# O Caesar, adfectorum et petri factus es



## fishvanda

Hey Guys,

I'd like to ask your help with this quote: "*O Caesar, adfectorum et petri factus es*."

It is from an episode of Jamestown (205), a period drama set in the 1600s America. I cannot find this quote anywhere on the web, it might be misspelled, I don't know. Could you possibly point me in the right direction as to which play/story/hymn/etc. is this from? (My guess was Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, but this quote is not in the play itself.)

Thank you so much!

_Source: Jamestown, 205, period drama, Carnival_


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## Scholiast

Greetings

As the text stands, little sense can be made of it, nor is it an immediately obvious quotation from anywhere. I am prepared to be shot down in flames by someone more learned, but if this is from a TV drama, I'd hazard a guess that it is pseudo-Latin, cobbled together by someone who half-remembers the Latin he/she learned at high school.

Σ


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## fishvanda

Hi,
It's a very poor way to use Latin, indeed.   Thanks for your reply anyway!


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## Snodv

I cannot pretend to be more learned than Scholiast, but I may be able to guess (partially) what was intended.  Does the context indicate that someone is stern or heartless?  I think this might be an attempt at "O Caesar, you were made of [??] and stone."   I can't make any sense of the genitive plural _adfectorum_, although it is a word.  And unfortunately the genitive _petri _(if indeed it intends "of stone") is the wrong gender and the wrong specific meaning: a rock or a crag, not the general material.  Even if it were , the genitive is not good Latin; there is in classical Latin an _Ablative_ of Material with _ex_ and in late Latin without the _ex, _so we should expect_ e saxo _(or_ lapide_) or just _saxo factus es_.
If I'm wrong, it's entirely on me; if I'm right, it's due to years of encountering bad student Latin!


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## fishvanda

Snodv said:


> I cannot pretend to be more learned than Scholiast, but I may be able to guess (partially) what was intended.  Does the context indicate that someone is stern or heartless?  I think this might be an attempt at "O Caesar, you were made of [??] and stone."   I can't make any sense of the genitive plural _adfectorum_, although it is a word.  And unfortunately the genitive _petri _(if indeed it intends "of stone") is the wrong gender and the wrong specific meaning: a rock or a crag, not the general material.  Even if it were , the genitive is not good Latin; there is in classical Latin an _Ablative_ of Material with _ex_ and in late Latin without the _ex, _so we should expect_ e saxo _(or_ lapide_) or just _saxo factus es_.
> If I'm wrong, it's entirely on me; if I'm right, it's due to years of encountering bad student Latin!



Hm, yeah, that kind of makes sense, I can go somewhere from this. Thank you so much!


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## Scholiast

saluete de nouo amici!

Equal perplexity confronts me with Snodv (# 4) here. And that compounded by _petri_, for while according to LSJ Greek shows both masculine πέτρος (_petros_) and feminine πέτρα (_petra_), Latin, it seems, has (as Snodv remarks) only the latter, except as in (Saint) _Petrus_ so sur-named by Jesus in the New Testament, after 'Simon'. I am wondering whether something has dropped out, or if _adfectorum_ might be corrupted from _interfectorum_, the assassins in 44 BC.

I remain inclined to think, however, that this quasi-Latin is of the _Romanes ire ad domum_ variety, by Google-translate out of Nonsense.com. (And I bet, in a lifetime of schoolmastering, I have encountered at least as much bad Latin as Snodv!)

Σ


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## ryan86

fishvanda said:


> Hey Guys,
> 
> I'd like to ask your help with this quote: "*O Caesar, adfectorum et petri factus es*."
> 
> It is from an episode of Jamestown (205), a period drama set in the 1600s America. I cannot find this quote anywhere on the web, it might be misspelled, I don't know. Could you possibly point me in the right direction as to which play/story/hymn/etc. is this from? (My guess was Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, but this quote is not in the play itself.)
> 
> Thank you so much!
> 
> _Source: Jamestown, 205, period drama, Carnival_


Hi,

Better late than never!

Former latin student and brushing up again. I believe it translates as “O caesar, (having been) afflicted, you were (once) made of stone.”

I think Adfectorum comes from adficio, adficere (ad+facere). However, instead of Adfectorum, as an apposition in this sentence the perfect participle ought to refer back to Caesar, a masculine noun in the vocative case, as in “adfectorus.” It is the perfect passive participle. Petri comes from petrus which is actually a greek word that I’ve not seen in classical latin to mean the material of stone, but many words were added or modified in latin long after the romans. Factus es is the 2nd person singular, perfect passive tense of facere. Some have noted the preference of the ablative vs. genitive with reference to “petri,” however, I’ve found that for every rule about good latin, the romans always had a grammatical exception or otherwise broke their own rules! It seems like the show wasn’t worried about the case endings, and I do not know of a specific literary inspiration for this quote. Could be a game of telephone where a technical adviser communicated this line to the script writer and then to the actor and you get a little garbled latin; and it doesn’t impact the scene whether or not it’s correct!


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## bearded

ryan86 said:


> “adfectorus.”


Please note that this is a non-existing form. The correct masculine (singular nominative) past participle in Latin should be ''adfectus'' (from adficio).
 -orum is just a genitive plural ending which cannot be modified to -orus.
And those genitives 'adfectorum and petri' (should they stand for  what we call ''complement of matter/material'', i.e. showing what something/someone is made of) are plain wrong, not exceptions.
It is indeed garbled Latin imho.

PS.
A far-fetched possibility would be  that a word (like, for example, 'defensor') was missing in the quotation.
_Adfectorum et Petri defensor factus es _could mean ''you have become the defender of the afflicted and of Petrus(?)''.


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## ryan86

You are absolutely right - adfectus! My mistake. I certainly recognize orum as a second declension of the plural genitive; I lost sight of the stem. I did not see anyone reference the verb “adficere” however and this was the main reason I wished to comment!


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## ryan86

bearded said:


> Please note that this is a non-existing form. The correct masculine (singular nominative) past participle in Latin should be ''adfectus'' (from adficio).
> -orum is just a genitive plural ending which cannot be modified to -orus.
> And those genitives 'adfectorum and petri' (should they stand for  what we call ''complement of matter/material'', i.e. showing what something/someone is made of) are plain wrong, not exceptions.
> It is indeed garbled Latin imho.
> 
> PS.
> A far-fetched possibility would be  that a word (like, for example, 'defensor') was missing in the quotation.
> _Adfectorum et Petri defensor factus es _could mean ''you have become the defender of the afflicted and of Petrus(?)''.


And regarding exceptions, I wasn’t pointing to anything specific with this possibility in mind; deponent verbs, for instance, are active in meaning yet passive in form. I only speak as a student and can understand how this becomes confused in the context of a film set where one line is written into a script that is not also translated for the audience. Food for thought.


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## bearded

bearded said:


> A far-fetched possibility would be that a word (like, for example, 'defensor') was missing in the quotation.
> _Adfectorum et Petri defensor factus es _could mean ''you have become the defender of the afflicted and of Petrus(?)''.


I wrote ''of the afflicted'', assuming that ''adfectorum'' is a mistake/misspelling instead of _adflictorum. _The unchanged 'adfectorum' might perhaps mean ''of the weak ones''...
However, I do realise that too many speculative changes are necessary if we pretend to find a sense in the given Latin sentence.


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## ryan86

Fair point! That is a good possibility - adflictorum as an adjective being conflated with the perfect passive participle of adficere (adfectus). While we may only speculate on the meaning, I have a non-lingual explanation since I have seen the show in which this quote is derived. It may have been an intentional mistake - to show the speaker was seemingly educated enough to know latin, but on closer examination, does not know the language very well. Only a learned audience would see the irony behind this intent. This concept fits with the plot in which the speaker intends to use chemistry to create gold, a 17th century idea that was obviously flawed. So the quote, such as it is, could be a way to showcase the speaker’s puported sense of knowledge and the subtle clue that this knowledge is flawed.


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## Casquilho

I didn't watch the show so I can't say if the bad Latin is intentional or just another example of TV Latin. However, I'm guessing it's an attempted translation of the churchyard scene from _Hamlet_ (Act V scene 1):

Imperious *Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,*
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Obs: That would be a possible anachronism since the show is set in 1619, a mere few years after Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. And also I don't think English settlers were exactly keen on theater. But maybe it was an intentional joke?


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