P*rl in Latin, whither Python?

[Alex Martelli]

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote in message
news:3A0FF1AA.7E915ADF at holdenweb.com...
    [snip]
> > Actually, the emperor Claudius (a scholar, before events propelled
> > him to the purple) introduced the letter 'u' (he claimed that using 'v'
> > for it, an old convention, had no connection any more with current
> > pronunciation of the two sounds; spelling/pronunciation
> > correspondence was quite important to Latin scholars), though it
> > took a while to be fully accepted.
> >
> Somewhat ironic that the paperback version of Graves' wonderful
> historical novel uses the banner
>
> "I Clavdivs"
>
> for the front-cover title.  He would have been turning in his grave.

Heh, poor old scholar-become-autocrat, I think he was used to
such mistreatments...:-).  He would have probably preferred to
spell his name "Clodius", because that was how it was in fact
*pronounced*, but that would have had serious political
implications he absolutely couldn't afford -- one of his ancestors
had done that specific spelling-change, just a couple of generations
before, and had gone on to an interesting career as a populist
rabble rouser until he got assassinated in his prime (Cicero's
oration in defense of his accused assassin was one of his
greatest _as he wrote it down_, but I'm not gonna say more,
just in case you don't remember the details -- Steven Saylor
has one of his excellent historical-novel mysteries about it,
and, if you like Graves', I think you might like Saylor's too:-).


Alex