This summer, I found myself on the summit of a mountain in Italy. This serene perch was once the home of a violent emperor named Tiberius. He lived upon this mountain where I sat, and he did so in absolute luxury, with goods from around the empire flowing to the remotest part of this remote island. The island is called Capri.

Tiberius was a violent man, and, as the story goes, he would push people from the cliffs near his home into the blue waters below with his ships circling like sharks ready to finish off any survivors. Because of this, the otherwise peaceful island developed the reputation of being a dangerous and Capri-cious tower of rocks, isolated from the metropolitan city of Naples that sat across the bay. 

Ironically, Capri became a tourist attraction, which brings me to why I stood on this once-dangerous crag of rock surveying the ocean below: I had been studying Latin for six years at this point. In a way, my trip to Italy was a culmination of my fascination with the ancient world. By learning this language, I had put myself closer and related myself more intimately to the ruins that I spent the summer walking through, and, in years prior, reading about in Latin.

There is an interesting play-on-words in Latin that describes my pursuit well: locus in locis. When taken somewhat figuratively, you can translate it as “passage in (its own) place.” This concept, being able to actually imagine what went on amongst the piles of rock and toppled walls of Italy (and the broader Roman world), is what is so unique about Latin. The language gives you the ability to decode the past and make more of your summer holiday than merely making pilgrimages to places that mean nothing to you. When I read Suetonius’ Latin, recounting the brutality that took place among these crumbled walls, I could feel the power that this place once held–as if the past was reaching forward for me, lest we forget it.

By Nicholas, a Milton Academy student