The Roman lawyer, writer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is greatly admired for his command of language. Like Shakespeare centuries later, he introduced new words and conventions of form that persisted ever afterward.
And like the Bard, he was fond of wordplay -- but how could he possibly have invented a riddle that works the same in English as it does in Latin? Sheer luck, of course, the same chance that preserved his words and Shakespeare's.
A greeting:
"Mitto tibi 'navem' prora puppique carentum."*
In English:
"I send you a 'ship' lacking stern and bow."
Something of an "Aenigma a patre," I suppose.
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* I have here taken the cheapest/easiest transcription of written Latin. For Romans vowel "u" and the consonant "v" were distinguished only by context, as readily as we skip through the myriad inconsistencies of English orthography. While contemporary fancy inscriptions and (probably) professional scrolls would have written MITTO TIBI NAVEM PROPRA PVPPIQVE CARENTVM at best and probably abbreviated many of the words in standardized ways, Cicero himself probably jotted it down in a chicken-scratch cursive not too unlike a modern doctor's handwriting, with a character like a cross between a "v" and "u" and what looks to our eyes like a ruthless disregard for getting the letters on the same line; Romans didn't see 'em the same way we are taught.
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1 year ago

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