From 22 September the review of language and culture. Here is a summary of the introduction by the curator. Even in everyday life we feel the reflections of the ancient Roman civilization
When, in the course of one’s life, one has had a relationship with classical languages, a comparison with a wide range of questions is required. Why? What will be the use of knowing declinations on declinations and lives of authors who have now disappeared for so long? Aren’t they dead languages? Nowadays it is therefore difficult, or at least curious, the choice of those who decide to devote themselves to the study of lost languages and societies. And death I am, in part, really. Society changed inexorably, and customs with it, war is no longer considered necessary to affirm one’s own people, but has turned into a deplorable activity, technology has allowed us to get away from chariots and oxen … not to mention the language.
What could we do with all those words ending in –a, –us and company? Sure, maybe studying Latin you can see your vocabulary rise, but after all, what is the use in everyday life?
At this point a question arises with arrogance: what is the sense of dedicating an entire series to the study of culture and the Latin language? Various exponents of our culture have already reflected on the importance of the classics, and with incomparable depth; among these emerges a consideration by Antonio Gramsci: on the meaning of the study of Greek and Latin languages and cultures, the intellectual observes that they are learned in order to know the civilization of the two peoples, whose life is the basis of world culture. It is difficult, and almost brazen, to try to add substance to Gramsci’s words. These, however, contain the deep, ultimate meaning of proposing to a large audience of readers, not specialized but curious and passionate, a collection of volumes where history, culture and society are intertwined with the great authors of Latin literature and with their language, which, after all, the mother of ours. This is because in each of us, at times hidden at times perceptible, there is an entirely Roman baggage, made up of impressions, suggestions, expressions, concrete facts.
Many of our cities, like the ancient ones, are built around the cardo and the decumanus; the Roman road system still very present in the Italic topography (if from Rome we wanted to head towards the Adriatic, or vice versa, yesterday as today we would take the Via Salaria); the fathers of our culture are those Cicero, Seneca and Virgilio, whose words echo in texts and works of our contemporaneity; Finally, mottos and idioms of the Latin language are present in our linguistic heritage, but also in our daily life. (To whom, discussing something, did not happen to say by gustibus?) Not to mention the myriad of words that have come to us without variations from the Latin vocabulary and we employ every day, such as earth, sloth, escape, concord, fear or love; the word referendum is nothing more than a Latin construct with an abstruse name, gerundive, which means to refer, as well as agenda, another gerundive, other does not mean that the things that must be done: and what is the purpose of the object we always carry with us if not to remind us? (…)
Walking through Rome and many other cities in our country, observing archaeological remains, but also hidden and unexpected ravines, you can hear the echo of Roman culture, the power of an empire, the evocative force of its language, that perhaps each of us has tried to read and interpret at least once by observing the many inscriptions that stand out in our cities. But not only. Our right arises from that right who went to compose the famous Body of Civil Law, a set of rules desired by the emperor Justinian; we often use the saying Who has time does not wait for time and, perhaps unwittingly, we make resound the conception of time of a very important Roman philosopher, Seneca, one of the most representative exponents of Stoic philosophy in Rome. Then, taken by passion, we think of our sweet half with feelings of hate and love, we relive the sensitivity of one of the fathers of love poetry, Catullus, and the famous Hate and love dedicated to his Lesbia. In the masterpiece of our literature, the Divine Comedy, Dante does not choose the most important exponent of Latin epic poetry, Virgil, as an accompanist on his path in the afterlife.
Finding a link between past and present is therefore not a difficult task. Understanding its deep meaning maybe a little more. Investigating the social structures, behaviors, habits of the ancient Romans, probing the founding aspects of their language is not only a tinsel of wisdom, but means understand a part of ourselves, know our origins, understand our way of thinking, our outlook on the world.
The first volume – Politics at the time of the Republic up to the principality
The text published on this page is the initial part of the general introduction written by Elisabetta Cantone to present the new series on newsstands with Corriere della Sera, Latin. Culture and language at the roots of the West, of which the canton itself is the curator. This introduction contained in the first volume of the series, dedicated to Politics and edited by Costanza Motta, which comes out on newsstands with the newspaper on 22 September at a price of € 6.90, plus the cost of the Corriere. The book, in addition to basic considerations on the way in which the ancient Romans conceived politics, contains an in-depth study on the historian Tito Livio and the first section of the language course: Latin morphology, first declension, present indicative. The aim of the initiative is to bring the reader closer or perhaps to bring the reader closer to an extraordinary cultural heritage which is at the origins of our civilization and helps us to better understand where we come from. Just think of the world hegemony of the Latin alphabet, the conceptual importance of the notions of Republic and Empire, and the fact that many upper chambers of democratic parliaments are still called the Senate. Not to mention the legacy of Roman law, which is still the basis of contemporary legal systems. The second volume, edited by Linda Pedraglio, will be War and will be released on 29 September, again at a price of € 6.90, plus the cost of the newspaper. They will follow: The company, edited by Elisabetta Cantone (6 October); Values and traditions, edited by Carmen Arcidiaco (October 13); Leisure, curated by Elisabetta Cantone (20 October); The philosophy, edited by Carmen Arcidiaco (October 27).
September 15, 2021 (change September 15, 2021 | 22:34)
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