Gratuitous Latin / Marathon Expanded Universe

The Marathon series contains so much Latin that we've given it its own page - and the Game Mods, which we've collectively dubbed the Marathon Expanded Universe, have gotten their own page. Numerous level names are in Latin, and there are several other cases in-story.

We have followed the example of Bungie's trilogy by not using any accents over Latin in our primary quotations, except where the fan games themselves included them. Classical Latin actually had an accent known as the apex (plural: apices), which differentiated between short and long vowels (long vowels were accompanied by apices) and is most commonly found rendered using macrons when it is included in modern renderings of Latin.^note The apex over the vowels a, e, o, and u was actually about halfway between a macron and an acute accent, looking roughly like a᷄, e᷄, o᷄, or u᷄. The vowel i, meanwhile, was simply written taller. As a result, we have also included versions of each of these words, phrases, or quotations with macrons over them (unless none of the relevant words contained apices), which can be found by clicking the phrase "With macrons" after each Latin phrase that contained them.

Since Aleph One uses the Mac Roman character set, which does not include the macron, scenarios that bothered depicting apices have typically defaulted to using acute accents instead. In these cases, we have simply quoted the text with acute accents as it appeared in the games. (An exception here occurs in the rare cases where the macron occurs over a y; the Mac Roman character set does not include the characters Ý or ý, either. Mȳthologia is a rare example of a Latin word with an apex over the letter y.)

See UsefulNotes.Latin Pronunciation Guide for info on how to pronounce these phrases in Classical Latin. (Ecclesiastical Latin, which is actually the source of some of these examples [e.g., most of Tempus Irae's cases], would have had a somewhat different pronunciation.)

Tempus Irae

Tempus Irae^{With macrons} Tempus Īrae or Tempus īrae means Time of Wrath (the English translation appears in the closing screen for The Lost Levels). There is a lot of other Latin in the game, of course:

• The level "Sordidae, turpes et faetidae"^{With macrons} Sordidae, turpēs et faetidae means roughly "dirty, foul, and stinking", though it could just as easily be translated "sordid, turpid, and fetid". It is a reference to the condition of the city streets during the Black Death, which is why all three adjectives are in their plural, feminine forms; it was taken from a biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Serge Bramly.
• "Polygonum opus"^{With macrons} Polygōnum opus refers to the art of polygonal masonry (it literally means just "polygon work", although it is slightly misspelled in older releases as "Polygonium Opus"); it can also be considered a play on the phrase "Magnum Opus" ("Great Work") as well as the fact that Marathon maps are created out of polygons.
• The splash page for the game's website contains quotations from the 13th-century hymn Dies īrae, which also appear in Mozart's Requiem in D minor (specifically the Rēx tremendae and Dies īrae portions). "Solvet saeclum in favilla"^{With macrons} Solvet saeclum in favīllā, the subtitle of the page, means "All the world into ash turning". (Taken with the title of the game, it can also be translated as "The time of wrath will dissolve the world into ash" - a slight paraphrase of the first two lines of the Dies īrae, which translate as "The day of wrath, that day/Will dissolve the world into ash.") The lines:
  "Rex tremendae majestatis,
  Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
  Salva me, fons pietatis"^{With macrons} 
  Rēx tremendae majestātis,
  Quī salvandōs salvās grātīs,
  Salvā mē, fōns pietātis
  • Are translated in the Catholic funeral mass (adapted from a version by William Josiah Irons in 1849, keeping the rhyme and metre of the original) as:
    "King of Majesty tremendous,
    Who dost free salvation send us,
    Fount of pity, then befriend us!"
  • A translation with greater formal equivalence, per Wikipedia, is:
    "King of fearsome majesty,
    Who gladly saves those fit to be saved,
    Save me, O font of mercy."
• One of the wall textures seen in a crypt and elsewhere (in both the 2006 version and Tempus Irae Redux) contains several Latin phrases:
  • "A verbis ad verbera, MCDLII"^{With macrons} A verbīs ad verbera, MCDLII: "From words to blows, 1452". A Latin idiom of unclear origin, referencing the degeneration of a situation from dialogue to violence. Sometimes also seen as "verbis perventum est ad verbera" ("Words come to blows") or similar. 1452 is the year of Leonardo da Vinci's birth.
  • "A fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi, IX XI MMI"^{With macrons} A fronte praecipitium, a tergō lupī, IX XI MMI: "A precipice in front, wolves behind, 9/11/2001". Less literally, "between a rock and a hard place" or "between the devil and the deep blue sea" - referring to a case where a person is caught between two impossible options. The Dutch humanist and scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536) collected this Latin phrase - along with its Greek equivalent, "Ἔμπροσθεν κρημνός, ὄπισθεν λύκοι" (Émprosthen krimnós, ópisthen lýkoi) - in his 1508 work Adagiōrum chīliadēs (Thousands of Adages) an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs. Erasmus' source is unclear; however, more info on these phrases can be found here.
  • "Materiam superabat opus, MCMXCVI"^{With macrons} Māteriam superābat opus, MCMXCVI: "The quality was better than the material, 1996." Or less literally, "the workmanship was better than the subject matter, 1996." A quotation from Ovid's Metamorphoses (apart from the "1996" part - 1996 when the first version of Tempus Irae was created).
  • "Nolite id cogere, cape malleum majorem"^{With macrons} Nōlīte id cōgere, cape malleum mājōrem: "Don't force it; get a bigger hammer." A modern, comical example of Latin; origin unclear.
• In Tempus Irae Redux, the stained-glass windows found in the level "Downward Spiral" (seen in this video, starting at roughly the 13:20 mark, although it is likely too small to be clearly legible) feature an abridged quote from Genesis 11:7 (excerpted passage in bold): "Venite, igitur descendamus et confundamus ibi linguam eorum, ut non audiat unusquisque vocem proximi sui,"^{With macrons} Venīte, igitur dēscendāmus et cōnfundāmus ibi linguam eōrum, ut nōn audiat ūnusquisque vōcem proximī suī which the KJV translates as: "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." This text being in Latin is quite fitting, since few people understand Latin nowadays. Given how high it is on the stained-glass windows, it is also so small that you have to squint (and quite possibly use the sniper zoom, which one may do by pressing F7) to see it.
  • Tempus Irae Redux also adds an exterior to "Downward Spiral"'s well-known cathedral with hedges spelling out the letters "DNIC". The creator of this segment of the level remarked in a YouTube video description, "It’s a Latin abbreviation (if you’re surprised, nice to meet you, my name’s Aaron) for Dominus Noster Iēsūs Chrīstus (Our Lord Jesus Christ). I found it in a list of Ecclesiastical Latin phrases; it seemed like something a Renaissance Italian cathedral’s hedge garden might spell out, so I used it."
• The map writing◊ of the secret level “Il grande silenzio” in Tempus Irae Redux, a work-in-progress screenshot of which is linked on the creator’s YouTube channel, evidently provides us with a final example:
  “Anne MMXX, pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō
  Creāta ab [creator’s name]
  Init. iūn MMXX
  Fīn. feb MMXXI
  Grātiās agō [list of thanks]
  In memoriam Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Devon Belcher, Ennio Morricone, et Duncan”
  • Line-by-line, the Latin phrases mean “Year 2020, I will sodomise you and face-fuck you” (a quotation from Catullus’ Carmen 16, regarded as one of the most obscene lines ever written in any language, which makes it an example of a Sophisticated as Hell Shout-Out and a Precision F-Strike); “Created by”; “Beginning June 2020” (“Init.” is an abbreviation of “Initium”); “End February 2021” (“Fīn.” is an abbreviation of “Fīnis”); “I give thanks to”; and “in memory of”. (The people thanked are one of Tempus’ two primary developers, the main mapmaker of Phoenix, and one of Aleph One’s developers; the level is a pastiche of the former two’s styles, while the Aleph One dev provided understanding of the engine’s technical limitations. The Tempus dev also created several snow textures and a landscape specifically for “Il grande silenzio”.) Devon Belcher was a philosophy professor and a member of Nardo who constructed several levels of Tempus Irae 2: The Lost Levels. Duncan was the creator’s dog. The creator’s YouTube video description indicates that the Catullus Shout-Out was partially inspired by “Yucatan Dive” from Imperium, which originally had “Fuck 2016” written on the map; the most recent release has “2016” crossed out and “2020” written beside it.

Rubicon

• Rubicon contains the Lampshade Hanging level title "Carpe *mumble mumble latin*", a reference to the well-known Latin phrase "Carpe diem", meaning "enjoy the day" or "make good use of the day" (commonly mistranslated as "seize the day", which would be written in Latin as "cape diem"; cape is the second-person singular active imperative of capiō, meaning capture, seize, take, etc.).
• In addition, there's the level "Veni vidi cursavi"^{With macrons} Vēnī vīdī cursāvī ("I Came, I Saw, I Ran Constantly About"), a pun on Julius Caesar's famous quote "Veni vidi vici"^{With macrons} Vēnī vīdī vīcī ("I Came, I Saw, I Conquered", which is exactly what you're not doing in that level).
• "Lazarus ex machina"^{With macrons} Lāzārus ex māchinā means "Lazarus out of the Machine", a play on the phrase Deus ex Machina ("God out of the Machine"). It also refers to Lazarus of Bethany, a man resurrected by Jesus in the Gospel of John. Given that the end of the level depicts the resurrection of Durandal, it is a rather fitting title.
• Chapter names include:
  • "Fraternus carnifex"^{With macrons} Frāternus carnifex: "Brother's Executioner" (literally "Fraternal Executioner").
  • "Mendacium ex machina"^{With macrons} Mendācium ex māchinā: "Lie from the Machine".
  • "Homo homini lupus"^{With macrons} Homō hominī lupus: "A man is a wolf to another man," or "man is a wolf to man."^{Grammar notes} This sentence technically does not have a verb. However, omitting forms of sum, or to be, is grammatically correct in Latin sentences like this; the phrase "Homō hominī lupus" is constructed in such a manner as to imply est. This is called a zero copula (plural zero copulae or zero copulas). As Latin grammarians Gildersleeve and Lodge explain:
    
    "Est or sunt is often omitted in saws and proverbs, in short statements and questions, in rapid changes, in conditional clauses, and in tenses compounded with participles." (Google Books result, StackExchange transcription).
    
    The same tendency occurs, to a lesser extent, in English; phrases like "the more, the merrier" and most newspaper headlines are examples of English zero copulae, as are many spoken phrases in casual English like "You going to the party tonight?" Zero copulae are more common in Caribbean creoles and African-American Vernacular English.
    
    Incidentally, cōpula is itself an example of Gratuitous Latin; it means bond, tie, or other connecting item in Latin. It is also linguistically related to the English words couple and copulation.
  • "Lex talionis"^{With macrons} Lex tāliōnis: "The Law of Retaliation", literally, whereby a punishment resembles the offence committed in both kind and degree - often referred to as "an eye for an eye", though this is not a literal translation of the Latin.
• The game makes several references to something called "Calix Temporum reverse allocation". "Calix Temporum" seems to be intended to mean "Vessel of Opportunities" (a more literal translation would be "Chalice of Times", but tempus can metaphorically mean opportunity as well).

Eternal

Eternal didn't really use much Latin before version 1.3. Version 1.3 seems determined to make up for it.

• The creators have translated the titles of dream levels and every level of chapter five into Latin, although currently, most levels have titles in both English and Latin. ("Haec caverna nón fórmátió nátúrális"^note The creators of Eternal have opted to use acute accents to represent apices, because the Mac-Roman character set employed by Aleph One does not include macrons; we have therefore followed their convention when quoting Latin text from Eternal is in Latin only due to a character limit on map titles.) Usually, they're fairly literal translations, but occasionally the creators took artistic liberties:
  • Látus procul núllíus locí = The Far Side of Nowhere (literally "The Far Side of No Place"^Explanation Latin heavily prefers the genitive case for possessives. Since nusquam, literally meaning nowhere, is an adverb, it lacks a genitive case. The same applies for alicubi (somewhere) on "The Midpoint of Somewhere" and for ubíque (everywhere) on the final level, hence why they respectively use alicuius locí (of some place) and omnium locórum (of all places) instead.)
  • Úniversum tangéns = The Tangent Universe
  • Dormíre, fortuító somniáre = To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
  • Receptor vítális = The Living Receiver
  • Terra est inánis et vacua = The World Is Hollow (literally "The World Is Without Form and Void"^note Which is an almost verbatim quote from Genesis 1:2 (the Vulgate of that verse opens "Terra autem erat inánis et vacua," meaning "And the world was without form and void"). However, the game's codirector and Latin translator confirms in a YouTube video description that this is primarily meant as a Shout-Out to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada, which contains the Hebrew version of the same phrase (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, ṯōhū wā-ḇōhū) on its cover, and not "to express any religious belief (or lack thereof)". The original English phrase, in turn, is a Shout-Out to the Star Trek episode "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky".)
  • Mortuí tortí = The Manipulated Dead (literally "The Tormented Dead")
  • Medietás alicuius locí = The Midpoint of Somewhere (literally "The Midpoint of Some Place")
  • Terra in firmámentó = The Land in the Sky
  • Eádem, sed aliter = Likewise, but Differently^{Translation note} Eádem can also mean by the same means or at the same time, while aliter can also mean otherwise, wrongly, poorly, badly, or negatively. However, as discussed on the shout-out page, this is a quotation from Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, wherein "likewise, but differently" is probably as accurate a translation of Schopenhauer's meaning as anyone can get.
  • Décipula praesidí = The Ensurance Trap (literally "The Trap of Assistance"; apparently to duplicate the effect of the archaic spelling Ensurance, this uses an archaic dative form of praesidium [assistance] that was only used until the Augustan Age)
  • Volitáns in lacúná = Floating in the Void
  • Échús Eden = Echoes of Eden^{Latin grammar note} Since "Eden" is indeclinable in Latin, all of its cases take the same ending; thus, the game's Latin translation could also mean "Echoes in Eden", "Echoes to Eden", and so on. "Échús dé Eden" might be clearer, though it could also mean "Echoes About Eden" or "Echoes from Eden".
  • Mortuí vívunt in catacumbis = The Dead Live in the Catacombs
  • Haec caverna nón fórmátió nátúrális = This Cave Is Not a Natural Formation^{Latin grammar note} This employs a zero copula, in which est, meaning is, is considered implicit in the sentence structure and thus omitted. See Homo homini lupus under Rubicon for another example of this, as well as for more information on zero copulae in general.
  • Obscúra crypta Léthés = Dark Grotto of the Lethe
    • Profundis in cavernam = Deep Into the Grotto (former level name)
  • Rána explóde corpus spíramentí = Frog Blast the Vent Core (a very loose translation, not that this phrase would be possible to translate any other way)
  • Teneó affectum malum de hóc = I've Got a Bad Feeling About This
  • Philosophia itineris temporis = The Philosophy of Time Travel
  • Hic núntius sésé ipsum délébit = This Message Will Self-Destruct (literally "This Message Will Destroy Itself")^{Latin grammar note} In Previews 1 and 2, this committed the minor but elementary grammatical error of using a first-person verb that should have been third-person; later builds have corrected this (after this very wiki pointed it out, we note; it is left to the reader to decide whether this is coincidental). The incorrect version was "Hic núntius sé délébó". Sé is also less emphatic than the current sésé ipsum, another thing this wiki noted. Incidentally, dēleō, the root verb of délébit, is the linguistic ancestor of the English delete by way of the Portuguese delir; "This Message Will Delete Itself" is also a reasonable literal translation of the Latin version.
  • Coíbámus olím in hortó = We Met Once in the Garden
  • Ubínam gigantés cecidérunt = Where Giants Have Fallen
  • Látus propinquum omnium locórum = The Near Side of Everywhere (literally "The Near Side of All Places")
    • Some of these titles also gain interesting double or even triple meanings in Latin. For instance, coībāmus could mean "we came up against (one another)", with a hostile subtext... or, without any subtext at all, "we copulated" (other forms of the verb coeō are the direct linguistic ancestors of the English words coition and coitus). Creator commentary indicates that at least this triple meaning is intentional.
• Marcus' diary is accompanied by map annotations in untranslated Latin, although many of the meanings are probably fairly obvious.
  • "Foris aperítur" = "Door opens"^{Etymology note} Apertūra (an opening), derived from aperítur's root verb aperiō (I uncover, open, make visible), is the linguistic ancestor of our aperture. Meanwhile, as dissimilar as foris and door sound, linguists believe that they derive from the same Proto-Indo-European word, *dʰwṓr.
  • "VII cellulae fúsiónis & chronicon Márcí pars II" = "7 fusion batteries & Marcus' diary, part 2"
  • "Portae démissae sunt" = "Gates are down"
  • "VIII cellulae fúsiónis & chronicon Márcí pars III" = "8 fusion batteries & Marcus' diary, part 3"
  • "Suggestus activus est" = "Platform is active"
  • "V cellulae fúsiónis" = "5 fusion batteries"
  • "I tormentum fúsiónis dé classe Úranó" = "1 Ouranos-class fusion cannon"
  • "Nuntius Hathóris, VII cellulae fúsiónis, & II pistolae fúsiónis dé classe Crone" = "Hathor's message, 7 fusion batteries, & 2 Cronus-class fusion pistols"
• In "Roots and Radicals", Durandal writes, "Ego delendus sum: I am to be destroyed, am I not?" See below for an exegesis of a very similar phrase from a different character in "Dark Grotto of the Lethe".
• "The Abyss Gazes Also" (known as "S'pht Happens" prior to September 2022) contains a terminal (new in 1.3) that's only accessible by jumping out of the Citadel to the area immediately south of it after closing its doors (grenade-jumping would be the most common way of doing this; note that players could trap themselves here in previous versions of the game, which is why the developers added the terminal) contains some incoherent text from the recently merged Leela and S'bhuth, who are clearly still integrating their programs. One curious bit of this is that S'bhuth says "fissúra cívitátis clausa", which in this context translates as something along the lines of "The Citadel breach has been closed."^{Grammar note} Literally "citadel breach closed", but it's employing a zero copula. This serves as foreshadowing, as why would a confused S'pht AI speak Latin? The reason is that the S'pht AI was created by the Jjaro, who — in this timeline, at least — spoke Latin.
• Starting in 1.3 preview 5, the music for "Run, Coward!" features Ominous Latin Chanting in its midsection, playfully entitled "Ecce homō corpulentus" ("Behold the Fat Man" - note that "Fat Man" is the name of the music used in the level). The game's readme file includes a transcription of these lyrics, along with a translation. Two lines are taken verbatim and a third almost verbatim from the medieval hymn Diēs Īrae, but the remainder are original. The entire song conforms to Diēs Īrae's rhyme scheme and meter, making it something of a dark parody. (It also largely uses Ecclesiastical pronunciation, presumably due to being a parody of Diēs Īrae.)
  Dies īrae, dies mortis
  Exorītur Sakhmet fortis
  Hūmānitātibus tortīs
  
  O imperātrīx tremendae
  Tua maiestās timendae
  Terrae tōtālēs dēlendae
  
  Cōnfūtātis maledictīs
  Flammīs ācribus addictīs
  Omnēs erimus convictīs
  
  Īra est īnsatiābilis
  Sum mortālis ac debilis
  Mors est inēvītābilis
  • The creators translate this as follows:
    Day of wrath, day of death
    Sakhmet emerges strong
    Out of tormented humanity
    
    O tremendous empress
    Your majesty is fearsome
    The entire world will be destroyed
    
    After the wicked are silenced
    Sentenced to acrid flames
    We shall all be with the damned
    
    Wrath is insatiable
    I am mortal and weak
    Death is inevitable
    • In the third line, hūmānitātibus is the ablative (or dative) plural of hūmānitās, a word coined by Cicero that means humanity, culture, civilization, philanthropy, kindliness, and so on. It's arguably a bit contrived to use it in the plural form there, but then, given that its adjective is tortīs, ablative/dative plural of tortus (which in turn related to tortūra, whence English torture), it arguably makes sense for the word choice itself to feel a bit tortured.
    • Tremendous is indeed derived from tremendus (of which tremendae is the feminine form), in turn derived from tremō (I tremble or shake with fear). Tremendus is the gerundive, meaning literally which is to be trembled, shaken, or shuddered at; less literally, fearsome, awe-inspiring, terrible, or horrific. Even in English, it can mean awe-inspiring, though it typically is used in more positive senses, e.g., terrific. (On that note, terrible, terrific, and terror all ultimately have the same root: terreō, meaning I frighten, terrify, alarm, deter by terror, scare.)
• In "The Ensurance Trap", Hathor makes the following threat to the player:
  "Get the Fuck out. Now. Lest I truly lose My Shit and begin to rend thee asunder, Atom from Atom, Limb from Limb, in omne aeternum."

  "In omne aeternum" means simply "for all eternity".

• Chapter five in general contains quite a few phrases of untranslated Latin throughout its terminals, as seen in this video and quite a few older ones - basically, anything where the machine translator wasn't sure how to translate a term in previous versions of chapter five is now Latin (though the creators have attempted to use mostly familiar-looking words). The terminals also attempt to employ plausible Latin declensions of each term in context. Creator comments confirm that the Jjaro spoke Latin as their native language, and that their AIs can no longer fully translate to English due to their damaged functionality - though it also doesn't help that English is a dead language. (Their translations also employ Antiquated Linguistics because the Jjaro judge Shakespeare and the King James Bible's use of language to possess the highest literary quality and thus assume them to be their purest samples of English.) Some words that appear frequently, though this is by no means (yet) an exhaustive list:
  • Arx – fortress (arca, which is cognate to arx, is the linguistic ancestor of our word ark)
  • Inimícus – enemy (its direct linguistic descendant via the Old French enemi)
  • Somnium – dream (the English terms somniferous and somnolent, amongst others, are derived from the same root)^note Strangely, linguists believe that the English terms sopor and soporific are also ultimately derived from the same root; they hypothesise the Proto-Indo-European *swep-, meaning to sleep, as the root of all of them
  • Custós – watcher (the derivative custōdia is the linguistic ancestor of our word custodian)^note Cū̆stōs is a relatively familiar Latin word anyway, due to the famous Juvenal quote "Quis cū̆stōdiet ipsōs cū̆stōdēs?", meaning "Who will watch the watchmen themselves?", popularised in works like Watchmen. Cū̆stōdēs is the plural of cū̆stōs in the accusative, nominative, and vocative cases
  • Praeses – guardian (our word president is descended from the related term praesidēns; both are derivatives of the verb praesideō)
  • nova praemátúra – early nova (which - in Eternal's timeline, to be clear, and not in Bungie's trilogy - was the original Jjaro name for what the Pfhor later renamed the trih xeem to obscure the Jjaro's origins).
  • Operátor - operator, worker (masculine), he who works^{Grammar note} Operor means I work in Latin; opus is a noun meaning work, and perhaps confusingly, opera can be its plural or a singular noun also meaning work. The suffix -tor forms a masculine agent noun from the fourth principal part of a verb; -tríx is its feminine equivalent.
    • Operátríx - operator, worker (feminine), she who works^{Spoileriffic grammar note} This is primarily if not entirely a post-classical Latin term, but the Jjaro may not have known or may not have cared.
  • Avé, Domine (seen at the start of every message from either Custóde or Praeside), means something along the lines of "Hello, Master."
  • Valé (seen at the end of every message from either Custóde, Praeside, or Pompeia), as mentioned above, means "farewell." "Avé atque valé", seen in Custódis final message to the player, means "Hail and farewell" or "I salute you, and goodbye", and is a Shout-Out to Catulli Carmen 101 (see ShoutOut.Marathon Expanded Universe for more).
• The messages from the computer interface are also in untranslated Latin. These usually correspond somewhat closely to the messages in previous chapters, which are in English, so players probably will be able to puzzle out their meanings without much trouble.
  • "Tránslátio anglicam nuntí hospite [anónymó] @ [intránslátábilis]" = "Translation to English of message from host [anonymous] @ [untranslatable]"
  • "Nuntius terminat" = "Message ends"
  • "Intránslátus núntius hospitá [NESIGNÁTÁ] [prócessus internális]" = "Untranslated message from hostess [NO SIGNATURE] [internal process]"
  • The one that might pose a slight bit of difficulty is "Tránslátio anglicam excerptí ex Populí historiá de dicióne armís ab Naomi Zinn @ [intránslátábilis]", found in "Dark Grotto of the Lethe" ("Deep into the Grotto" prior to September 2022). This translates as "Translation to English of excerpt from 'A People's History of Arms Control' by Naomi Zinn @ [untranslatable]"; the work's title and its author's name are obvious Shout-Outs to A People's History of the United States and its author, Howard Zinn. "Naomi" may also be intended as a subtle shout-out to Zinn's close friend, the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky - it is the feminine form of his given name.
• Pompeia tells us in "The Dead Live in the Catacombs", "I can only express my Regrets that I could not [?cognóscere] thee now, as I believe it [?placuisset] us both." The literal meaning of this would be, "I can only express my Regrets that I could not get to know thee now, as I believe it would have pleased us both." However, cognóscere has the alternate meaning to have sex (with), which is what she actually means here. (In point of fact, the English verb know once had this connotation as well, and still does in the phrases "know carnally" and "know Biblically".) Per creator commentary, Jjaro society considers it proper etiquette to offer sex to guests or new acquaintances to whom one is attracted; thus, Pompeia is apologising to Marcus because her duties defending the Arce prevent her from carrying out her expected role as hostess. Since Marcus is visiting her precisely to relieve her of those duties (which will also enable her to sleep again), she feels unusually obligated to him and thus asks him to visit her again "when this is all over," since "it is the Least I can do to express my Gratitude."
  • In "We Met Once in the Garden", she reiterates, "I really would love to stay and [?cognóscere] thee" ("I really would love to stay and have sex with thee"), but indicates that the Pfhor's launch of the novam praemátúram has robbed them of that opportunity. She adds, "It is my sincerest Hope that the third Time [?coímus] will be the Charm for us [?cognoscére]. I remain convinced it [?delectábit] us both." Delectábit here means it will delight, and she intends a pun here with coímus, which can also mean we have sex. "It is my sincerest Hope that the third time we have sex will be the Charm for us to have sex" is obviously nonsensical, but the phrase can either mean "It is my sincerest Hope that the third time we meet will be the Charm for us to have sex" or "It is my sincerest Hope that the third time we have sex will be the Charm for us to know each other" - in other words, she not merely hopes they have sex the next time they meet, but she hopes they do it at least three times. Given her society's mores, since it would be the third time they'd met, it's only natural that she'd want to make up for the previous two meetings when they couldn't have sex.
• As of 1.3, the map annotations on "Dark Grotto of the Lethe" ("Deep Into the Grotto" prior to September 2022) are in untranslated Latin, although their meaning is probably not very difficult to puzzle out, since there are close English linguistic descendants of every word used in the annotations:
  • Príma memoria computátrí = First computer memory
  • Secunda memoria computátrí = Second computer memory
  • Tertia memoria computátrí = Third computer memory
  • Quárta memoria computátrí = Fourth computer memory
  • Quínta memoria computátrí = Fifth computer memory
  • Sexta memoria computátrí = Sixth computer memory
  • Septima memoria computátrí = Seventh computer memory
• One case of translated Latin in chapter five also occurs in "Dark Grotto of the Lethe" (formerly "Deep into the Grotto"): Hathor says "ego delenda sum" and immediately and helpfully translates it for the player: "i must be destroyed." (A more literal translation of this would be "I am to be destroyed".^note If we want to be tediously literal, an exact translation would come out to "I am something that is to be destroyed". There's a reason that no one is this literal when translating Latin. However, a literal translation misses the statement's rhetorical intensity; due to the use of the gerundive dēlendus and the placement of sum at the end of the statement, it's closer in intensity to a statement along the lines, "There is no choice but to destroy me."^{Grammar note} Since the author of this statement is female, dēlenda is correct; a male author would write ego dēlendus sum instead. A non-binary writer might use the neuter-gender ego dēlendum sum (the neuter gender was used solely for objects in Classical Latin, but this is not the case in New Latin), or might default to either masculine or feminine, or might switch between them, or might use ego dēlendēs sum (a fifth-declension -ēs ending), or might do something else entirely; the conventions for this are unsurprisingly far from solidified and largely a matter of individual preference. On a completely different note, dēleō, the root verb of dēlendus, is also the linguistic ancestor of our English word delete. This statement may double as a Shout-Out to Cato the Censor's famous phrase, "Carthāgō dēlenda est," meaning "Carthage is to be destroyed." Marathon already had such a Shout-Out in the level "Welcome to the Revolution"; see GratuitousLatin.Marathon for more.)
• "The Philosophy of Time Travel" features a terminal written almost entirely in Latin, which is simply a Latin translation of chapter twelve of the level's namesake.
• The terminal from "Apep" in "This Message Will Self-Destruct" features some Latin sprinkled among the other languages. To avoid redundancy, we have discussed this on its character page under Characters.Marathon Expanded Universe.
• Hathor says "aut futue, aut pugnémus" in "We Met Once in the Garden". This translates roughly as "Either fuck me, or let's fight" and is a verbatim quotation from Martial's Epigrams 11:20, which the co-director describes as "really quite a nasty piece of propaganda", but also notes as fitting Hathor's mood and the level's Latin subtitle (which could mean "We Copulated Once in the Garden" or "We Came Up Against [One Another] in the Garden") perfectly. It also qualifies as Sophisticated as Hell because it's a Latin Precision F-Strike that doubles as an erudite literary reference.^{Further notes on the translation and digressions on Latin obscenity more broadly; Cluster F-Bomb, Country Matters, and explicit descriptions of sex acts are inevitable} Since Latin obscenity is substantially more precise than English obscenity, Hathor's Martial quote can be translated more literally, though less poetically, as something like "Either fuck my pussy, or let's fight". The verb futuō refers specifically to vaginal intercourse and has a distinction between its active and passive voices; a futūtor (man who fucks, or fucker) would typically say futuō (I fuck), while a futūtrix (woman who fucks, or fuckee, if you will) would typically say futuor (I am fucked), perhaps unless she took an unusually active role in the futūtiō (act of fucking). Hence, the command futue means fuck (more exactly, fuck in the pussy); the command futuere would mean be fucked (more exactly, be fucked in the pussy; note that futuere is also the active present infinitive meaning to fuck in the pussy).
  
  Also, futuō was usually used in erotic contexts and typically not for insult or emphasis the way the word fuck is in English; attempting to translate fuck you literally using forms of futuō might translate as a come-on (futue or futuere could be read as offering to fuck the listener, or as expressing hopes that they have a good time while fucking or being fucked), or as completely nonsensical: fuck yourself (more literally, fuck you yourself in the pussy) could be translated as futue tē ipsum (to a man), futue tē ipsam (to a woman), futuite vōs ipsās (to a group of women), or futuite vōs ipsōs (to a group of men or mixed gender) - but how can one fuck oneself in the pussy? However, other obscenities referred to other kinds of sex and could be substantially more insulting; for example, paedīcō (or pēdīcō) referred to sodomy and irrumō and fēllō referred to fellatio - hence the infamous line "pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō" ("I will ass-fuck you and face-fuck you") from Catullus 16.
  
  Interestingly, although fellatio is considered a comparatively "polite" term in English, it descends from the Latin fēllātiō, which - as you no doubt already guessed - in turn is derived from the above fēllō. Its coordinate term cunnilingus, though also "polite" in English, was extremely obscene in Latin; it literally translates as cunt-licker, being a compound of cunnus (cunt) and lingō (lick). (Cunnilingus originally meant a person who performed oral sex on a clitoris or vulva in English, but shifted to its current meaning sometime in the twentieth century. Although cunnus and cunt sound like cognates, Cunning Linguists have yet to conclusively establish a relationship, as the etymology of cunnus remains unclear; some linguists have suggested both obscenities may be related to the Latin cuneus, meaning wedge, but this is not unanimously accepted. Cunning, while we're at it, is etymologically unrelated; it descends from the Old English cunnan, meaning to know how or to be able.)
  
  However, a lot of other "polite" or medical terms in English were similarly not particularly obscene in Latin. Penis comes directly from the Latin pēnis, which could also figuratively mean lust (pēnis also had an archaic meaning of tail; cauda came to replace it). Testicle is derived from the Latin testiculus, the diminuitive of testis, which either meant testicle or one who testifies or attests. (In other words, testicle and testify have the same etymological root. Isn't language fun?) Vulva and vagina also both come directly from Latin, although interestingly, vulva referred to the internal genitalia and the womb in Latin, but it's used exclusively for the external genitalia in English. Vagina originally meant sheath or hull in Latin, but by medieval times, it also acquired its anatomical meaning. Note that the English medical usage of vagina refers exclusively to the internal genitalia, but colloquially it can mean the external genitalia as well. And now that we've made genitalia stop sounding like a word, we'll note that it comes from the Latin genitālia, the nominative neuter plural of genitālis ("of or related to generation or birth"). Uterus also comes directly from Latin. Labium and its more common plural labia likewise come from Latin, in which they meant lip or axle. Clitoris, on the other hand, comes from the Ancient Greek κλειτορῐ́ς (kleitorís), though it was absorbed into post-classical Latin sometime in the sixteenth century.
  
  As is to be expected, That Other Wiki has a lot more info on Latin obscenity.
• Eternal 1.3 uses the phrase "imperátrícés cónstituunt malás amantés", which translates as "Empresses make bad lovers," in Leela's login screen for "Where Giants Have Fallen". She has a corresponding logoff screen saying "débés tuum imperium vénumdare", which translates roughly as "You should put your empire on sale." These messages are not actually directed at the player, but are an oblique way of signalling her suspicions that Hathor has somehow become the Pfhor Empress. They also double as a Shout-Out to Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman", which contains the lines "Rulers make bad lovers/You'd better put your kingdom up for sale."
• In 1.3, "The Near Side of Everywhere" has a terminal with the entire "I have been Roland, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Achilles" terminal can be found rendered into Latin of perhaps dubious grammatical quality. This was some four pages of text, mind you, which might place it in Overly Long Gag territory. Post-preview 3, these have been replaced with terminal images featuring the text written over MidJourney prompts; counting images with no text (to mark paragraph breaks), there are fourteen of these. (They can be viewed here (images 03520 to 03533), but beware spoilers, and note that some images are vaguely NSFW, though even the most severe examples still qualify as PG-13.) Preview 5 also moves them to a rather difficult-to-access secret terminal, because it also introduces another example.
• Starting in 1.3 preview 5, the music for "The Near Side of Everywhere" has Latin vocals:
  Sakhmet odiósa, té superábó
  Déstrúctor Apep déléndus
  Pthia Arxque, té vindicábó
  Furor meus retinendus
  
  Malitátés meás paeniteó
  Illórum necábam nunc misereó
  Maat, dona eis pietátem
  Nephthys, dona eis pácem
  
  Márce, aliquandó paenitébó
  Et dénuó tuí árdébó
  Spero qui mi poteris ignóscere
  Etsí numquam poteró merére
  
  Té amábam
  Té amábó
  Ac paeniteó
  • The first twelve lines are from the opening movement, "Dona eis pietátem" ("Grant Them Mercy"); the last three are found at the close of the level's rendition of "Swirls". The penultimate terminal of the game, which uses Hathor's login, helpfully features the song lyrics, then translates them as:
    Hateful Sakhmet, I shall overcome you
    The destroyer Apep is to be destroyed
    Pthia and the Arx, I shall avenge you
    My wrath is to be restrained
    
    I repent of my evils
    I now lament those I killed
    Ma'at, grant them mercy
    Nephthys, grant them peace
    
    Marcus, someday I'll be sorry
    And burn with love for you again
    I hope you'll be able to forgive me
    Even though I'll never be able to earn it
    
    I loved you
    I will love you
    And I am sorry

Eternal Map Writing

• Several maps in the 1.3 preview, when opened with the map editor Weland, contain writing in Latin - in addition to the map credits (which are usually written somewhere on the map in Latin), you can also frequently find what appears to be song lyrics on many of them translated to Gratuitous Latin (making them also double as Shout-Outs). As of 1.3 preview 6, the map includes the following:
  • "Deja Vu All Over Again": "Erámus omnés húc ante. (RIP DC, MCMXLI-MMXXIII)" Translation: "We have all been here before." A quote from — what else? — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Déjà vu". "DC" is, of course, David Crosby.
  • "Sakhmet Rising": "Nónne potes mé pulsántem audíre?" In memoriam C. Watts (MCMXLI-MMXXI). Translation: "Can't you hear me knocking?" A tribute to Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, who passed away during the development of 1.3.
  • "Remedial Chaos Theory": "Nón obligás habilitáre lúcem rubeam." This is Gratuitous Latin for "You don't have to put on the red light," a line from The Police's song "Roxanne" - which is played something like six or seven times in the Community episode "Remedial Chaos Theory", which gives the level its name (see ShoutOut.Marathon Expanded Universe for more). A more literal translation would be "You're not obligated to empower the red light" - the Police's idiomatic use of "put on the red light" is difficult to render accurately in Latin. (The codirector posted a Weland screenshot◊ of this level showing the map writing in a YouTube video description.)
  • "The Tangent Universe":
    Incipimur id dénuó.
    Cúr nón possumus incipere id dénuó?
    Modo sine nós incipere id dénuó,
    Et erimus boní.
    Hoc tempus faciémus id récté.
    Est opportúnitás ultima nostra ignóscere nós ipsós.
    • Translation:
      Let's start it over again.
      Why can't we start it over again?
      Just let us start it over again,
      And we'll be good.
      This time we'll get it right.
      It's our last chance to forgive ourselves.
    • Which comes from Muse's "Exogenesis: Symphony Part III (Redemption)".
  • "The Living Receiver":
    Castra panopliae máiestátisque
    Quis is libertás optiónis?
    Ubi stó in spectáculó?
    Cuií est vóx mea?
    Nón sentítur tam pessimum nunc
    Cógitó terminum est initum
    Incipió sentíre laetissimus nunc
    Omnia sunt pars
    Omnia sunt seorsa
    Omnia sunt pars
    • Translation:
      Camps of panoply and majesty
      What is freedom of choice?
      Where do I stand in the pageantry?
      Whose is my voice?
      It doesn't feel so very bad now
      I think the end is the start
      Begin to feel very glad now
      All things are a part
      All things are apart
      All things are a part
    • Which comes from Van der Graaf Generator's "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers".
  • "Let Sleeping Gods Die":
    Equitábimus spíram ad finem
    Eámus etiam ubí némó ívit
    Torqué forís
    Continua íens
    • Translation:
      We'll ride the spiral to the end
      We may just go where no one's been
      Spiral out
      Keep going
    • Which comes from tool's "Lateralus", the relevance to the level being that it ends with a lengthy spiral staircase upwards.
  • "The Abyss Gazes Also" (formerly "S'pht Happens"):
    Quid si omnia té né essent pléné tam vidébantur?
    Quid si omnis mundis ut cogitábaris ut sciébáris, esset somnium élabórátum?
    Et si vidéris reflexiónem tuam, estne omni ut désíderáris ea esse?
    Quid si possés vidére réctá per rímás?
    Invenírésné tutumet metuentem vidére?
    • Translation:
      What if everything around you weren't quite as it seemed?
      What if all the world you thought you knew were an elaborate dream?
      And if you look at your reflection, is it all you want it to be?
      What if you could look right through the cracks?
      Would you find yourself afraid to see?
    • A slight paraphrase of the chorus of Nine Inch Nails' "Right Where It Belongs", which relates heavily to the existential crisis Leela has been suffering after... looking right through the cracks, in a sense.
  • "Second to Last of the Mohicans":
    Nóminas eam pluvia, sed nomen humanum
    Nón significat merdam arborí
    • Translation:
      You call it rain, but the human name
      Doesn't mean shit to a tree
    • Which comes from Jefferson Airplane's "Eskimo Blue Day".
  • "The Manipulated Dead":
    Ubi mundus est ínfirmí, potestne némó sánus esse?
    Sed somniábam essémus omnés pulchrí potentésque
    • Translation:
      When the world is sick, can no one be well?
      But I dreamt we were all beautiful and strong
    • Which comes from the canon at the end of Silver Mt. Zion's "God Bless Our Dead Marines", minus a bit of non-standard grammar the band used that might sound awkward if translated accurately to Latin.
  • "Flight of Icarus":
    Vellem voláre, sed álae meae sic negátae erant.
    • Translation:
      I'd like to fly, but my wings have been so denied. ^{Latin grammar note} Interestingly, vellem and voláre take the same form in first-person singular active indicative (which is how Latin verbs are usually listed in dictionaries): volō. The phrase may have been translated this way precisely because of this coincidence. However, the two words are completely different verbs; the former means I wish, I want, I intend, I am willing, or I am preparing, while the latter means I fly. Vellem is the first-person singular imperfect active subjunctive (thus, I would like or I should like), while voláre is the present active infinitive (thus, to fly).
    • From Alice in Chains' "Down in a Hole".
  • "Bug-Eyed in Space"
    Capiébat horam
    Fortasse diem
    Sed simulac véró auscultábam
    Clangor modo évánéscébat
    • Translation:
      It took an hour
      Maybe a day
      :But once I really listened
      The noise just fell away
    • Which comes from Liz Phair's "Straford-on-Guy".
  • "Run, Coward!":
    Sum modo laeta ubí pluit
    Scis amó id ubí ácta sunt mala
    Et cúr id sentítur tam bona sentíra tam maesta
    Sum modo laeta ubí pluit
    • Translation:
      I'm only happy when it rains
      You know I love it when the news is bad
      And how it feels so good to feel so sad
      I'm only happy when it rains
    • Which comes from Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains" - most likely the creators felt it was an appropriate summation of Hathor's attitude at this stage in the game.
  • "The Ensurance Trap":
    Díc mí omnés tuás cógitátiónés dé Deó
    Propter díligerem scíre Eam
    Quaerereque Eam cúr sumus quí sumus
    Díc mí omnés tuás cógitátiónés dé Deó
    Propter sum iéns vísitáre Eam
    Sic díc mí, sumne remotissimus?
    • Translation:
      Tell me all your thoughts on God
      Because I'd really like to meet Her
      And ask her why we're who we are
      Tell me all your thoughts on God
      Because I'm on my way to see Her
      So tell me, am I very far?
    • Which comes from Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars".
  • "Once More Unto the Breach..."
    Iam mútátió obruit corpus suum
    Ea né mé videt iam
    • Translation:
      Now change has come over her body
      She doesn't see me anymore
    • Which comes from Judas Priest's "Victim of Changes". In this case, the change that's come over Hathor's body is that she no longer has one - which Leela clearly (and, ultimately, correctly) delineates in the level as the likeliest cause of the former's Face–Heel Turn.
    • On the same map:
      Obsidés omnes; sub coercitióne sclopétí
      Rotávérunt rotam et sperunt
      qui quod tenuérunt véndibilis esse;
      labor unius véndibilis débet.
      Violentia it profundior, violentia indélébilis...
      
      Creáta labóre tuó, aedificátum ossibus tuís.
      SUNT NULLÍ MAGNÍ HOMINÉS - SOLO MAGNÍ MULTÍ!
    • Translation:
      Hostages all; at gunpoint
      they spun the wheel and hoped
      that what they had was sellable;
      one's labor must be sellable.
      The violence goes deeper, violence indelible...
      
      Built with your labour, fuelled with your bones.
      THERE ARE NO GREAT MEN - ONLY THE GREAT MANY!
    • Which comes from Ashenspire's "Tragic Heroin".
  • "Genie in a Bottle":
    Distrahe hanc mácinátiónem
    Reprogramma hós oculós
    Abróga hunc cónsilium [...]
    Cónfringe hanc mendácem máchinam
    • Translation:
      Disassemble this machinery
      Re-program these eyes
      Undo this design [...]
      Break this deceitful machine
    • Which comes from Meshuggah's "Clockworks".
  • "The Dead Live in the Catacombs" gives away the translation of its Latin alongside the text, but the Stealth Pun might take a minute. "[Mortuí] ...nón viantés sunt, et hic nón pléne in capite meó erat" translates as "[The Dead] ...ain't touring, and this wasn't all in my head." The line comes from tool's "Rosetta Stoned". The joke is that it's treating the level title, "The Dead Live in the Catacombs", as "The Dead - Live in the Catacombs", as though it were a live album by the Grateful Dead.
  • "Haec caverna nón fórmátió nátúrális" ("This Cave Is Not a Natural Formation") doesn't have song lyrics, but it does mention a (presumably fictitious) book:
    Haec caverna nón fórmátió nátúrális:
    Sal sapientiaque collécta Cortanae
    Prómptus hic autumnus é Simone Schusterque
    • Translation:
      This Cave Is Not a Natural Formation:
      The Collected Wit & Wisdom of Cortana
      Available this fall from Simon & Schuster
  • "Dark Grotto of the Lethe" (formerly "Deep into the Grotto"):
    Ita, sunt duae semitáe potes viáre, sed tandem,
    Adhuc est tempus permútare iter es in.
    • Translation:
      Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run,
      There's still time to change the road you're on.
    • Which comes from one of the most famous songs of all time, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven". This is one of five "branch levels" in Eternal, all of which in fact present two paths the player can go by. The level also contains "Quaesó impetrá novum computátrum," which translates as "Please get a new computer," the direct relevance being that we spend the whole level shutting off the memory banks that house most of Hathor's memories and then destroying the CPU that's supposedly powering her, though this also doubles as a reference to an old Pfhorums in-joke at the expense of a user that kept asking the Aleph One developers to do extra work to keep Aleph One running on his already ancient PowerMac.
  • "Teneó affectum malum dé hóc":
    Né reminíscor
    Né meminí
    Né teneó memoriam cuiusquam omnínó
    • Loosely translating as:
      I don't remember
      I don't recall
      I've got no memory of anything at all
    • Which comes from Peter Gabriel's "I Don't Remember". This serves as a Gallows Humour summation of exactly Hathor's problem at this stage of the game.
  • "The Philosophy of Time Travel":
    Odiósus est creátúra quae dissipáret potentiam leváre oculum ad caelum, cónsciéns temporis fugácis híc.
    • Translation:
      Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here.
    • Which comes from tool's "Right in Two". As of August 2022, it also has:
      Violentia est hīc, camisiae nigrae modernae in viīs
      Quī ūtilitās est cīvīlitās in faciē crepīdinis plēnus dē dentibus?
      Nē est systēma frāctum, sed prōductum eius.
      Nē potes reficere id quod operātur ut intentum.
      Frendēns-dentatum prelum typographicum, vīrulentum, causticum.
      Ligāvērunt fascēs per ipsōs. Acuērunt asciam.
      Scī hoc: Nē requiēscunt, nec legunt rēgulās.
      Sunt dēspērātī prō bellō, salīvantēs prō eō!
      Si Via Saphōn dēnuō ēveniet, nē spatium prō disputātiōnī est.
      Nē potes ratiōcinārī malitiā. Fasces cōnfringendī sunt!
      
      Si hic contra frūmentum est, tunc ūrēdō vere rādīcābat.
      Sulcāns superciliōrum, suppūrātiō cēnsūrae, dēfōrmis flexusque.
      Nē est futuentem angulī taberna quae auget pēnsiōnem tuam.
      Saliērunt humum. Dēfossus tenus tuā cervīce in dēbitīs statiōnis tuae.
      Sed hic est ubī id terminat. Nē est media via.
      Et tī digō: Dēscende ab saepe ante fīlum hāmātum it sūrsum!
    • This translates roughly as:
      The violence is here, modern Blackshirts in the streets.
      What good is civility in the face of a kerb full of teeth?
      ’Tis no broken system, but the product of it.
      You cannot fix that which is working as intended.
      Gnashing-toothed printing press, virulent, caustic.
      They bound the fasces themselves. Sharpened the axe.
      Know this: They aren’t resting, nor reading the rules.
      They’re desperate for war, gagging for it!
      If it’s to be Cable Street again, we won’t win through debate.
      You can’t reason with malice. The fasces must break!
      
      If this is against the grain, then the blight really has set in.
      The furrowing of brows and the festering of blame, misshapen and bent.
      It’s not the fucking corner shop that drives up your rent.
      They salted the soil! Buried up to your neck in the debts of your station.
      But this is where it ends. There’s no middle road.
      And I tell you: Get down off the fence before the barbed wire goes up!
    • Which comes from Ashenspire's "Cable Street Again". A few notes: "The fasces must break" does not actually convey the full intensity of "Fasces cōnfringendī sunt." This uses the gerundive, so a literal translation would be closer to "The fasces are to be broken"; however, "There is no choice but to break the fasces" is far closer to its rhetorical intensity. Also, "futuentem" is a hyper-literal translation of "fucking", which wouldn't have been used that way in Latin; it may have been translated that way to introduce a bit of levity into an otherwise extremely grim passage. (Latin would've used different obscenities to convey contempt where we'd use fucking to do so, but the translator may have reasoned that the passage means to convey contempt not for the the corner shop itself, but for the idea that the corner shop drives up the listener's rent.) Finally, pēnsiō, confusingly, could mean payment, instalment, recompense, or (obviously) pension; in this context, though, it means rent payment.
      
      The relevance of this passage to Eternal's story - and to this level in particular - may not become fully apparent until a few levels later, but effectively, in this level, Leela demonstrates to the player the Ascended Jjaro's rigid opposition to any changes to what they consider the proper course of history. Unfortunately, what they consider the proper course of history results in the complete destruction of the entire galaxy starting when Admiral Ksandr launches the novam praemátúram in "This Message Will Self-Destruct", the first level of this chapter's "success" branch. The Ascended Jjaro believe themselves to be fighting the W'rkncacnter that is trying to destroy the entire galaxy, whom Hathor nicknames "Apep" after the Egyptian deity, but as Durandal points out on the final level, by insisting on a timeline in which the galaxy is destroyed, they are in practice giving Apep exactly what it wants and thus serving as its greatest allies. Yet, for the Ascended Jjaro, this is "working as intended". Thus, we can't afford the luxury of neutrality: we must get off the fence and oppose them. Working out the Reality Subtext here will be left as an exercise for the reader.
  • "This Message Will Self-Destruct":
    Laxá propulsiónem tullií
    Balláns ergá futurum nóstrum
    Futurum nihilí
    Futurum ergá nihilum
    VALÉ AD OMNIA
    • Translation:
      Jet propulsion, disengage
      Dancing towards our future
      A future of nothing
      A future towards nothing
      GOODBYE TO EVERYTHING
    • Which comes from Between the Buried and Me's "Silent Flight Parliament". Spoiler for both the source material and Eternal 1.3: The relevance is that these lyrics accompany Prospect 2 being mind-controlled into activating the Black Box and destroying humanity. However, the live version of the album presents itself as a warning: "If this transmission is received, there is hope. Mold this hope towards change." This is uncannily relevant to Eternal's plot, in fact: the text is written next to a terminal from a Pfhor admiral who became an Unwitting Instigator of Doom by unleashing the trih xeem on the Jjaro Arce, thinking that doing so would save the entire galaxy from the W'rkncacnter somnia that had overrun his ship - in fact, owing to the nature of the Arce, this leads to the destruction of the galaxy. This is, it turns out, exactly what the W'rkncacnter wanted (just as activating the Black Box was exactly what the Night Owls wanted). However, since we know that this happened, we can prevent it next time around - or so we hope.
  • "We Met Once in the Garden": "Temperá odium meum cum páce," which translates as "Temper my hatred with peace" and comes from Liz Phair's "Help Me Mary". The map also contains a number of stage directions about where characters start/exit, also in Latin, as well as the phrase "Aut futue, aut pugnémus", mentioned above as meaning "Either fuck me, or let's fight" and coming from Martial's Epigrams.
  • "Where Giants Have Fallen":
    Eho, vir vetus, quómodo potes perpetí cógitáns quó modó?
    Cógitábatisne véró dé eó ante creáverátis régulás?
    • Translation:
      Hey, old man, how can you stand to think that way?
      Did you really think about it before you made the rules?
    • Which comes from Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is". As of May 2022, it also has:
      Deinde, in clívó distáns,
      Vidébat únum sine spé
      Fugere retro súrsum látum montis.
      Cógitábat cognóscébat eum per incessum suum,
      Et per modum qui cadébat,
      Et per modum qui surgébat
      et vánéscébat in áerem.
    • Translation:
      Then, on a distant slope,
      He observed one without hope
      Flee back up the mountainside.
      He thought he recognised him by his walk,
      And by the way he fell,
      And by the way he stood up
      and vanished into air.
    • Which comes from Genesis' "One for the Vine", which (spoilers for both original work and Eternal) contains a similar Stable Time Loop to Eternal's (and obviously, there's the mountain as well). The protagonist's development is comparable to Hathor's in that he is caught in a recurring cycle of warfare and revenge, and he - and the listener - are not actually aware of its cyclical nature until the climax of the story. (Also, the final line is a case of The Ending Changes Everything, which is also comparable to how Eternal conceals a substantial portion of its backstory until its final few levels.) One difference between the two stories, however, is that Eternal's time loop is not actually set in stone, but is simply the result of two powerful factions (the ascended Jjaro and the W'rkncacnter) manipulating events to reach their own desired outcomes; Eternal's ending makes it clear that Hathor and Marcus are both now seeking to break the time loop, however, and implies that the next iteration may end quite differently. By contrast, it's not clear whether "One for the Vine"'s time loop can be broken; if it can, the iteration described in the song is unlikely to do so.
    • And also:
      Mulier in nigritiá fugiébat súrsum montem, et funditor sclopétórum sequebátur.
    • Translation:
      The woman in black fled up the mountain, and the gunslinger followed.^{Linguistic notes} The shining black of nigritia (noun form of niger) can be contrasted with the dull, shadowy black of atritas (noun form of ater) and the wan, almost grey black of fuscitās (noun form of fuscus, which can also mean brown or dark). Latin has no word meaning exactly gunslinger; the phrase funditor sclopétórum literally translates as slinger of guns.
    • Which is a quote from The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower (2004) by Stephen King with three words modified to fit Eternal (the original is "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" [emphasis added]). (Spoiler for both original work and Eternal: The Dark Tower series contains a similar time loop to Eternal's that has recurred in similar, but not identical, iterations, and both works' endings suggest that the next iteration may result in a better outcome and possibly even break the loop entirely.)
  • "The Near Side of Everywhere":
    Sícut tempus ubí fúgí
    Et gýráví
    Et tú stábás prope mé
    • Translation:
      Like the time (when) I ran away
      (And) turned around
      And you were standing close to me
    • Which are a slight paraphrase of the final words to Yes' "Awaken" - which serves as another Stealth Pun, since that is exactly what the player is about to do. (The words in parentheses do not appear in the original lyric; they were presumably added to make the meaning of the Latin clearer.)
    • There's also:
      Quia finis numquam dictus,
      érogámus aureís fábulátórem
      in spébus qui revertétur,
      sed né potest émí seu véndí
    • Translation:
      Since the end is never told,
      we pay the teller off in gold
      in hopes (that) he will return,
      but he cannot be bought or sold.
    • Which comes from the Grateful Dead's "Terrapin, Part 1", from Terrapin Station (1977). (Again, the parenthetical "that" is not part of the original lyric and was presumably added for clarity's sake.)
    • And:
      Possumus ambuláre viam nostram idipsum
      si ambitiónés nostrae sunt omnés eádem.
      Possumus currere sólí líberíque
      si persequimur propositum differentem.
      Illúminétur amóris véritátem.
      Lúceat cláram véritátis amórem.
      Sénsibilitás, armáta cum sénsú líbertáteque,
      cum corde menteque únítá in úná sphaerá perfectá.
    • Translation:
      We can walk our road together
      If our goals are all the same
      We can run alone and free
      If we pursue a different aim
      Let the truth of love be lighted
      Let the love of truth shine clear
      Sensibility, armed with sense and liberty
      With the heart and mind united in a single perfect sphere
    • Which comes from Rush's "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres". This track has a comparable Take a Third Option stance to Eternal's; it argues that logic without emotions and emotions without logic are both unhealthy stances, in much the same way that Eternal argues that both too much order and too much chaos are undesirable. The biggest difference is that in "Hemispheres", both Apollo and Dionysus are well-intentioned; the same can hardly be said of the Ascended Jjaro or the W'rkncacnter in Eternal.
    • And finally, as of preview 6:
      Numquam veró erat proelium pró mé vincere. Erat saltátió aeterna. Ac sicuti aliqua saltátió, rigidior fíébam, difficilior saltátió fíébat. Magis exsecrábar vestígia inconcinna mea, magis lúctábar. Igitur adoléscébam, ac discébam mollíre, ac illa saltátió fíébat facilior.
      Est haec saltátió aeterna quae dívidit hominés ab angelís, ab daemonibus, ab dís. Ac debeó né oblívíscí, débémus né oblívíscí, ut sumus hominés.
    • Translation, with extra context provided (the parts included on the map are in bold):
      When I was seventeen years old, I shouted out into an empty room, into a blank canvas, that I would defeat the forces of evil. And for the next ten years of my life, I suffered the consequences, with autoimmunity illness and psychosis.
      As I got older, I realized there were no real winners and there were no real losers in psychological warfare, but there were victims, and there were students. It wasn’t David versus Goliath; it was a pendulum eternally swaying from the dark to the light, and the more intensely that the light shone, the darker a shadow it cast.
      It was never really a battle for me to win. It was an eternal dance. And like any dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I struggled. So I got older, and I learned to relax, and I learned to soften, and that dance got easier.
      It is this eternal dance that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods. And I must not forget, we must not forget, that we are human beings.
    • Which comes from Ren's "Hi Ren". As with the previous track, there is also a Take a Third Option aspect here that heavily reflects the game's themes (and its inclusion of multiple Title Drops for the game itself is clearly a bonus). Interestingly, the sentence before the excerpt on the map ends with an example of enantiodromia paraphrased from none other than Carl Jung.

Others

• Phoenix has the level "Sanctum sanctorum"^{With macrons} Sānctum sānctōrum ("Holy of Holies").^{Long linguistic digression} According to That Other Wiki, this in turn originated as a slight mistranslation of a Hebrew term קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים (Qṓḏeš HaqQŏḏāšîm) used in the Hebrew Bible to refers to the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle in which God's presence appeared; the correct translation would have been "Sancta sanctorum" ("Holies of Holies"), which is simply the plural of "Sanctum sanctorum". However, "Sanctum sanctorum" has been far more commonly used in English-language writings for centuries (Romance languages have tended to use the plural). Part of the confusion may have been that the Hebrew term came to Latin by way of the ancient Greek “ἅγιον τῶν ἁγίων” (hágion tōn hagíōn, literally "Holy of the Holies"), which appears in the Greek New Testament and is rendered in the Vulgate - quite accurately - as "sanctum sanctorum".
  
  The King James Version always renders the phrase "sanctum sanctorum" as "Most Holy Place," incidentally, which may be more faithful to the spirit of the original Hebrew phrase than a literal translation, since it is intended to express a superlative; similar phrases appear throughout Hebrew scriptures as "servant of servants" (Gen 9:25), "Sabbath of Sabbaths" (Ex 31:15), "God of gods" (Deut 10:17), "Vanity of vanities" (Eccl 1:2), "Song of Songs" (Song of Songs 1:1), "King of Kings" (Ezra 7:12), and others.
  
  More on the phrase here.
• The level name "Sic friat crustulum" from Origin of Species literally translates as "Thus Crumbles the Cookie," a loose rendering of the idiom "That's the way the cookie crumbles."
• Gemini Station has three examples in its level titles:
  • "In partibus infidelium"^{With macrons} In partibus īnfidēlium means "In the Parts of the Infidels" or "In the Lands of the Unbelievers".
  • "taurus ≈ torus" is derived from Latin words that can mean "bull" and "ring", respectively (both have several other meanings). The map writing is subtitled "The Bull Ring", and the level is in fact ring-shaped. ("Taurus", always seen with a capital T, is only used in English to refer to a bull-shaped constellation, a sign of the Zodiac, and an automobile; "torus" is used in English with several meanings.)
  • "Aquae perturbae" is probably intended to mean "Troubled Waters", but is slightly grammatically incorrect; the correct form would be "Aquae perturbatae"^{With macrons} Aquae perturbātae.
• Marathon Apotheosis:
  • Noah provides several examples in the final level, "Gravin Threndor" (or "The Arch of Time" in Apotheosis X):
    • "Deus ex Machina"^{With macrons} Deus ex māchinā - note that, since "ex" is usually followed by the ablative case, it's māchinā rather than māchina (found in the login), of course, means "God out of the machine".
    • "Fiat justicia ruat caelum"^{With macrons} Fīat jūsticia ruat caelum means "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall," or "Let there be justice, though the heavens fall." A common Latin legal phrase, although more often seen rendered as "Fīat jūstitia ruat caelum" (both spellings are correct; iūstitia is also correct, and caelum may also be seen as cælum). This exact phrase appears to have originated in the 17th century and is used to signify that there must be justice, regardless of the consequences.
    • "Machina angelorum sunt"^{With macrons} Māchina angelōrum sunt (found in the logoff) appears to be intended to mean either "The machines are of angels" or "The machine is of angels" - the former would be "Māchinae angelōrum sunt", whereas the latter would be "Māchina angelōrum est."^{Grammatical digression} Sunt is the third-person plural of sum, I am, whereas est is the third-person singular. In all likelihood, the confusion was a result of angelōrum being plural and māchina singular. Since angelōrum is in the genitive case, "māchina angelōrum sunt" appears to translate literally as "The machine are of angels." This is corrected in Apotheosis X's "The Arch of Time" to "Machina angelorum est" ("the machine is of angels").
  • From the secret credits terminal in "Gravin Threndor": "Contra Felicem, vix deus vires habet"^{With macrons} Contrā Fēlīcem, vix deus vīrēs habet: "Against a lucky man, a god scarcely has power." A quotation from the Sententiae (essentially, proverbs or aphorisms) by Publilius Syrus.
• Trojan has a level entitled "Non dormit, qui custodit,"^{With macrons} Nōn dormit, quī cū̆stōdit which translates roughly to "Anyone who guards does not sleep," or, slightly less literally, "A guardian does not sleep."^note (The latter could be expressed more literally and succinctly as "Cū̆stōs nōn dormit.")
• The net map pack Paradise Lost has a level called "Oculus ex inferni". This is grammatically incorrect Latin for "Eye from Hell" or "Eye out of Hell", though the grammatical error isn't Ryoko's: it's referring to the Album Intro Track of the Symphony X album after which the entire pack is named - in turn named for (and based on) John Milton's epic poem of the same name. The correct form, if you're wondering, would have been "Oculus ex īnfernō": ex governs the ablative case. (Īnfernī is used for the genitive singular, the nominative plural, and the vocative plural.)
• The net map pack Infra Apogee has a level called "Tempus Fugit" on the level select/gather network game screen. The translation of this is correctly given on the overhead map: "Time flies".
• The net map pack Imperium is an example: the most common translation is empire, its direct linguistic descendant, though it has numerous other translations. It also has a level called either "Lorem Opus" or "Magnum Ipsum" (it's the former on the level select/gather network game screen, and the latter on the overhead map). This is a play on the Latin phrase Magnum Opus (great work) and the pseudo-Latin lorem ipsum (the nonsense text used in graphic design and typesetting). Lorem ipsum is derived from dolōrem ipsum, a phrase from a passage in Cicero's Dē fīnibus bonōrum et mālōrum (On the Ends of Good and Evil) of which the most commonly seen versions of the lorem ipsum text are corruptions. (The lorem ipsum text avoids using real Latin because it's supposed to emphasise the design rather than the text, and if it used real text with actual meaning, people that knew Latin might focus more on the meaning of the text.) The complete passage is:
  "Nēmō enim ipsam voluptātem, quia voluptās sit, āspernātur aut ōdit aut fugit, sed quia cōnsequuntur magnī dolōrēs eos, qui ratiōne voluptātem sequī nesciunt. Neque porrō quisquam est, qui dolōrem ipsum, quia dolor sit amet, cōnsectētur adipīscī velit, sed quia nōn numquam eius modī tempora incidunt, ut labōre et dolōre magnam aliquam quaerat voluptātem."
  • Which means:
    "No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure."
• An old three-level scenario was entitled Arx immanis.^{With macrons} Arx immānis Since both words in the title have multiple meanings, this can be defensibly translated in several ways, including Vast Fortress and Monstrous Tyranny. Several possible meanings of both words follow, adapted from Wiktionary.
  • Arx can mean:
    • (literally) stronghold, castle, citadel, fortress, acropolis;
    • (metaphorically) defence, protection, refuge, bulwark;
    • (metonymically) tyranny (since an arx would be the abode of a tyrant);
    • (again metonymically) height, summit, pinnacle, top, peak (since arcēs were frequently built on elevated locations).
  • Immānis can mean:
    • huge, vast, immense;
    • monstrous, inhuman, savage.
  • Oddly, both these words may already be familiar to some readers of this page: Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts players may know immānis from the phrase "sors immānis et inānis" (roughly, "a monstrous and empty fate") in Nobuo Uematsu's "One-Winged Angel" (which draws most of its lyrics, including this line, from the Carmina Burana). And of course, as noted above, Arx figures prominently in Eternal 1.3.
• This tendency has extended even to the third-party utilities used to create scenarios. The tool Atque, used as a replacement for Forge's "merge map" function, is quite cleverly derived from a Latin word meaning roughly "and also". It's part of a library called "Igni ferroque", which means "With Fire and Sword" (see the entry on "Ingue Ferroque" in GratuitousLatin.Marathon for more on this).