50 Explōrātiō Decima (X) Adventure Ten

Sallust, selections

Perfect Active Verb Forms The verb eō, īre

Karthāgō Mēnsis Martius

C. Iuliō Caesare M. Antoniō cōnsulibus

Carthage March, 44 BC

atinitas’ appearance always changed slightly from one visit to the next: sometimes she looked older, sometimes younger, sometimes she was shorter than me, and sometimes, like today, she was my height. With her hair wrapped up in a dark headscarf, she told me

she was going to assume the identity of a Carthaginian woman named Hanna, a cook who would be getting the day off while Latinitas took over her opera, her jobs. As soon as we blinked into antiquity, we were standing on what looked like a breakwater composed of massive blocks of white stone, surrounded by the sea. Latinitas placed a pot over a cooking fire to bring the water and barley inside to a boil.

Once the fire was going, Latinitas introduced me to the place we had traveled to. On one side the waves were pounding; hungry seagulls eyed us, sizing up their opportunities for a stolen breakfast. On the other side ran a long, narrow harbor, a portus with about a dozen ships, and what looked like a second harbor mouth at the far end. Beyond that entrance, she explained, was a cōthōn, a circular inner harbor. We were visiting Carthage, a port city that had at one time been the capital of Rome’s greatest enemy.

“Nearly 100 years have passed since the end of the third Punic War, when the Romans sacked this city. As you can see, many of the buildings are still abandoned.” It did seem underpopulated, and reminded me of one of those small American cities whose streets are lined with nothing but abandoned factories and liquor stores.

I looked at the cooking pot again. The aqua was boiling now, but the barley was still hard. You would be surprised how long it took for it to soften; I did not envy ancient cooks. We sat down

to study the language and by the time the meal was ready we had completed almost all of our lesson.

“Here are some words you will hear later today:” 1st Declension Nouns

amīcitia, amīciti-aef.friendship

inimīcitia, inimīciti-aef.hostility

“Adding in- to a noun can give it the opposite meaning. This added syllable is called a Prefix. The Latin prefix in– can function like English ‘in-’ or ‘un-’: insensitive, uncertain. So, inimīcitia means, really, ‘unfriendship’. Prefixes often cause the sounds that follow them to change slightly, and that is why the a at the beginning of amīcitia has turned into an i.”

lingua, lingu-aef.tongue; language 4th Declension Noun

vultus, vult-ūsm.facial expression

US-A-UM Adjectives

commodus, commod-a, commodumconvenient

incommodus, -a, -uminconvenient