SPQR Blues 3 part XXV

Notes on today's comic:

• Although I personally believe breasts are nonthreatening (unless deliberately used as weaponry) and that society needs to analyse its fears, this comic might become illegal in the 50 states if you could actually see Justa's. They are just that dangerous.
  
• My Etruscan language skills are minimal (well, aren't everyone's?), and my reference books on the language are trapped in a box somewhere, I'm not even sure in which state.
  
• Etruscan and Samnian were the Cornish and Welsh of Rome, losing native speakers to aggressive Latinisation. Herculaneum and Pompeii were major strongholds of Samnian culture (the "Samnite House" in Herculaneum has graffiti in the language). But within a generation, there would be no more native speakers of Etruscan. Today much of what we know of the language comes from funerary inscriptions.
  
• I'd have made Justa's friend Seianti a Samnite, but Etruscans are just so cool. They are.
  
• The "Sabine women" of early Roman history were Samnites.
  
• If anything else in the girls' conversation seems unclear, perhaps the second half of the conversation will clarify.
  
• Goran Visjnic is my vir-du-jour (I can mix those languages, they're both Romance). He should be in more sword-and-sandals movies, and fewer doctor-nurse shows. Also, that isn't so much a note on the comic as an indication I saw the ER episode "The Lost" yesterday.
  
• I feel much better, thank you, though for whatever reason I do tend to feel fine in the mornings and worse as the day progresses. Also, I lost 12.5 pounds from being ill. And yet, my arms are still so big. If only they were big from muscles. I need to swing more swords around.

( Splish splash )