Romani ite domum
"Romani ite domum" (Romans go home) is the corrected Latin phrase for the graffiti "Romanes eunt domus" from a scene in the film Monty Python's Life of Brian.
The scene features John Cleese as a centurion and Graham Chapman as Brian, at that stage a would-be member of the revolutionary group the "People's Front of Judea". To prove himself worthy to be a member of the group, Brian has to daub an anti-Roman slogan on the walls of Governor Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem, under cover of darkness. He has just finished when the centurion sees him. Brian is terrified and clearly expects to be killed on the spot. However, Cleese plays the centurion as an irascible Latin teacher, and instead of killing him he corrects Brian's sloppy grammar at sword-point.
"What's this, then?" he says. "Romanes eunt domus? 'People called Romanes they go the house'?!"[1] Brian is then forced to remember the correct Latin declension or conjugation for each word as if he were a delinquent school boy. "Now", says Cleese when they eventually get to the correct form Romani ite domum, "write it out 100 times.... If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off." Brian does so, and becomes a hero. In subsequent scenes, various Roman soldiers can be seen erasing the graffiti to censor the seditious message.
The phrase itself is perfectly idiomatic classical Latin. Furthermore, the discussion of Latin grammar in the scene is accurate, except for the centurion's assertion that domus (home) "takes the locative". In fact, the idea of "toward home" is expressed by the accusative case without a preposition.[2]
References
- ^ Scene 9: Brian Learns to Conjugate, transcript
- ^ Mahoney, A. Allen and Greenough New Latin Grammar, 2000. Focus Publishing, Newburyport, MA, USA page 260
External links
- "Graffiti vandal strikes in Gloucester", BBC News, 22 June 2003