ūsus magister est optimus
(Cicero, Rab. Post. 4.9)
Winston Churchill on his introduction to Latin at his prep school
I was taken into a Form Room and told to sit at a desk. All the other boys were out of doors, and I was alone with the Form Master. He produced a thin greenybrown covered book filled with words in different types of print.
‘You have never done any Latin before, have you?’ he said.
‘No, sir.’
‘This is a Latin grammar.’ He opened it at a well-thumbed page. ‘You must learn this,’ he said, pointing to a number of words in a frame of lines. ‘I will come back in half an hour and see what you know.’
Behold me then on a gloomy evening, with an aching heart, seated in front of the First Declension.
Mensa – a table
Mensa – O table
Mensam – a table
Mensae – of a table
Mensae – to or for a table
Mensa – by, with or from a table
What on earth did it mean? Where was the sense in it? It seemed absolute rigmarole to me. However, there was one thing I could always do: I could learn by heart. And I thereupon proceeded, as far as my private sorrows would allow, to memorise the acrostic-looking task which had been set me.
In due course the Master returned.
‘Have you learnt it?’ he asked.
‘I think I can say it, sir,’ I replied; and I gabbled it off.
He seemed so satisfied with this that I was emboldened to ask a question.
‘What does it mean, sir?’
‘It means what it says. Mensa, a table. Mensa is a noun of the First Declension’.
There are five declensions. You have learnt the singular of the First Declension.
‘But,’ I repeated,’ what does it mean?’
‘Mensa means a table,’ he answered.
Then why does mensa also mean O table,’ I enquired, ‘and what does O table mean?’
‘Mensa, O table, is the vocative case,’ he replied.
‘But why O table?’ I persisted in genuine curiosity.
‘O table – you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table.’ And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, ‘You would use it in speaking to a table.’
‘But I never do,’ I blurted out in honest amazement.