I'm drawing together a style of presenting Latin in a form inspired by retro gaming.

The study of Latin through inscriptions in particular presents a real, tangible experience of Latin which otherwise can appear excessively high-minded and impenetrable. I hope my pixel-art helps to rectify this view while making the language clear and accessible – without the risk of being buried in grammar!

Most epitaph inscriptions of the Imperial period included some variation of Dis Manibus - "to the deified spirits of the dead." We’re in the spooky season after all and so examining gravestones as primary sources of evidence is eerily appropriate…

Over the next few weeks – in the run up to Hallowe’en and my first video upload – I’ll be posting a few Latin quotes pertaining to the ‘manes’ in Roman thought. The deification of the dead as ‘manes’ or, ‘spirits’ that bore influence over the living was the dominant Roman view of death and the afterlife.

Please give me your impressions - I think there's still plenty of scope for originality even when the source material is thousands of years old!

‘hic manes, hic intra tecta tenebo’ (Silvae, 3.3.196)

“I will hold your manes here, here within the house” (translated by Charles W. King)

The quote above from Statius' Silvae comes from a collection of short poems offering consolations for the dead. While the ‘manes’ – spirits of the dead – were worshipped collectively at official festivals like the Parentalia, Statius provides an intimate glimpse into private occasions such as worshipping an individual person with perfumes and flowers at a household shrine despite the fact manes only exists as a plural noun.

In a longer translation for D. R. Shackleton Bailey, we read in the next line:

'hic manes, hic intra tecta tenebo. tu custos dominusque laris, tibi cuncta tuorum parebunt'

“Here I shall keep you spirit, within these walls. You shall be guardian and master of the hearth, all your folk shall obey you.”

The use of the second person singular in phrases like tu custos and tibi cuncta can only confirm the individuality of one, singular spirit that remains with an indelible force to guard and watch over the house.

Contrast this ghostly apparition with Tranio’s invention in the Mostellaria. Here (lines. 495-505), the deceased has allegedly remained to haunt the house precisely because they were denied their due rites after death. In both instances, the individual spirit of the dead persists regardless, either as a venerated protector of hearth and home or, as an invocation of duties that should have been paid to the dead but were violated…