In Asiā est vir clārus.
Right around nine in the morning, when the sun shines ripe—having risen for a few hours now—the wheels touch down. At this moment, I feel my feet make contact with ground, too, but the invisible kind. At first glance through the plane window, it doesn’t look any different from America. You have to squint your eyes in order to better discern the thick brush of greenery beyond the runway, the pines similar in shape yet surely more ancient.
The landscape blurs past the bus that takes us towards the coast. I continue observing it amidst the cacophony of excited yelps and squeals. The surroundings are still somewhat familiar, but increasingly hard to believe is that these very lands were where Western history and legend formed. Every so often, a car speeds by on the parallel highway, quaint in the European way. Who’s to say what is European, and what is distinctly Italian? Certainly not a seventeen-year-old Sichuan girl whose bloodline has never set foot on this old, old land. I lean my head against the glass and feel time wrap itself around me, coaxing further questions and musings out of me.
Vir est Anchīsēs.
We skip Rome at first. I find myself before a cross beside Ms. Keener. The bus has dropped us off at a small village square right outside of our intended destination: Ostia Antica, the archeological ruins of the Romans’s port city. Below us lies that classic Italian cobblestone, arranged in curves and grooves that eventually meet and overlap. Around us are villas, all connected and earthy, forming narrow passageways where perpendicular rows come to corners. A handful of the high schoolers, myself included, wander into the central church that stands separate. Above the altar, there’s a massive arch embedded into the wall. Over the centuries, instead of commissioning new frescoes or wall motifs, architects cut fragments out of ancient structures to create patchwork patterns. A large wooden cross with a sculpted Jesus attached to it rests against a column. When the first documented mention of Italian Christianity appeared in 1 A.D., I wonder what the gods (Dei) thought of the ordeal as they watched their influence slowly fade away and the crowned man journey between life and death.
Ms. Keener points out the Latin phrase carved at the head of the arch, running in all uppercase letters without spaces between the words—the Roman way. I realize that this is the first time I’m seeing my language of study in actual usage, a dead language finally alive before my eyes (even if cemented in time). It exists, it exists, it exists, and so do I. Deciphering the line, I begin to recall my own gospel of sorts: First Declension Singular: -a, -ae, -ae, -am, -ā…
Dea Anchīsēn (accusative) amat.
Similar to English, Latin sentences are built around subjects, verbs, and direct objects. Unlike English, Latin words take on different “cases” that designate them into these specific functions; each case is correlated with a modified ending to the root word. There are five: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Puella is the nominative singular form, literally meaning “[the] girl,” while Puellarum is the genitive plural form, changing the function to possession and the translation to “of the girls.” All vocabulary typically follows these patterns, but, of course, there are exceptions. In a way, I love this puzzle-piecing, identifying the endings and organizing the words by meaning. In the way that I trace historical throughlines in translation, maybe I can similarly track my inner grammar nerd to these five years of declensions and conjugations. Maybe, though, I love it for what it isn’t. It isn’t something that is naturally, forever imprinted onto me. I roll the syllables of the old West off my tongue, the language of this once-thought empire of the world.
Aenēās est filius deae et Anchīsae.
The fifth word of Homer’s Odyssey reads “polytropos” (Πολύτροπος), an adjective used to describe the titular character Odysseus. Polytropos is also the subject of one of the most contested translation debates in history. With “poly” meaning “many; much” and “-tropos” meaning “turns; changes; styles,” it could be literally written as “much-turning.” By extension, it could be “much-traveled” or metaphorically “wily.” Some scholars argue that it’s untranslatable, its layered meaning only understood by the Greeks who heard the original bard hymns. Robert Fitzgerald offers “that man skilled in all ways of contending.” Robert Fagles writes, “the man of twists and turns.” Emily Wilson gives perhaps the most succinct translation: “complicated.”
Aenēas fēmina est Creūsa. Creūsa Aenēāsque fīlium vocant Ascanium.
After exploring the ancient streets of Ostia Antica, we finally arrive in Rome. How clandestine it feels: me standing between Mr. Holmes, my middle school teacher, and Ms. Keener, my high school teacher, my two guides through the rings of time—my modern Virgils, now at the origin. We navigate through the streets of Trastevere, bustling with Saturday traffic. Sitting right on the Tiber River, this neighborhood is distinct for its narrow, winding streets—its maze-like structure is attributed to its medieval roots. The soles of my sneakers bend and mold to every cobblestone beneath, attempting to keep up with all the twists, trying to identify landmarks to no avail (they are never consistent anyway). How many people have crossed over this particular stone before, over this land?
Aenēae patria est Troia.
I am in the classroom again, with the white brick walls (American, evidently) and declension posters taped from floor to ceiling. The collage of Times New Roman is interrupted by a square mural by Mr. Holmes’s door—a single mountain covered with different figures pinned at various heights. Each character corresponds to a specific student, representing their ascending path towards Olympus based on points accumulated from extra credit homework and quizzes throughout the year.
There were three languages offered at my middle school; by sixth grade, the decision between Spanish, French, and Latin was the latest hot topic among the Chinese moms. Registration form in hand, I checked off “Latin I” as my first-choice elective. As a girl whose body couldn’t tell the difference between a fight-or-flight situation and the act of public speaking, I swore off the speaking assignments of Spanish and French. Latin was a dead language—there would be no pronunciation practice or oral presentations involved. Perhaps beneath was another deeper layer. As writer Jhumpa Lahiri writes of her relationship with Italian, my Latin takes place in exile, a layer of separation between it and me. English is my true birth-tongue, my one fluency. Chinese is my obligation, connected to my heritage, heavy and hefty. Latin is different. My bloodline has never intertwined with Italy, no less Europe in general. It is separate, and, for that, it is all the freer.
I still remember my first sentences. I remember the first passage Mr. Holmes assigned us to translate, entitled “THE TROJAN WAR” from “Old Jenney” (affectionate nickname for the 1987 edition of Jenney’s First Year Latin)—the story of a famous man named Anchises who fell in love with a goddess. Together, they had a son, Aeneas, who then started a family of his own with a wife named Creusa and a son named Ascanius. I ran the next sentence’s words through the dictionary. Aenēae: genitive form of “Aeneas.” Patria: nominative form of “country.” Est: third-person singular of “is.” Troia: accusative form of “Troy”… hold on. Who is Troy? My thirteen-year-old self thought. Aeneas’s country is Troy? This makes no sense.
Trōia nōn est in Eurōpā, sed in Asiā.
Five years later, I am in Rome (In Romā sum). Chronicled in the Aeneid, the Latin Odyssey, Aeneas journeys across the Mediterranean and ultimately lands on the Italian peninsula. His lineage later births Romulus and Remus, marking him as the founder of the Roman people. For some reason, there’s one sentence I remember best from that founding passage for myself: Troy is not in Europe, but in Asia. Troy, not a name but a city. Latin, not separate but an avenue towards both continents.
Five years later, I stand before Augustus himself—at least, a stone version of himself, the man who commissioned Virgil to compose an epic dedicated to his believed ancestor (two founders in one lineage, he boasted). From the hall of statues, the Vatican archives lie a few buildings away in this tiny country, another new one to check off. I have sought out the ancient scriptures. I have studied them and now see them for myself. I gaze upon time, and travel through it.
Nōn iam est Trōia… Hodiē ad Eurōpam nāvigāmus.
According to William Whitaker’s Words, the Latin adjective clārus means “clear, bright, gleaming; loud, distinct; evident, plain; illustrious, famous.” Like much vocabulary, there are multiple interpretations that vary by its appearance across historical texts—creating a language of contradiction, of enigma. Here, I get to choose my translation. Perhaps I, too, can provide my most simple conveyance of what this dead language has grown to be for me. Something loud.
