Analysis: the level and severity of obscenity, cursing and vulgarity in classical texts has often been concealed by dictionaries and translators
The level of obscenity in classical texts has often been obscured in dictionaries. The Liddell and Scott Lexicon (originally published in 1843 by Oxford University Press) was the standard ancient Greek-English dictionary for the best part of two centuries. In Victorian fashion, though, "obscene" terms were concealed.
"But when I have drunk down a vessel of honey-wine, I tell the cold to go fornicate." So does Seleucus in Petronius’ Satyricon utter an obscenity ("fornicate"), but the sense might be better conveyed by a stronger f-word. Seleucus is a wonderful piece of characterisation, delivering some passionate comments against bathing regularly, but he may very well also be bilingual.
While his comments are in Latin, the actual obscenity Seleucus utters is laecasin, derived from the Greek laikazein. Greek strongly influenced Latin sexual vocabulary and Roman encyclopedist Celsus regards it as superior to that of Latin. it is difficult to work out the real sense of laikazein from the Liddell and Scott translation ("wench" or "a vulgar form of execration"). The phrase laikasom' ara which means "I'd rather prostitute myself" is translated by "I'd do anything rather". Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary (1879) translates Petronius’ laecasin with the Greek laikizein and the rather lame "go to" along with a reference to our passage.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Brendan O'Connor show, has swearing lost its shock value?
"Obscene" Latin is translated by Greek. Martin Smith's commentary on this section of Petronius translates laikazein via the Latin fornicari, while J.N. Adams in The Latin Sexual Vocabulary translates it as fellare. It is really only in more recent dictionaries like The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (2015) or Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2021) that we are liberated from this Victorian baggage and the precise sexual act is translated into English. Cambridge even follows this up with an altogether more colourful expression. (There is a counter argument that sexual terms such as laecasin weakened in meaning and became simply generalised expressions of contempt.)
What was the Roman attitude to such "obscenities"? Cicero in Letters to his Friends lists a series of words considered improper in Latin, words largely related to body parts or implications of sexual activity. His central point is that the words are themselves pure, but we introduce obscene meanings into them.
Catullus thought that it was necessary for a poet to be clean, but not for his poems. Catullus 16 is frequently censored in English translation. Here, he vents against his opponents, Aurelius and Furius, for casting aspersions on his manhood ("You do not regard me as much of a man") and crudely threatens to sodomise them (which he does figuratively every time someone reads the poem).
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ 2fm's Jennifer Zamparelli show, journalist Jen Hogan on how people manage to have conversations without swearing
"Prostitute" is a term which tends to attract numerous variants. A 1983 study found over 50 such words, for example scortum (originally meaning "leather") or meretrix ("woman who earns" which gives us our word meretricious). Scortum could also be applied to a male prostitute. Although neither word is an obscenity, other terms exist which have a more pejorative meaning or a rather specific application.
Lupa ("a female wolf") could refer (according to Martial 1.34.8) to prostitutes who worked out of graveyards and the term is related to the Latin for a brothel (lupanar/lupanarium). Although Lewis and Short in their Latin Dictionary translate mulier secutuleia as a "street-walker", the term, again from Petronius Satyricon, actually suggests someone who desperately pays for sex ("he sold everything for a single night, just like a mulier secutuleia/ woman who runs after others").
Christian writers tend to favour words such as fornicaria or fornicatrix (from fornix, which originally denoted an underground vault, a type of structure which subsequently became associated with brothels). Terms with other meanings might be applied to prostitutes, such as the euphemisms puella (girl) or amica (girlfriend). A more negative word often applied to them was moecha ("adulteress").
Many obscenities were equally at home in Roman graffiti or in the love poetry of Catullus
An interesting feature of Latin obscenities is that is can be difficult to assign their usage to different social classes. Many obscenities were equally at home in Roman graffiti or in the love poetry of Catullus, the poet who idealised wit (lepor), but who could also refer to the beloved of his friend, Flavius, as "some kind of feverish whore" (nescio quid febriculosi scorti).
Although scortum is not necessarily obscene, its application to a friend’s girlfriend is jarring. We should not really be surprised: Catullus refers to his own former beloved, Lesbia, as engaged in obscene acts in the backstreets of Rome with the high-minded grandsons’ of Remus.
Exactly what obscene act is denoted by glubit has been the subject of some debate; the basic sense of the verb is "to peel". Another object of Catullus’ attacks, Aemilius, is represented as so disgusting that any girl simply touching him is committing a hideously obscene act (while Catullus simultaneously admits that Aemilius is successful with the ladies).
Although Catullus attacks Lesbia’s lovers as alleyway adulterers (semitarii moechi), particular vindictiveness is shown to one of them, Egnatius, not by name-calling, but by a description of his absolute outrageousness. He smiles at the most inappropriate places, such as in court and at funerals and is also said to brush his teeth with urine. Just as in the case of Petronius, the level of obscenity found in Catullus has historically challenged assumptions about the level of elegance necessary for regarding a text as "literary".
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
