Ducentesimum Nonum Latinum Verbum Diei: May 23, 2010

[Christina Wallin]

Theme for this month: Miscellany

hortus, horti m.

Definition: garden, especially a fruit or vegetable garden

Sententia: Plautus Truculentus 2.i.40-41

[sed is clam patrem etiam hac nocte illac
per hortum transiluit ad nos. eum volo convenire.]

But on that night, he also secretly leaped to the other side of his
father [i.e. without his father's knowledge], that way through the
garden, towards us. I wish to meet up with him.

Titus Maccius Plautus was a playwright in the 2nd and 3rd centuries
BCE. His plays are among the earliest surviving works in Latin
literature, and they influenced later playwrights such as Shakespeare
and Moliere. These lines are thought to have been inserted after
Plautus wrote the play, however, hence the square brackets.

Etymologically, “hortus” has somewhat surprising siblings also derived
from the same Proto-Indo-European root. In fact, the military sort of
word "cohort" (and its Latin cognate, “cohors, cohortis,” a tenth of a
legion) derives from a similar stem as "hortus," both coming from the
hypothesized stem “*hors,” ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European
stem "*gher-," meaning "to grasp, enclose." A cohort was thought of
originally as an “enclosed multitude of soldiers,” whereas a “hortus”
is an “enclosed area of space.” The "yard" in which a cohort perhaps
practices maneuvers is also from the same stem!

And last but certainly not least, Sunday the 23rd is the birthday of
Ms. Conklin, one of the beloved TJ Latin teachers. Felicem Natalem
Diem, Magistra!