDo you have any attested sources that suggest soldiers farmed out their curses to slaves? Did it ever occur to you that certain things in the classical world had to be transacted in person? Do you somehow have reason to believe that curses, magic, religion rites were farmed out? The sort of literate slave you are suggesting, BTW, would be fit for a patrician and command a price beyond what a provincial soldier could afford. Of what use would such a slave be to such a soldier anyway? You're really stretching it to preserve this fantasy of yours.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoAre 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus
- seclorum_wien 4y ago>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 4y agoWhat 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.)
- doliveira 4y agoFunny 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 4y agoThese 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 4y agoYeah, I know. It's just that specifically "cagar" sounds so informal and slang-like, those words tend to vary a lot through generations.
- jobigoud 4y agoIn 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.
- ncmncm 4y ago"Cacogen" was Latin for people who spoke a foreign language.
- marcodiego 4y ago> 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.
- kwonkicker 4y agoDam , here in Turkey "kaka" [caca] literally means "poop" or "to poop". How odd.
- geuis 4y agoSimilar root words somewhere in the past. Caca in Spanish means the same thing.
- schoen 4y agoBut the oddity is that Turkish isn't related to the Romance languages.
- Tagbert 4y agoNo, 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."
- mseepgood 4y ago"Secundinus der Kacker" in German
- kgeist 4y agoKaka means poop in many unrelated languages. It's baby talk: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk Another example is "to eat" or "tasty": English yum, Russian nyam etc.
- bawolff 4y agoI 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16
- fileeditview 4y agoSounds like an early rapper lyric :)
- dakial1 4y ago> "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.
- hk1337 4y ago“Romani ite domum”
- robg 4y agoLove how this trolling is HN appropriate.
- omega3 4y agoDoes 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 4y agoIf 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 https://www.vindolanda.com/News/ancient-graffiti
- ncmncm 4y agoI wonder why... Abbreviations on paper just save on paper. In stone, you can count hammer blows saved. Guessing "Secundinus" is an insulting diminutive of "Secundus". Extra work for a serious purpose!
- wyldfire 4y agoCenturion: 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 4y agoThe 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.
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- canjobear 4y agoI 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.
- Tagbert 4y agoThe Romans used phallus imagery in multiple ways. See Fascinus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus
- mseepgood 4y agoWow, he even used serifs on the letters.
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- jelliclesfarm 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrcbCW4y9Dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrcbCW4y9Dw : all the bits of Biggus Dickus from MP’s Life of Brian
- uberdru 4y agoThe 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."
- _8j50 4y agoImagine people 2k years from now excavating gas station restroom stalls.
- kadoban 4y agoIf 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.
- thedailymail 4y agoSecundinus 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracon
- jelliclesfarm 4y agograffiti 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.