In one of the courses I'm teaching this semester, we're reading the Georgics, a set of four didactic poems by Vergil, a 1st-century BCE Roman poet. In the first one, he offers all sorts of advice about planting and sowing crops, and it includes the classic line "nudus ara, sere nudus" - "plant naked, sow naked." Now, I'm not advising this, but it would make our gardening efforts a little racier.
But to get to the real purpose of this post, I want to tell you about the word laetus in Latin. When applied to people, it is usually translated as happy. Vergil, however, uses it quite often in reference to plants and crops to mean fertile, but in doing so he also anthropomorphizes the plants somewhat. I digressed in class a bit about this word, and how I like to imagine happy crops. One of my students emailed me later to say that he liked that translation, and that it reminded him of a game called "Plants vs. Zombies." It looks like a good game - and how can you not like cartoon zombies? - so I've been tempted to get this, but I have to wait at least until I'm done with the chapter I'm writing.
2 comments:
I just love how you got from Vergil to zombies in less than three moves. Nicely done.
Yeah, the zombie thing took me by surprise too! I thought you were going to suggest new name for the blog, like Laetus Plotus or something!!
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