C. Sempronius Gracchus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ad_dicendum) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2017-01-30 11:40 pm
ad_dicendum) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-01-30 11:40 pm
† equipped for oratory with every advantage of nature or training
WHO: Gaius Gracchus
WHERE: The Inn and around the village
WHEN: January 30
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: None so far
STATUS: Open!
Even after what must be a month or so here, Gaius has not yet grown used to being so completely unable to express himself to most people in this place. He'd been raised from childhood to be a man who would sweep the people of Rome before him with education, eloquence, argument. Even the men who'd hated him had admitted he was the finest speaker in Rome. Even when the people had turned from him to his enemies, it was because they had out-promised him, never because they had outspoken him.
Yet here, every morning he wakes into a world in which the barest handful of people can understand the slightest thing he says. Many of them have never even been introduced, because neither of them knows how to do so, save by baldly stating their names, which is hardly much of an introduction.
He's expecting it to be the same today when he dons his strange blue clothes and goes downstairs to the main room of the Inn for breakfast.
Except that when he hears someone call out a greeting, he understands that it means salve.
Gaius pauses, mid-step, and turns, his hand pressed to one side of his chest where the sweep of a toga would be, and listens. And finds that he can understand every word of English as though it were perfect Latin.
When he next sees one of the residents, he pauses, nods, and says, "Good morning."
The words sound strange in his voice, and he doesn't sound like the others, his accent thick and rolling, but he can speak English.
When he goes out, later that day, the black wool not-quite-cloak wrapped around him, he pauses to greet the people he passes on his way through the village. Not just with a nod, which has been usual for him up to now, but with the greeting of their own people in their own language.
He's got a lot of lost time getting to know these people to make up for.
WHERE: The Inn and around the village
WHEN: January 30
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: None so far
STATUS: Open!
Even after what must be a month or so here, Gaius has not yet grown used to being so completely unable to express himself to most people in this place. He'd been raised from childhood to be a man who would sweep the people of Rome before him with education, eloquence, argument. Even the men who'd hated him had admitted he was the finest speaker in Rome. Even when the people had turned from him to his enemies, it was because they had out-promised him, never because they had outspoken him.
Yet here, every morning he wakes into a world in which the barest handful of people can understand the slightest thing he says. Many of them have never even been introduced, because neither of them knows how to do so, save by baldly stating their names, which is hardly much of an introduction.
He's expecting it to be the same today when he dons his strange blue clothes and goes downstairs to the main room of the Inn for breakfast.
Except that when he hears someone call out a greeting, he understands that it means salve.
Gaius pauses, mid-step, and turns, his hand pressed to one side of his chest where the sweep of a toga would be, and listens. And finds that he can understand every word of English as though it were perfect Latin.
When he next sees one of the residents, he pauses, nods, and says, "Good morning."
The words sound strange in his voice, and he doesn't sound like the others, his accent thick and rolling, but he can speak English.
When he goes out, later that day, the black wool not-quite-cloak wrapped around him, he pauses to greet the people he passes on his way through the village. Not just with a nod, which has been usual for him up to now, but with the greeting of their own people in their own language.
He's got a lot of lost time getting to know these people to make up for.
no subject
"The poets would make a beautiful work of your love," he tells her, and it makes him think of loves won and lost, of the ignored pleas of his own wife that last day in Rome as he'd set out from their home. Where would Licinia be now, he wondered? Would she have turned to her brother Crassus, thinking herself widowed by the unrest in Rome? No grand tale of Rory's loyal vigilance for her.
"How did these things come to happen to you? They sound like tales of the clash of the gods, such as most men could never be involved in."
no subject
"It gets a bit complicated from there, but all you need to know is that he's my best friend and he had a box that could travel in time and space," she says, her smile tinged with sadness. "Rory and I, though, we were separated from him just before we turned up here. Still, ten years of adventures is pretty good," she says, trying to convince herself of that as much as she's trying to convince Gracchus.