It’s the Latin word for “rumor,” a concept vividly described, perhaps never better, in Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid (this translation by Theodore C. WIlliams):
Swift through the Libyan cities Rumor sped.
Rumor! What evil can surpass her speed?
In movement she grows mighty, and achieves
strength and dominion as she swifter flies.
small first, because afraid, she soon exalts
her stature skyward, stalking through the lands
and mantling in the clouds her baleful brow.
The womb of Earth, in anger at high Heaven,
bore her, they say, last of the Titan spawn,
sister to Coeus and Enceladus.
Feet swift to run and pinions like the wind
the dreadful monster wears; her carcase huge
is feathered, and at root of every plume
a peering eye abides; and, strange to tell,
an equal number of vociferous tongues,
foul, whispering lips, and ears, that catch at all.
At night she spreads midway ‘twixt earth and heaven
her pinions in the darkness, hissing loud,
nor e’er to happy slumber gives her eyes:
but with the morn she takes her watchful throne
high on the housetops or on lofty towers,
to terrify the nations. She can cling
to vile invention and malignant wrong,
or mingle with her word some tidings true.
She now with changeful story filled men’s ears,
exultant, whether false or true she sung:
how, Trojan-born Aeneas having come,
Dido, the lovely widow, Iooked his way,
deigning to wed; how all the winter long
they passed in revel and voluptuous ease,
to dalliance given o’er; naught heeding now
of crown or kingdom—shameless! lust-enslaved!
Such tidings broadcast on the lips of men
the filthy goddess spread; and soon she hied
to King Iarbas, where her hateful song
to newly-swollen wrath his heart inflamed.
Surely the inspiration for the pithy saying, centuries later (often attributed, but never definitively traced, to the inimitable Mark Twain) that “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.”
I know, from personal experience, how true this is.
And I also know that, in the long run, truth will out.
All we have to do is wait.
Publius Virgilius Maro (AKA “Virgil”), my favorite Roman poet, died 2043 years ago today, on September 21, 19BC.
I read all of these but hardly ever comment. This woman She (sounds redundant, doesn’t it?) has to be among the very best writers I’ve ever encountered on a screen, instead of in a book. Always lovely prose. One of my inbox’s most welcome visitors. Really, you should charge us for this.
Thanks, Gary. I never tire of remarking on your kindness, and on how you regularly post some of the loveliest comments, both on Ricochet and here. (You’re not so bad yourself, you know….)
The only reason I’m relatively informed and coherent on the Latin poets is thanks to my high school Latin teacher. I took three years of Latin in a regular high school class. (Some decades later, I discovered that my teacher for the first two of them, a wonderful man and a very gifted teacher, was the father of my eventual stepdaughter’s best friend in a different school district. Go figure.)
My final (fourth) year of high school Latin was enabled only because the Latin teacher (a very handsome fellow it occurs to me now, although I wasn’t so susceptible to it at the time) volunteered to hold a class after hours (IIRC it was Wednesdays after school) for a couple of hours a week. There were only four of us who wanted to sign up, myself and three boys. That wasn’t enough to hold an “official” class, but the school district went along with the plan, we met once a week, did our translations and grammar, and got a load of homework to last us until the next session. We received full credit for the class.
Kudos to the Bethel Park School District (yes, the very one that was in the the news a month or two ago). I simply can’t imagine such an ad hoc arrangement, made in the best interests of enthusiastic students, prevailing today. Just another thing to be grateful for, IMHO.