WARFARE

INTRODUCTION

Homer’s Iliad, the West’s first work of literature (c. 700 BC), had war at its heart. Even then, there were procedures and issues with which we are familiar today: the justice of going to war, parleys, treaties, treatment of the dead and setting up of monuments to them. Classical Greeks made peace under treaty by means of sacred oaths and exchange of hostages, vowing ‘to have the same friends and enemies’. Romans instituted their own official procedure of surrender – handing oneself over into Roman good faith (fides, whence our ‘fidelity’, ‘confide’, etc.).

Cicero (first century BC) defined the two big questions as ius ad bellum (rightful conduct to declare war) – retaliation and self-defence, under the appropriate authority, were the key; and ius in bello (rightful conduct on the battlefield). St Augustine thought war should punish wrongdoing – vengeance was not permitted and the defeated should be converted to Christianity. Machiavelli argued that all war was just. Others argued that war could be pre-emptive: fear alone could justify it. The seventeenth-century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius was most influential in arguing for a true ‘law of nations’ and the concept of international intervention.

Writing about war began with Homer and became a staple diet of ancient Greek and Roman poets and historians. Xenophon left a memoir of his expedition to help the Persian Cyrus, and Julius Caesar left diaries of his wars in Gaul and the civil war against Pompey − the personal account was born and flourishes today. One of the most important books on Roman battle tactics was written by Vegetius, and was used widely up to the seventeenth century.

Depictions of war on pottery were commonplace in the Greek world, while decorated marble monuments were put up to soldiers, both living and dead. Romans followed suit. Trajan’s column celebrated that emperor’s victories in Dacia, depicting the army in all its various activities; the arch of Titus celebrated a victory parade after the capture of Jerusalem. The tradition continues today, expanded into film, photography, cartoons and so on.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI

‘Sweet and honourable it is for one’s fatherland to die’ (morior [mort-], ‘I die’, → ‘mortal’, etc.), began a poem by Horace. The poet Wilfred Owen called this the ‘old lie’. He could see nothing glorious about warfare.

The ancients could (see here). For them, it was a simple matter of survival – survival of the whole race. If their men could not fight a successful defensive battle, it was potentially the end of their family, people, tribe, past and future. The past was an unforgiving place.

The Latin virtus, source of our ‘virtue’, meant ‘moral excellence’ at one end of the scale, but its stem meaning derived from vir, ‘man’ (whence our ‘virile’), and what it meant to be a man, and that was ‘manliness’, ‘valour’, ‘steadfastness’, especially in battle. The Horace poem continued:

Death hunts down even the man who runs away,
And does not spare the back or hamstrings

Of young cowards.

(trans. David West)

There was no escape in battle: death would get you one way or another, but you could at least die with honour. The only alternative was to run like a coward and lose everything. Our ‘coward’ seems to derive from Latin cauda, ‘tail’ + ‘-ard’, a suffix which can indicate something discreditable, for example, ‘drunkard’, ‘sluggard’.

LEADING THE ARMY

The word imperator meant literally ‘one with the supreme authority to give orders’, and was used to mean both ‘commander-in-chief ’ of the army and also ‘emperor’ (see here–here). The word derives from impero, ‘I order, command’ (→ ‘imperative’), and is also the source of imperium (our ‘empire’), the power vested in emperors and top officials such as consuls and provincial governors to give orders in the sure knowledge that they would be obeyed (or else).

STRATAGEMS

The Greek for ‘military commander’, both on land and sea, was stratêgos (στρατηγος), literally one who led (-êg-) the fighting force (strat-); and stratêgêma (στρατηγημα) referred to the action that general should take in any situation, especially a ruse or trick. Latin took the term over directly.

Practical treatises on fighting and farming were probably the Roman toff’s favourite reading. Frontinus (see here) wrote a book of strategemata (plural) in twelve main sections, covering such topics as concealing one’s plans, finding out the enemy’s, escaping tricky situations, distracting the enemy’s attention, and other wizard wheezes and top tips (Julius Caesar: ‘Conquer the foe by hunger rather than steel’; Hannibal: ‘Throw jars full of vipers onto enemy ships’; Scipio Africanus: ‘Give the enemy a road to escape by, and pave it too’).

ENEMIES

Latin had two words for ‘enemy’: one was the public, military sort, hostis. This gives us ‘hostile’, etc., but its basic meaning was ‘stranger, foreigner’, and it is linguistically related to ‘guest’! The other was the private sort, inimicus. This was the negative of Latin amicus, ‘friend’ (→ ‘amicable’, etc.) – literally ‘not-friend’. Our ‘enemy’ derives from inimicus.

HOSPITAL HOSTS

The word ‘host’ was once regularly used to mean ‘army’. To us it is someone who entertains a guest. ‘Host’ in that sense derives from Latin hospes (hospit-), which meant both guest and host, and is at the root of ‘hospital’, originally a shelter for the poor and outcast. On the battlefield, a mobile hospital was needed, and this was called in French an hopitâl ambulant, literally ‘walking hospital’ (1798), from Latin ambulo, ‘I walk’ (→ ‘ambulance’, ‘amble’). Latin perambulo meant ‘I walk about, tour, make the rounds of a place’, as every mother of a young baby knows; it is the source of ‘perambulator’ (1881), or ‘pram’. A ‘funambulist’ is a tightrope walker, from Latin funis, ‘rope’ + ambulo. Romans called him a funambulus.

ARMS AND ARMIES

Our word ‘army’ derives from Latin arma (found only in the plural), ‘implements, weapons, troops’; the ar- root meant ‘fitted on/into’, e.g. the hand. Our ‘military’ derives from Latin miles (milit-), ‘soldier’ (the derivation of the Latin is unknown); the Latin militaris meant ‘someone qualified for, engaged in, military service’.

The Latin for ‘army’ was exercitus (→ ‘exercise’). Why? Latin arca meant ‘box’, where something was enclosed or shut in (→ ‘arcane’), and arceo meant ‘I contain’. Get things out of (ex-) the box, and they keep moving. Hence exerceo, ‘I keep moving’ and so ‘I train, exercise’.

At its peak, the Roman army was perhaps as near perfection as any human institution could be. As the Jewish historian Josephus said of it in the first century AD:

It will be seen that this vast empire [of the Romans] has come to them as the prize of valour, and not as a gift of fortune. For their nation does not wait for the outbreak of war to give men their first lesson in arms; they do not sit with folded hands in peace time, only to put them in motion in the hour of need.

On the contrary, as though they had been born with weapons in hand, they never have a truce from training, never wait for emergencies to arise. Moreover, their peace manoeuvres are no less strenuous than actual warfare; each soldier daily throws all his energy into his drill, as though he were in action. Hence that perfect ease with which they sustain the shock of battle: no confusion breaks their customary formation, no panic paralyses, no fatigue exhausts them; and as their opponents cannot match these qualities, victory is the invariable and certain consequence. Indeed, it would not be wrong to describe their manoeuvres as bloodless combats, and their combats as bloody manoeuvres.

We may not know the derivation of miles, but we do of ‘soldier’, and rather unheroic it is too. The Latin solidus referred to a gold coin introduced by the emperor Constantine in the fifth century AD. Via Old French, a soldier was someone paid to do soldiering. ‘Solder’, however, derives from the more heroic sense of solidus: ‘rigid, unyielding, complete’.

SOME WEAPONS

The spear, pilum, probably got its name from pilum, ‘pestle, grinding/ pounding instrument’, such as was used to break up parched earth. The sword, gladius, was also used of the swordfish and the plant gladiolus (‘little sword’); the gladius was the main weapon of the gladiator. The sword was kept in a sheath − vagina. This technical term is at the root of the popular ice-cream flavour ‘vanilla’, from Spanish vainilla, ‘a little va(g)ina’, so called from the shape of the vanilla pod. The shield, scutum, came from a root meaning ‘cover, protect’. The dagger, pugio, derived from pungo (punct-), ‘I puncture, pierce’, which is probably related to pugnus ‘fist’ and pugna ‘battle’ (whence our ‘pugnacious’).

TIROS AND VETERANS

The first two lines of the Roman legions were filled by those learning the business, wielding a short throwing spear and stabbing sword; the third line was made up of those who had already learned it. These were the veterani, with long thrusting spears. The first two lines would normally see the enemy off; if they fell back and it came to the third line, it meant things had become serious. The term veteranus did not mean ‘old’; it meant ‘experienced, mature’, especially of soldiers. Manning the third line, they could be relied upon to ensure victory.

Seneca told of the young Scipio, in battle against Hannibal in 218 BC: even though a tiro (a novice, especially a newly enlisted soldier), he galloped through the ranks to save his veteranus father when matters had indeed come to the third line, and the situation was desperate.

CAMPS

A castrum was a fortified settlement; in the plural, castra, it meant a collection of fortified structures, i.e. a ‘camp’ (whence, for example, Doncaster, a camp by the river – since ‘don’ in Celtic meant ‘river’). Is the word connected with castro (castrat-), ‘I cut’ and all its unmanly implications? It is possible: a castrum may have been a piece of land ‘cut off ’ for military use. Or it may refer to the tents that were the original ‘buildings’ inside a camp, all cut out of material. Or, from its Proto-Indo-European associations, it may simply be a tract of enclosed land. Or it may be none of these.

CAVALRY

Owning a horse in the ancient world was a bit like owning a helicopter or luxury yacht in the modern world: it cost a very great deal both to purchase and to manage. Equus was the Latin for ‘horse’, and eques (plural equites) for ‘horseman’ or ‘cavalryman’. The equites were the wealthiest men in Rome (see here), and as such are also translated as ‘knights’.

Our term ‘cavalry’ has a different origin, from the Latin caballus, ‘riding-horse, packhorse, nag’, the everyday ‘vulgar’ word for ‘horse’. The Italian cavalliere, ‘a lady’s mounted escort’, derives from it, as does the French for ‘horse’, cheval (→ Spanish caballo, ‘horse’; caballero, ‘knight’, ‘gentleman’).

This is a good example of a word in everyday use in Latin providing the source of words in romance languages. Another example is French tête, ‘head’. It derives from Latin testa, ‘brick, tile’, also used of an outer shell.

ARMY DISCIPLINE

Exercise and practice were one thing; discipline (disciplina), derived from Latin disco, ‘I learn’, was something else. With its overtones of orderly conduct, obeying orders, knowing where you fitted in and why, and general organization on a small and large scale, disciplina did not come naturally; it was a matter of education and experience.

When Caesar was expecting trouble in Gaul in 53 BC, he needed to raise troops quickly ‘to impress public opinion in Gaul not only for the present but for the future too’. Within a short time he had raised three legions. Caesar commented that ‘the size of the reinforcements and the speed of their assembly showed the natives what Roman resources and disciplina could achieve’. Such a reinforcement was called a supplementum, from suppleo, meaning ‘I fill up with additional liquid’.

NO PREVARICATION

Many were the stories told of men, young men in particular, keen to impress, who resisted disciplina and paid for it. One such was Manlius. In 340 BC, in a battle against a powerful local force, the army was instructed by Manlius’ father, the consul, to hold its position. But Manlius advanced into single combat, killed his opponent and presented his father with the spoils. His father at once ordered him to be decapitated. No prevarication there – Latin vârus, ‘bandy-legged’, praevaricor (praevaricat-), ‘I straddle, have my feet in both camps’ and ‘I act or speak evasively’. Not to be confused with ‘procrastinate’, Latin procrastino, ‘I put off till tomorrow (cras)’.

SUBJUGATING THE ENEMY

Latin sub, ‘under’ + iugum, ‘yoke’ gives the key to the origin of ‘subjugation’. When a Roman army was defeated, one way of humiliating it was to form a ‘yoke’ of three crossed spears and force the soldiers to stoop under it. Hence subiugo, ‘I subjugate’.

At the battle of the Caudine Forks (321 BC), the Roman army was trapped in a narrow pass by Samnite forces. There was no escape and they surrendered. The Samnite general Pontius did not know whether to let them go and win Rome’s favour, or execute them all and win undying hostility. In the end he forced them all to walk under the yoke of spears and let them go. Rome soon had its revenge for this humiliation.

INFANTRY DRILL

Training and experience were the major reasons for the Roman army’s success. In 209 BC, in the war against Hannibal, Scipio Africanus had taken the battle to Cartagena, Hannibal’s main outpost in Spain. After capturing it, he spent many months training his men up for the battles to come:

He devised the following scheme for the training of the infantry. He ordered them on the first day to do a run of nearly four miles in full kit, on the second to rub down, clean and generally make a close examination of their equipment; on the next day to rest and do nothing; and on the following, some men to fight with wooden swords sheathed in leather with a button at the end, and others to throw javelins similarly fitted with buttons; on the fifth day to revert to the marching they had done on the first, and so on.

But why ‘infantry’? An infans in Latin meant, literally, one who could not speak (in, ‘not’ + fans, ‘speaking’), i.e. a baby. But in time it came to mean ‘young man’, and from that, via Italian and French, ‘foot soldier’.

Julius Caesar was always keen to keep his infantry on the go:

He often did this where there was no need at all, especially when it was raining and on public holidays. Sometimes he would warn them to watch him closely and then quite suddenly steal away from the camp at any hour of the day or night, expecting them to follow. The march was made longer than usual to wear out those who straggled.

We are also told that on one occasion a gladiator trainer was hired to sharpen up the army’s skills in weapon-handling – basically, hitting and avoiding being hit.

CAMPAIGN

‘Campaign’ and ‘champagne’ derive from Latin campus , ‘a flat expanse of open land’, for whatever use. In Rome, for example, the Campus Martius, the field of the war god Mars, was used for assemblies and elections as well as sport and recreation.

Campus also meant the field of battle. Indeed, given Roman battle tactics, an open field was exactly what they wanted, where armies could meet head-on and battle it out. In AD 69, the infamous year of the four emperors, Antonius, general of the ultimately victorious Vespasian, led his army against the ruling emperor Vitellius at Bedriacum. In the runup to the battle, he urged on troops who had been humiliated there previously, saying that ‘these were the very battlefields which offered them the chance to wash away the stain of past humiliation and regain their glory in men’s eyes’.

In the Second Punic War (218−204 BC), when the Romans met the great Carthaginian general Hannibal, who cheated by waging battles in different locations and with very different tactics, they were in serious trouble. But a bad defeat, far from inducing Romans to surrender, guaranteed no surrender. They looked and learned from Hannibal and eventually beat him at his own game.

FROM PRESSING TO PRINTING AND THE PRESS

The Latin premo (press-) was the term used to describe the relentless pressurizing, driving and harassing that was at the heart of all ancient battle, the aim being to turn the enemy to flight and slaughter them as they fled. Here Caesar described the climax of the battle in 58 BC that ended the interest of the Germanic leader Ariovistus in supporting the Gauls against Caesar’s invasion:

Although the army of the enemy was routed on the left wing and put to flight, their advantage in numbers enabled them to put our men on the right wing under considerable pressure. Publius Crassus, a young man who commanded the cavalry, noticed this, and because he had more of an overview than those doing the fighting, sent in the third line to relieve the desperate soldiers. Battle was immediately rejoined, at which the enemy ran for it, and did not stop running until they reached the river Rhine about fifty miles away.

It was this word, via Old French preinte, ‘impression’, that gave us ‘printing’ − Caxton uses ‘emprint’ in 1474 − to describe the pressure exerted by the printing press. ‘Press’ originally referred to a throng of people (c. 1300) but, after the Gutenberg printing revolution, became used of printing and publishing houses; hence ‘freedom of the press’. This was extended to journalism, and in 1921 ‘the press’ became a term for journalists.

VINDICATING VIOLENCE

Romans have a reputation for ruthless aggression on the field of battle. The Latin for such aggression was vis (vir-), a word presumably related to ‘violence’ (but do not confuse it with virtus and ‘virility’, see here).

In fact, they were no more aggressive than anyone else at that time. Every tribe they came up against would willingly have done to the Romans what the Romans did to them. When Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed three Roman legions in the Teutoberg Forest in Germany (AD 9), the slaughter was as brutal as any inflicted by a Roman army.* Five years later, the Romans came to seek revenge, and found human heads still fastened to tree trunks and remains of the altars at which commanders had been ritually massacred. The Latin for ‘revenge’ was vindicta, ‘force asserted’ (vis + dicta, ‘spoken’) – which indeed it was when Romans asserted it.

TERRITORIAL ARMY

The Roman state was said to have been founded in 753 BC. The very earliest warfare – if we can trust the accounts written by the historian Livy some 700 years after the event – was little more than a one-day scrap for territory between neighbouring bands, led by a local bigwig and his followers – basically, his retainers and farm tenants taking a day off work. ‘Territory’ derives from terra, ‘dry land, ground’, which may be related to torridus, ‘dry’ (→ ‘torrid’). An interesting, but unlikely, alternative derivation is from terreo, ‘I terrify’; ‘territory’ would then be a place from which fear warns you off.

THE EARLY ARMY

Traditionally, Rome was said to have been divided into three artificial tribes (tribus) – Tities, Rhamnes and Luceres – and it was these that were thought to form the basis of the first proper army. Each tribus was said to have supplied 100 cavalry and 1,000 infantry. The word for levying or raising the infantry was legio, from lego (lect-), ‘I pick’ (‘select’ derives from it).

That word tribus is teasing. It is clearly the origin of tribunus (‘tribune’, a tribal officer, military leader, see here), but does it derive from the Latin for ‘three’ (tres, tria)? Is it also the source of our ‘tribe’? Perhaps, but ‘tribe’ could also be of Germanic origin.

ROLLOVER

This first Roman army, built up from the seventh century BC, imitated the Greek phalanx (φαλαγξ: note that our ‘nx’ represents the sound made by the Greek ‘gx’). Phalanx was connected with the Greek for ‘roller’, and that is what it was designed to do: a line of heavily armed men, up to sixteen rows deep, each armed with jabbing spears and shields overlapping, shoved, stabbed and generally pressurized its way relentlessly forward, ‘rolling over’ the enemy in front of it.

These fighters were called ‘hoplites’ from the Greek hoplon (ὁπλον, the circular shield which hoplites carried), and were made up of men who could afford the very expensive full suite of bronze body-armour and weapons.

PANOPLY

Armour was expensive stuff because metal was expensive. Only the well-off could afford it. That is why in the Greek world it was the well-off who fought in the front line. Our ‘panoply’ comes from the Greek panoplia (πανοπλια), which meant the full suit of armour of a hoplite (pan [παν], ‘all’ + hopla [ὁπλα], ‘arms and armour’) – shield, breastplate, helmet, greaves, sword and spear.

TYRANTS

The Greek historian Herodotus told of a trick played by Peisistratos, the son of Hippocrates, to persuade the Athenians to make him tyrant (Greek turannos [τυραννος]). He dressed a very tall woman called Phye in full armour and drove with her in a chariot into Athens, sending messengers ahead to say that Athena herself (who was a goddess of war) was accompanying him. Herodotus commented that Athenians had a reputation for high intelligence, but they fell for it like simpletons.

Turannos (Latin tyrannus) in its original usage meant nothing much worse than ‘prime minster’. It was only later that it gathered tyrannical associations.

COHORTS

In time, the Roman legion came to be subdivided into ten units called cohorts. A cohors (cohort-) originally seems to have meant a farmyard, i.e. a space surrounded by buildings, and is connected with Greek khortos (χορτος), ‘enclosed space, farm’, and Latin hortus, ‘garden’ (→ horticulture). This sense can be seen in other derivations from cohors, e.g. ‘court’ as in ‘courtyard’ and even (such is the complexity of etymology) ‘yard’ itself. Somehow it came to mean an armed force, especially a contingent from a particular place, and was then applied to the legionary unit.

OBSESSION WITH SIEGES

In 133 BC, Scipio Aemilianus was preparing his troops for the siege of Numantia in Spain:

Scipio did not dare to engage in active warfare before he had trained his men by hard exertion. He went over all the low-lying ground in the vicinity, and had one new camp after another fortified and then demolished each day, very deep trenches dug and then filled up again, high walls built up and then pulled down, while he himself watched the work from dawn until dusk.

They needed the training. Scipio encircled Numantia with a stone wall with a ditch, eight feet wide, ten feet high and six miles in length. There were wooden towers every thirty yards, and seven forts. Every Roman soldier had the skills of a builder as well as a killer. Look at Hadrian’s Wall (AD 122).

The Latin for ‘siege’ was obsidio. It derived from ob, ‘against’ + sedeo (sess-), ‘I sit’ (→ ‘sedentary’), which means ‘I plant myself, take up a position, blockade’. It gives us our ‘obsession’ − something that lays siege to the mind. Our word ‘siege’, literally ‘seat’, also derives (via French) from sedeo. The ‘Siege Perilous’ was the empty chair in King Arthur’s court, waiting to be filled by the knight who would discover the Holy Grail.

PAYING FOR BATTLE

In 406 BC, Rome began a lengthy conflict with its bitter Etruscan rival, the wealthy town of Veii (ten miles north-west of Rome, sharing a border along the Tiber with Rome), which it brought to heel under Camillus in 395 BC.

This was an important moment. First, Rome had needed more soldiers to win this protracted war, and therefore enlisted men outside the hoplite group. Secondly, never having launched a campaign lasting so long, Rome needed to pay their soldiers a daily allowance. This was the stipendium (our ‘stipend’), from pendo, ‘I pay’, and stips, ‘alms, small sum of money’. Thirdly, to raise the money, the state imposed a property tax on the wealthiest: tributum (our ‘tribute’) was the term used; a war tax paid through the tribes (tribus; see above). Finally, in 394 BC, after another lengthy siege, Camillus imposed an indemnity on the town of Falerii to pay for his army’s costs. ‘Indemnity’ derives from Latin damnum, ‘loss’, from which come indemnis, ‘suffering no loss’, and indemnitas, ‘security from financial loss’ – in this case, no loss for the Romans.

SALARIES

The standard Latin word for ‘pay for holders of military or civil posts’ was salarium. Pliny the Younger described a situation in which his friend Egnatius Marcellinus, serving as a quaestor in a province (p. 40), wondered what to do with the salarium of his secretary who died the day before it was due to be paid:

He felt strongly that he ought not to keep the money which had been paid over to him to give to the secretary. So when he returned to Rome, he consulted first the emperor and then the Senate, on the emperor’s recommendation, as to what was to be done with it. It was a trifling question, but, after all, it was a question.

The case was brought to court, and it was decided to return the salarium to the treasury and not to give it to the man’s heirs.

It is regularly claimed that, because salarium is associated with sal, the Latin for ‘salt’, Roman soldiers were paid in salt. As the above story makes clear, that is a myth. It was invented by Pliny the Elder, to try to explain why a salarium was so called.

MAKING PEACE

The Latin for peace, pax (pac-), meant basically ‘settlement’. It derived from paciscor (pact-), ‘I negotiate, arrange an agreement; I secure by bargaining; come to terms’. Its final meaning was ‘I become engaged to’. Romans would have thoroughly approved of prenuptials.

In 193 BC, the Romans were trying to conclude a peace treaty with the Greeks. The Greek negotiator Menippus explained how he thought an agreement might be reached. The Romans rejected it, but it gives a good idea of some of the principles behind the making of ancient treaties. Menippus said:

There were three kinds of treaties by means of which states and monarchs came to terms with one another.

In one case, the conditions were imposed upon those conquered in battle. For when everything had been surrendered to the winning general, he had the absolute right to determine what the enemy might keep and what give up.

In the second case, states equally matched in war formed a treaty of peace and friendship on equal terms: they reached a mutual understanding in respect of claims for indemnity; and where ownership of property had been disturbed by the war, matters were settled either with reference to established principles or the convenience of both parties.

The third class of treaties came into play when states which had never been enemies united in forming a league of friendship; no conditions were either imposed or accepted, for these existed only between victors and vanquished.

The Latin for ‘treaty’, foedus (foeder-), was based on Latin fides, ‘good faith, trust’. ‘Federal’ states are those bound together in a ‘confederation’ (‘all-together treaty’).

GENERAL

In what sense is a general general? General in relation to what? Latin genus (whence ‘genes’, etc.) meant ‘birth, origin’, ‘race, kind’, and then ‘type, class, variety’ of humans, species and so on. The adjective derived from it was generalis, ‘of universal application’. Our ‘general’ was originally a ‘captain general’ (from the French). ‘Captain’ indicated an officer of rank; the epithet ‘general’ then extended the scope of his authority.

PRIVATE

From the same root as our ‘deprive’, a privatus in Latin was someone who did not hold public office. In other contexts it referred to one’s subject status.

In 105 BC Rome was in conflict with Jugurtha, king of Numidia in North Africa, and Jugurtha attempted to persuade his son-in-law Bocchus, king of the Moors, to join him. Bocchus agreed and was beaten in battle. The Roman general Marius then sent his guileful quaestor Sulla to persuade Bocchus to come over to the Romans. Bocchus began his speech to him as follows: ‘I would not have believed it possible that I, the greatest king in Africa, and indeed of all the kings that I know, should now find myself indebted to a private individual.’ A quaestor (see here) was hardly a private individual, but in terms of rank, that is what Sulla must have seemed to the great king.

REGIMENT

We all know about rules and regulations. Rego (rect-) in Latin meant ‘I rule, control’, and regimen originally meant ‘ship’s rudder’ (actually, more of an oar), then ‘control, management, guidance’. Of Rome’s might, Valerius Maximus said: ‘Fiercely imposed military discipline gave Rome authority over Italy, and then regimen over many cities, great kings and powerful nations.’ ‘Regiment’ took the meaning ‘army unit’ in the sixteenth century, referring to a body under strict discipline and organization.

Ranks that derive from Latin include cadet (little caput, ‘head’), sergeant (Latin servio, ‘I serve’), corporal (either corpus [corpor-], ‘body’, of which he was in charge, or caput), captain (caput), major (maior, ‘greater’), colonel (columna, ‘column’, because he was in charge of a column of soldiers: what one might call a pillar of the army).

BOMBS AWAY!

Whatever the damage a bomb may wreak, it is initially its noise that is so terrifying. That is in fact the origin of its name. Greek bombos (βομβος), Latin bombus, meant a deep, rumbling, booming sound, anything from (in Greek) the roar of the sea and the roll of thunder to (in Latin) the buzzing of bees and even applause.

Nero, we are told, was greatly impressed by the applause his operatic performance was granted by some Egyptian visitors to Naples. So he ordered over 5,000 young men to learn how to do it. The applause came in three varieties: the bombus (buzzing like bees), ‘roof tiles’ (clapping with hollowed hands) and ‘bricks’ (clapping with flat hands). See here for ‘explosive’ applause.

* Arminius was later said to have been the latinized name of Hermann (‘the German’, see here).