O Bone Deus: Adventures with the Vocative

 O Bone Deus 

o bone deus, hi sunt ipsi, qui imputant suam culpam in medicamentis quasi nihil proficientibus. Scribonius Largus, Compositiones Medicamentorum 84

Never heard of Scribonius Largus, author of the Compositiones? I’m not surprised.  Nor is Felipe Fernandez Del Castillo, MD, who is both a nephrologist and a classicist. “It is easy to see why,” the good doctor explains:

The Compositiones Medicamentorum is a distinctly “low yield” book. Written in tortured Latin, the book contains about 300 medication recipes: lists of ingredients and instructions for turning them into remedies. Few anecdotes relieve the monotony, and though some of Scribonius’ remedies are intriguing, and fewer are plausible, most are either useless or harmful.

Castillo goes on to quote another physician with expertise in classical studies, Guido Majno, who proclaimed that ““if the Latin of Celsus is . . . a glass of sparkling wine, that of Scribonius is not far from dishwater.”  Ouch. And yet the quote from chapter 84 of his Compositiones at the top of this page occupies a unique place in classical literature.

 An Elusive Vocative 

Honestly, I never set out to write about Scribonius. Or is it Largus? One source warns that, when looking him up, it’s never certain whether you’ll find him listed under “S” or L.” In any case, I had started writing about a much more acclaimed Latin stylist, Horace.  I wanted to look at the way he uses a series of images to create something like a modern “photo story” in his Soracte ode (Ode 1.9).

My article, however, keep getting longer and longer. And the longer it got, the more complicated it became.  Eventually, I just set it aside.  Maybe it’ll be a book someday.

 What is the Vocative Form? 

Intending to take up a briefer and narrower topic, I decided to write about the vocative case of the noun deus. Well, that’s not as simple as it might first appear, either. I had never given it much thought until somebody asked me directly, “What is the vocative singular of deus?” I quickly answered that, according to the rules, it would be dee (two syllables, de-e).  But I was almost immediately troubled by the fact that I couldn’t recall ever seeing that form.  In fact, I couldn’t recall ever seeing the vocative singular of the word for “god” in classical Latin.

Christian Latin, of course, is a different story. Invoking God by title is fairly common there. Christian writers, however, do not follow the usual rules for the 2nd Declension singular vocative. They universally use the nominative Deus as the vocative as well.  There’s no definitive reason why. Certainly, the lack of an attested form left Christians free to create one that seemed suitable to them. I always assumed that the nominative just seemed more reverent, possibly because Dee just sounded a little goofy.  It did to me, anyway.

 Was there or wasn’t there? 

But that leaves the question, why was there no vocative singular for deus in classical Latin? At least, that’s our assumption.  Granted, some sources (Wheelock’s Latin, for example) assure us that the form was dee, as we would assume.  But they don’t provide any examples.  Because there aren’t any.  We get a fuller explanation from the venerable  Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges:

The vocative singular of deus does not occur in classic Latin, but is said to have been dee; deus (like the nominative) occurs in the Vulgate. For the genitive plural, dīvum or dīvom (from dīvus,  divine) is often used.

Speaking of dīvus, I’ve seen suggestions that classical writers would have used the vocative dīve instead of the goofy dee. But of course, there are no examples of this usage either.  I also saw somewhere the assertion that the reason we never see the form is that the ancient Romans simply had no occasion to address individual gods as “god.”  Well, almost (more on that below).

 Fruit of Wax 

Classical Latin does, in fact, offer numerous examples of the plural form of the vocative of deus. Cicero, for instance, in his First Oration Against Catilina exclaims: O di immortales, ubinam gentium sumus? (In Catilinam 1.9) “O immortal gods, where in the world are we?” I am told, by the way, that “di immortales” is a frequent interjection in the Percy Jackson series. In any case, whatever the reason, the singular vocative of deus simply didn’t exist in pre-Christian Latin.

Or rather, hardly existed.  As it turns out, there are two examples that are sometimes cited.  The first is from  Carmina Priapea 42 (translation by Gaia Brusasco):

Laetus Aristagoras natis bene vilicus uvis
   de cera facili dat tibi poma, deus.

Propsperous Aristagoras,  the overseer to well-born grapes,

Gives to you, god, fruits made of wax.

A couple of observations here.  First of all, scholars have some doubts about the authenticity of this poem (that is, whether what has come down to us is as its author composed it c. mid 1st century AD).  If it is authentic, it’s not necessarily an indication of the classical use of the nominative. It may be that its author was simply modeling it on the nominative as vocative usage common in classical Greek. Also, in context, it doesn’t look like simple direct address.  It makes more sense to read it with concessive force: “. . . . gives to you, even though a god, fruits made of wax.” The author may have wanted to emphasize the difference with a more elevated form.

 “O good god. . .” 

The other example is more clearly intended as direct address.  It’s the  quote at the top of this article:

o bone deus, hi sunt ipsi, qui imputant suam culpam in medicamentis quasi nihil proficientibus. Scribonius Largus, Compositiones Medicamentorum 84

“O Good god, there are those who impute their own shortcoming to medicines, as if those were of no benefit.”

Now, the same scholars have their doubts about the soundness of this source as well. And even if the copyists have accurately transcribed the words of Scribonius Largus they warn us against trusting him as a reliable source of good usage, as we saw above. And it could be that, not a writer by trade, he just didn’t know that addressing an individual god as “god” simply wasn’t done.  At least not in literary Latin.

To be fair, his reasons for compiling the Compositiones were not literary. He was responding to a request from the emperor Claudius for a written collection of medicinal compounds. By the way, that explains why, as Dr. Castillo tartly observes, “few anecdotes relieve the monotony.” No, we wouldn’t expect amusing stories in a medical formulary. Unfortunately for Scribonius, Castillo also disparages his skill in his field of expertise: “though some of Scribonius’ remedies are intriguing,” he concedes, “and fewer are plausible, most are either useless or harmful.”

 Eels, Open Access, Etc. 

It’s worth pointing out that not all modern observers take such a dim view of Scribonius Largus. A group of European brain researchers recently published an article in the Brain Stimulation Journal* with the suggestive title “What do eels teach about open access, medical education and professional ethics? The inception of Peripheral Nerve Stimulation in ancient Rome.” It seems that one of Scribonius “intriguing” remedies was “treating chronic refractory pain by applying an electric eel to the patient’s skin.” The authors nod approvingly to Scribonius for anticipating the modern method of Peripheral Nerve Stimulation (PNS).  “[H]is significant contribution to medical education during his time,” they lament, “remains under-discussed.”

The brain researchers also offer a more generous evaluation of Scribonius as a writer as well. As they tell it, his use of “bad” Latin was intentional:

Distinct from other medical authors of his time, Largus adopted a simple language, incorporating colloquial terms. Recognizing that many of his contemporaries lacked formal education and struggled with complex scientific Greek or Latin, he chose this approach. While many esteemed physicians of the imperial court looked down on less educated practitioners, Largus communicated with them in a language they understood.

 Following Precedent 

Who knows, they may be right.  Maybe Scribonius Largus was not an inept Latin stylist, but a champion of Medical Writing for the Common Man. Either way, his work does cast some light on our discussion of the vocative singular of deus. Whether he’s doing it intentionally or not, his work is to some degree a reflection of colloquial Latin. It suggests that perhaps the common speech was not quite as skittish about addressing a god as “god.”

That’s not the only thing it suggests.  Note that Scribonius does not say “bone dee,” in accordance with the standard rule.  He instead uses the nominative form, deus, in the place of a regular vocative. The only other possible extant example from classical Latin is the one from the Priapic poem above. It does the same. No, two examples is not enough for solid proof. But it certainly raises the strong possibility that Christian writers were simply following established precedent when they used the form Deus for direct address.

 Not Cognate Yet Cognate 

One of the themes of this article is that you never know where you’ll end up when you pursue a particular topic. I had never run across Scribonius before, for instance.  Or, for that matter, Peripheral Nerve Stimulation. I also learned that something I thought I knew, I didn’t know at all.  I had long assumed that the Greek word for god, θεός (theos), was cognate with deus. They certainly look similar. The linguists tell us, however, that θεός comes from the Indo-European root dhes -, which means “set apart, sacred.”  Latin cognates are festus (“festive”)and fanum (“shrine”).  A true cognate of deus in Greek is the name Zeus (Ζεύς). The connection is clearer in other case forms of the name.  The genitive is Διός (Dios). As in Latin, in Greek we go to the genitive to find the stem.

Deus and θεός may not be cognates, but they do belong to cognate declensions.  The vocative singular of Greek –ος nouns is the same as that of Latin 2nd declension -us nouns, –e (-ε in Greek). Classical Greek writers did seem to share the Latin squeamishness about the vocative singular of the word “god” under any form. Christian Greek writers generally followed the same practice as their Latin brethren and used the nominative (ὁ θεός). 

 Lost in Translation 

Here, however, they did occasionally use the standard vocative singular θεέ. Let’s look, for example, at the familiar passage from the Gospels in which Christ calls upon God the Father with a quote from Psalm 22.  In English it reads:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 26:46)

The Latin Vulgate translation of Matthew is:

Deus meus Deus meus ut quid dereliquisti me?

As in Scribonius, the vocative of deus looks just like the nominative. Unlike the example in the Compositiones, however, here the possessive adjective is also attracted to the usual nominative form.

The original Greek from which the Latin translation derives looks like this:

θεέ μου θεέ μου, ἱνατί με ἐγκατέλιπες; (“The-e mou, The-e mou, himati me enkatelipes?”)

Even when the equivalent form is used in Greek, we never see de-e in Latin.

Off the Trail

So, there you have it.  The big lesson here, I suppose, is that reality is messy. I’m sure that’s not news to anyone.  Still, it’s good to be reminded sometimes that it applies to language as well. The rules we learn are essential guideposts.  Sometimes, however, we need to step off the marked trail.

O bone Deus, hi sunt ipsi, qui imputant suas fines in litteris quasi nihil viventibus!

*What do eels teach about open access, medical education and professional ethics? The inception of Peripheral Nerve Stimulation in ancient RomeTsagkaris, ChristosPapadakis, MariosTrompoukis, ConstantinosMatiashova, LolitaMatis, Georgios et al.Brain Stimulation: Basic, Translational, and Clinical Research in Neuromodulation, Volume 16, Issue 5, 1300 – 1301

Featured image top of page: Asclepius (center) arrives in Kos and is greeted by Hippocrates (left) and a citizen (right), mosaic, 2nd–3rd century AD (via Wikimedia Commons). Scribonius Compositiones, by the way, is the earliest extant text that mentions the Hippocratic Oath.