Latin, Italian and English Glossary

Kindly provided to pompeiiinpictures by Michael Binns.

This glossary started life many years ago as various reference lists for my students of Latin and of Roman archaeology, architecture, and life, that were put together in my own way for my own teaching needs, and I have now pulled many of them together into this collection apart from archaeological, political, military, epigraphic, and prosopographical terms. It has gained clear benefits over the years from many other sources, both electronic and printed, whose details I can no longer recall, and I have made no attempt to do so. There are several helpful glossaries on the Web. The best printed glossary that has appeared recently must be that in John J. Dobbins and Pedar W. Foss, The World of Pompeii, New York and London, Routledge, 2007, pp. 637–48, though because of the book’s wide-ranging articles it contains many entries outside the needs of my own students. For the differences between original Latin terminology and modern “scholarly” Latin terms see Penelope M. Allison, Pompeian Households: An Analysis of the Material Culture, Los Angeles, University of California, 2004, Chapter 7, Textual Nomenclature for Spaces, pp. 161–77, simply referred to as “Allison” below.

One feature of the Latin presented here may surprise some users who are still unfamiliar with the use of “u” in lower-case to represent both vowel and consonant; for its separation into two different characters, “u” and “v”, is a fairly modern conceit, and to be deprecated, for Latin itself made no such distinction. The original Latin usage is at last returning and becoming standard again now, although some teachers, both in schools and in universities, are still unaware of this or are reluctant to change their habits. A similar modern separate use of “i” and “j” for vowel and consonant died long ago, but for some reason that modern separation of “u” and “v” is dying a rather prolonged operatic death. In upper case “V” is used for both vowel and consonant.

I have included the Italian terms, as far as I know them, as many of our sources are of course in Italian, and I have given the plurals of both Latin and Italian terms to ease their distinction. Sometimes Italian simply copies the Latin term or adapts it to modern Italian spelling; yet it also tends to do this with Latin personal names—which it should not, for Caecilius Iucundus was ever called just that, and never Cecilio Giocondo! I hope that someone will check my Italian and advise me on errors or poor terminology. Later I hope to prepare another version of this list sorted alphabetically by the Italian terms instead of the Latin ones.

For more information on architectural matters an excellent web site is at http://www.buffaloah.com/a/DCTNRY/vocab.html. There is another very useful list in F. Coarelli, Rome and Environs, Un. of California press, Berkeley, 2007, pp. 536–40.

There is still work to be done here on the architectural terms and materials, and on a separate glossary on these and other technical terms, and there are other gaps to be filled and improvements to be made, when I get round to them! For such lists are always incomplete and are prone to error, and I shall appreciate your additions, suggestions, corrections, and comments.

A swung dash (~) shows the repeat of a longer term to save space, a hyphen (-) that of part of a single word. A pair of spaced dashes (–  –) shows a repeat of the previous item, and a single long dash (—) shows an empty slot. [!] means take note; [!!] means a usage to be condemned.

University of Durham, Department of Archaeology; 

Created 2007-09-11; Last Revision 2015-01-11.

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