#i'm not sure i count as a classicist haha

[volumina-vetustiora]

I'd be curious to hear your opinions on the Latin in Thermae Romae Novae, the Netflix adaptation of the manga Thermae Romae. It's all pretty simple and my initial impression was "Oh. Way better than I expected," but I have yet to get other classicists' eyes on it.

I watched the first episode, where the only bit of Latin was the translation of the title All Baths Lead To Rome as omnes thermae Romam ducunt, which made me happy since they correctly used the accusative without ad for "to Rome"

however after looking up some scenes of spoken Latin, I think they probably lucked out with that title as omnes viae Romam ducunt is already a phrase

the spoken Latin was clearly being delivered by someone who didn't know what it meant (though the Japanese voice actor was unsurprisingly able to preserve the correct vowel length)

from what I could make out, the grammar is not particularly good, but neither has it been completely ignored: they go for an accusative and infinitive but don't get the accusative right, they use the ablative with cum where it should be an ablative absolute, they use a gerundive but forget to put it in the right case

in that sense it probably is better than I expected - I can't say for sure but it seems like there was at least one person on the project who wanted the Latin to be correct, but they probably didn't know enough or have anyone to check their work

I don't really know enough about day-to-day life in ancient Rome to properly judge, but the scenes set in Rome seemed to have a lot of attention to detail which was nice

thanks for reminding me of this show! :)