One of the first times that Rome was on the verge of disappearing from the map was in the 4th century B. C. by the hand of the Gallic Senones.
In Latin historiography there are many stories of heroic Roman characters. Historians didn’t have any problems narrating the initial defeats, even catastrophic ones such as that of Cannae or that of lake Trasimeno at the hands of Hannibal, if the ultimate aim is to magnify the terrible enemies who, after all, ended up being conquered by the Romans.
But rare are the stories of shameful and humiliating defeats without, so to speak, a moral.
Although, as everyone knows, the Gauls would eventually be defeated, crushed and conquered, the story at hand is probably that of one of these shameful and humiliating Roman defeats.
The Senones, led by the leader Brennus, had already cornered the Romans in their own city.
In action movies, such situations are only solved with a deus ex machina: at the last moment a huge allied army appears on the horizon and wipes out the enemy.
But the Romans were not in a movie.
They decided to humiliate themselves and negotiate with terrorists. Better that than to die all massacred. Run away to fight another day.
The Gauls accepted the bribe:
It’s going to be 1000 pounds of gold so that we don’t finish what we are about to finish.
Oks, we guess.
The Gauls allowed themselves to be judge and jury and set up their own scales to weigh the gold.
As we can imagine, the scales were rigged to benefit the Gauls. The Romans noticed and complained.
Brennus didn’t even bother to defend himself, but laughed out loud and threw his own sword at the scales to unbalance them even more. Unable even to hold back his tears, he said that famous:
VAE VICTIS!!!
Woe to the conquered!!!
And don’t complain, it could be even worse!
This is a well-known phrase, perhaps not as well known as alea iacta est, but more or less.
It is the typical example of a dative of exclamation that comes in any manual.
It is a universal example.
In general, more or less the same examples are more or less always used.
However, I occasionally make up my own examples if I think the usual ones are not so appropriate.
And then, for whatever reason, I find the examples I have made up on other websites, teachers’ notes, and YouTube videos. Sometimes I even find videos of teachers reading my notes, with or without modifications, as if they were their own. Without citation or link, of course.
Oh, well.
It really and honestly doesn’t bother me.
Although there is some disloyalty in such practices, they have little effect on me.
One might even think of unfair competition. But, truth be told, it is hard to compete with the only Latin video course that already has dozens of hours of theory, practice, texts and so on.
Besides, it is very hard to make videos, which will then be watched by hardly a soul, for which you will get hardly a couple of bucks.
That’s why all these attempts at competition don’t scare me at all: because I know that, by the time they reach the third declination, they’ll have had enough and they’ll leave it there.
One more of those latin courses that have 4 or 5 videos and poof. With what you have learned with those videos you can’t even translate Regina nautam amat.
Well.
Don’t let that happen to you.
If you want to learn Latin from zero to university level, go with a professional: LatinFromScratch.com.
Vale!
Paco
P. S. With the free part of my course you will learn more than with the complete courses you will find out there.
