Comments on: SPQR

By: Filippo

Filippo — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:28:07 +0000

I don’t think Latin is that strict in agreeing number.

“Romanus” sounds appropriately applied to Senatus and Populus in a phrase where they are considered jointly and not severally.

I am strongly tempted to suggest that “Senatus Populusque” in this acronym could be interpreted as the definition of polity, or authority, which would neatly fit the singular “Romanus”.

Take it from a guy who was stuck getting A’s in Latin on condition of thinking fuzzily and not trying to apply grammatical rules!

In modern Spanish, French and Portuguese the phrase (e.g.) “people and government” can be considered singular or plural for the purpose of agreement with an adjective, but singular seems predominant.

By: aperson

aperson — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:43:42 +0000

i know that there are 3 other ways the SPQR stand for and i know 2 witch is the one your talking about and serve and protect the roman republic

By: Claire

Claire — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:16:37 +0000

Oops. Yes, that’s it.

By: jangari

jangari — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:26:07 +0000

Was this it? It's great, just about every word links to a pop-up showing some relevant grammatical information about it.

By: jangari

jangari — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:18:14 +0000

Claire, you forgot to include the link. Sounds like an excellent resource though.

By: Claire

Claire — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:51:39 +0000

Here’s one, complete with links to most words for parsing.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:13:03 +0000

The German WP entry points to the Latin; why the English one doesn’t, I've no idea.

By: Jangari

Jangari — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 08:43:27 +0000

Agreed Claire, although I do occasionally prefer my science, like mammalian anatomy, dished out in Seussian rhyme rather than Lucretian hexameter:

This is a femur, a femur it is, Big on a person but small on a lemur,¹

I was trying to find a copy online of the Latin De Rerum Natura, to no avail, although Project Gutenberg has a freely available English translation. ¹Sorry, that was awful.

By: Claire

Claire — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:09:55 +0000

Jangari, Bill's example is from Lucretius (De Rerum Natura), whereas mine is, shall we say, not. It's a pity science textbooks aren't written in hexameters these days. The link goes to an absolutely terrible wikipedia article.

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:17:43 +0000

The reason that “romanus” cannot modify “the senate and people” is the failure of agreement. In Latin adjectives agree in number, gender, and case with the NP that they modify. The conjoined NP “senate and people” is plural, so the nominative plural masculine form of “roman” is required, which is “romani”. So, one way of saying “Rome’s senate and people” would be “Senatus Populusque Romani”. Another way more literally like the English, would be to use the genitive case of the noun “Rome” rather than an adjective, which would yield: “Senatus Populusque Romae”.