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This is true and a core foundation of Roman law Classical Antiquity (~100 BCE) (media.piefed.social)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] [S] 29 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Explanation: The image is from a famous (if not entirely accurate) 19th century painting depicting the Roman conspirator Catiline (pictured) being harangued by the politician and famed orator Cicero.

Catiline was accused (almost certainly correctly) of attempting to overthrow the Roman Republic... but Cicero's oratory is infamous amongst Latin students for taking forever to place the verb and stop filling up space with nested statements. DRAMATIC EFFECT

If Cicero doesn't reach the damn verb in the next 15 minutes, Catiline's coup is perfectly legal!

It's the only way Roman law could stop Cicero from going on indefinitely. 😔

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    there's a scene from a Samuel Beckett play - one of my favorites but definitely for the hard-core Beckett fan - in which two administrators are examinaning testimonials from a man's life while he stands on a window ledge working out whether he should jump to his death or not. In it they interview someone he knows and leads to one of the administrators yelling "WHERES THE VERB?!?!!" which in a better world I could post as a Relatable Meme

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I got curious what that would even sound like and tried to look it up. Is it the First of the four Catilinarian Orations?

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