Screwed by "Screwed".

Why is it that in Hollywood Romans almost invariably speak "olde-worlde" English? Even the TV series Rome, which made a big effort to puncture lots of Roman stereotypes, still sometimes floundered with its dialogue choices, occasionally lapsing into bizarre linguistic anachronisms that were especially jarring when set against the modern phrasing that the characters often used.

If we want to understand the roots of this, it's probably partly the Romans' own fault. We know the Romans largely through their own literature, but their own literature was not written in "everyday" Latin. Literary Latin is an extraordinarily highly-wrought and artificial "dialect" of Latin. Real Romans didn't speak in Ciceronian Latin any more than real Elizabethans spoke high Shakespearean English. If we want to get close to the "real" sound of classical Latin, we have to look not at the grand works of philosophy, rhetoric and history, but at the graffiti from the walls of Pompeii, or perhaps at the work of the small number of authors (like Catullus) who occasionally used "street" vernacular in their writings. And what we find is curiously modern - a racy, fluid, flexible language, full of allusion, slang, proverb and obscenity ("I had a great fuck here", reads one memorable graffito from a Pompeian brothel).

But all this has consequences for us humble purveyors of historical fiction. Readers probably expect fictional Romans to talk in the grand, noble, clunking cadences of the Hollywood depictions. So what do I do? The "honourable" thing, and puncture those stereotypes by presenting dialogue in (what I would argue is) a more authentic way? Or the "cowardly" thing and pander to the tired linguistic stereotypes so as not to throw the readers? You can probably see what my heart wants me to do - but if I ever want to get this manuscript sold, I'll need to do some pandering somewhere along the line!

The "translation" effect complicates things even further. What, for instance, is a poor boy to do when an otherwise extremely perceptive and valuable reader tells me that I shouldn't use the word "screwed" in the sexual sense because it can only be dated back to the 18th Century? Is it really necessary to point out that when the characters in my novel speak, literally every single word they say is an anachronism, since in the novel they are speaking in a language which didn't even exist when they were alive? Can I think of any Latin words that could justifiably be translated as "screwed"? Yes, probably half a dozen. However, this highly perceptive reader finds it hard to stomach the idea of Romans saying "screwed". So what do I do - stubbornly keep it in, knowing I'm really "in the right" and giving an accurate impression of how real Romans spoke? Or axe it so as not to scare off editors and potential readers? After all, if an experienced and perceptive reader stumbles over "screwed", what's a casual reader going to think?

Just a taster of some of the ridiculous decisions that exercise my time nowadays!