OJCL Torch Fall 2022 | Page 5

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pocketed his dad’s sestertii. And so, he buys the book by “Eduardus” and heads back to his villa. Expecting the novel to be the fiendish work of a con artist, Marcus feasts his eyes upon the first page. He gasps. The writing appears to be written in a completely different language. There are a few words Marcus can make out due to their Latin roots, like “school,” “exhausted,” and “application,” but there are others that appear more puzzling, like: “troubling,” “iPhone,” and “laptop.” For a moment, Marcus pauses. He sifts through the remaining pages, all swathed in linguistic mystery.

Months pass, and Marcus grows increasingly frenzied, attempting to dissect every bit of the language on the pages. Refusing to seek help from Magister Silvis or even call upon divine intervention, Marcus sequesters himself in his cubiculum, plagued by the intrigue of it all. Unable to engage in human contact, Marcus gathers the books his parents and tutor slide under his door, leaving each with hasty, cryptic annotations.

That is, until the day Marcus comes upon the “Anthology of Catullus”.

Frantically, Marcus finds the page of “Eduardus” that mentions the text, and checks the date of compilation. Marcus realizes that the Anthology of Catullus was compiled fairly recently, and that despite the fact that he had a complete catalog of the Latin canon, these works weren’t mentioned previously. Eduardus must have been a prophetic text, a glimpse into the future! Filled with more questions than answers, Marcus opens the door to his chambers and dashes through the halls to let his family know of his discovery.

...

Your name is called to translate a few lines from the text on the SmartBoard, and you sigh wearily. After class, you brood over the material, the result of a test date rapidly approaching. Left alone to your diaristic devices, you think, “oh, how mundane the real world can be!”

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