Gods, Saints And Latin

The Golden Slave, XII.

Eodan says that he hopes to settle somewhere close to where he was born, maybe among the Goths or the Sueones. Hwicca responds by quoting a Roman saying that "'...nothing human is alien to them.'" (p. 156)

Elsewhere, Poul Anderson quotes Terence:

"'Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.' I am a man; nothing human is alien to me."
-Poul Anderson, "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 189.

Anderson places Terence "...in second-century Rome..." (ibid.) He must mean the second century BC because The Golden Slave is set BC and Terence's dates are BC.

Homo: man, a man, the man;
sum: I am -

- two Latin words for four English words.

puto: I think -

- thus, "I think nothing human alien to me," but with a different word order.

Also in "The Discovery of the Past":

"Some outlying parts of Brittany remained pagan until the seventeenth century, and everywhere many of the horde of local saints are ancient gods in disguise." (p. 183)

A paganism that survived until that recently should be easier to revive or, at least, to understand and interpret.