I knew that rotten sneaky wench was up to something! Poor Justa! She needs to run away to her mother's house immediately!
I hope they DO find the will and that Vitalis is given Justa as well as a sizable chuck of his fortune! That would just server bad evil step mother right!
I love the constant doing of Justa's hair in the background while she TOTALLY ignores it. Good illustration of how darned spoiled and rich the little gril is!
But... but... uhm... she's too pretty to worry about whether she's spoiled?
Now taking bets on the contents of Petronius Stephanus' will. Maybe he'll leave everything to charity. (Hmm--I don't think he'd actually be allowed to do that even if he wanted....)
What, only four comments??!! I should have shown Justa getting her hair done... topless! That brings in the punters :D
::ahem, pardon me::
Anyway, Domitian is still married to that nefarious lady who cornered Felix on a porch at a party. Titus is available, though, if you don't count the mistress. Someone needs to make an honest man of him.
Maybe Spendi will tell Menander the next time they visit, who will tell Mus, who will tell Felix, who will tell Vitalis... just because that's more convoluted :)
I have a wonderful book on Latin handwriting and cursive forms... in a box somewhere. So here are some images quickly snapped up from the intarweb (http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/):
That last fragment says: bruised beans, two modii, chickens, twenty, a hundred apples, if you can find nice ones, a hundred or two hundred eggs if they are for sale there at a fair price ... 8 sextarii of fish-sauce ... a modius of olives ... to the slave of Verecundus
Good God, that's supposed to be Latin? Oh wait, the Romans clearly had a professional class. That explains why it looks more like dwarvish runes... (grin) Imagine have a prescription for eel's blood and getting bat's livers at the apothocary instead...
Reading it gets relatively easy once you know what to look for and can recognise quirks such as how sometimes Romans would write, say, three slanting, unconnected strokes to form an "M" instead of connecting them as below.
Bat livers! Now we know what really killed Stephanus: Helvius' handwriting.
Also pen-and-ink cursive is different than wax-tablet cursive, which is where you're more likely to see unconnected strokes. Sometimes Roman handwriting looks like Ogham :D
Here's an image I found here (http://www.unigre.it/pubblicazioni/lasala/WEB/T3_E.HTM) of a wax tablet from Pompeii:
When I was a wee freshman and only knew of CAPITALIS LATIN INSCRIPTIONS IN STONE, a friend in the dorm asked me to help him read a letter I think was purported to be in the Emperor Claudius' handwriting (or some other important person). A photocopy of it for a class, not the real thing. Then I visited the uni's rare manuscripts collection and saw a whole lot of real things. I'd already had some militant dissatisfaction about how high school history was taught as "times and places a lot of people died" (as opposed to those lower school social studies units we had such as "in the middle ages, people ate black bread"), but it was then that I realised how vastly more interested I was in how the ordinary folks lived than lists of kings and where the emperors and generals marched. I began to understand that some of the keys to understanding the development of cultures and human civilisation lie in the mundane, not just the territorial squabbling and who gets to erect a statue at the end of the day. That leads to understanding some of those marching generals a while lot better, too.
When I was studying Russian in college, I was appalled at the potential for abuse in cursive Cyrillic... I could write whole words, even sentences, which were long strings of slanted vertical lines looped together at the base -- and how the frick do you tell where the spaces are? At the time I joked that Russian doctors must be a disaster for writing prescriptions. Your strokes for "mille" above are obviously in the same class.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 12:25 pm (UTC)I hope they DO find the will and that Vitalis is given Justa as well as a sizable chuck of his fortune! That would just server bad evil step mother right!
I love the constant doing of Justa's hair in the background while she TOTALLY ignores it. Good illustration of how darned spoiled and rich the little gril is!
Kissies.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 02:12 pm (UTC)Now taking bets on the contents of Petronius Stephanus' will. Maybe he'll leave everything to charity. (Hmm--I don't think he'd actually be allowed to do that even if he wanted....)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 02:27 pm (UTC)Unless he's got something worked out with the Domitian we don't know about. He did mention that the Emperors "sons" spent time at his house...
It would be like you to do something like that, ya know?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 09:03 pm (UTC)::ahem, pardon me::
Anyway, Domitian is still married to that nefarious lady who cornered Felix on a porch at a party. Titus is available, though, if you don't count the mistress. Someone needs to make an honest man of him.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 09:16 pm (UTC)We'll, I do like Titus better.
But not better than Felix.
What would be the best way for you to torture these poor unfortunate souls? I suppose we'll find out soon enough!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 09:05 pm (UTC)Scandalous!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 10:59 pm (UTC)Maybe Spendi will tell Felix, who will tell Vitalis, and they will rescue Justa, somehow . . .
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 12:12 am (UTC)Telephone
Date: 2007-03-30 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 04:29 am (UTC)Ooh, I like that.
http://meritahut.livejournal.com/159278.html?mode=reply
Date: 2007-03-29 11:02 pm (UTC)Trickier than you'd think
Date: 2007-03-30 12:04 am (UTC)That last fragment says: bruised beans, two modii, chickens, twenty, a hundred apples, if you can find nice ones, a hundred or two hundred eggs if they are for sale there at a fair price ... 8 sextarii of fish-sauce ... a modius of olives ... to the slave of Verecundus
Titus had a reputation as an excellent forger.
Re: Trickier than you'd think
Date: 2007-03-30 02:21 am (UTC)Dr. Phil
Re: Trickier than you'd think
Date: 2007-03-30 03:01 am (UTC)Bat livers! Now we know what really killed Stephanus: Helvius' handwriting.
Re: Trickier than you'd think
Date: 2007-03-30 04:28 am (UTC)Re: Trickier than you'd think
Date: 2007-03-30 01:04 pm (UTC)Here's an image I found here (http://www.unigre.it/pubblicazioni/lasala/WEB/T3_E.HTM) of a wax tablet from Pompeii:
When I was a wee freshman and only knew of CAPITALIS LATIN INSCRIPTIONS IN STONE, a friend in the dorm asked me to help him read a letter I think was purported to be in the Emperor Claudius' handwriting (or some other important person). A photocopy of it for a class, not the real thing. Then I visited the uni's rare manuscripts collection and saw a whole lot of real things. I'd already had some militant dissatisfaction about how high school history was taught as "times and places a lot of people died" (as opposed to those lower school social studies units we had such as "in the middle ages, people ate black bread"), but it was then that I realised how vastly more interested I was in how the ordinary folks lived than lists of kings and where the emperors and generals marched. I began to understand that some of the keys to understanding the development of cultures and human civilisation lie in the mundane, not just the territorial squabbling and who gets to erect a statue at the end of the day. That leads to understanding some of those marching generals a while lot better, too.
Persnickety...
Date: 2007-03-30 06:18 pm (UTC)Re: Persnickety...
Date: 2007-03-30 07:15 pm (UTC)Dr. Phil
Re: Persnickety...
Date: 2007-03-30 07:59 pm (UTC)That is, if penmanship is still being taught in the United States....
Re: Persnickety...
Date: 2007-03-31 05:44 pm (UTC)Al-chan had a little cursive in grade school, in ONE year. It wasn't something they pushed.
Now, what they need to do, is MAKE children not only learn to read it, but write it well too.
My cursive isn't bad, but my print is easier to read. Hrm.
But then, I really try not to write by hand as much because I am far better with a keyboard than I am with a pencil.
It's just a sign of the times.
Re: Persnickety...
Date: 2007-08-13 11:45 pm (UTC)Re: Trickier than you'd think
Date: 2007-04-01 06:11 pm (UTC)