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98-549: The term "peplum" (a Latin word referring to the ancient Greek garment peplos ), was introduced by French film critics in the 1960s. The terms "peplum" and "sword-and-sandal" were used in a condescending way by film critics. Later, the terms were embraced by fans of the films, similar to the terms "spaghetti Western" or "shoot-'em-ups". In their English versions, peplum films can be immediately differentiated from their Hollywood counterparts by their use of "clumsy and inadequate" English language dubbing . A 100-minute documentary on

196-514: A beautiful girl whom he later discovers to be Fabiola, the senator's daughter. Fabius is murdered during the night by reactionary politicians opposed to Christianity, and the Christians are blamed for the murder. Fabiola suspects Rhual to be one of the Christian assassins, but at their trial he appears in their defence. However, the Christians together with Rhual are found guilty and sentenced to death in

294-526: A faster pace. It is characterised by greater use of prepositions, and word order that is closer to modern Romance languages, for example, while grammatically retaining more or less the same formal rules as Classical Latin. Ultimately, Latin diverged into a distinct written form, where the commonly spoken form was perceived as a separate language, for instance early French or Italian dialects, that could be transcribed differently. It took some time for these to be viewed as wholly different from Latin however. After

392-718: A few in German , Dutch , Norwegian , Danish and Swedish . Latin is still spoken in Vatican City, a city-state situated in Rome that is the seat of the Catholic Church . The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part, in substantial works or in fragments to be analyzed in philology . They are in part the subject matter of the field of classics . Their works were published in manuscript form before

490-404: A few. Famous and well regarded writers included Petrarch, Erasmus, Salutati , Celtis , George Buchanan and Thomas More . Non fiction works were long produced in many subjects, including the sciences, law, philosophy, historiography and theology. Famous examples include Isaac Newton 's Principia . Latin was also used as a convenient medium for translations of important works first written in

588-636: A major superhero (such as Hercules, Maciste or Samson), and as such they fall into a sort of miscellaneous category. Many were of the Cappa e spada ( swashbuckler ) variety, though they often feature well-known characters such as Ali Baba, Julius Caesar, Ulysses, Cleopatra, the Three Musketeers, Zorro, Theseus, Perseus, Achilles, Robin Hood, and Sandokan . The first really successful Italian films of this kind were Black Eagle (1946) and Fabiola (1949). Inspired by

686-399: A massively muscled character, Maciste (played by actor Bartolomeo Pagano ), who served in this premiere film as the hero's slavishly loyal sidekick. Maciste became the public's favorite character in the film however, and Pagano was called back many times to reprise the role. The Maciste character appeared in at least two dozen Italian silent films from 1914 through 1926, all of which featured

784-573: A mighty protagonist named Ursus (Italian filmmakers later made several pepla in the 1960s exploiting the Ursus character). MGM also planned Ben Hur to be filmed in Italy as early as 1952. Riccardo Freda 's Sins of Rome was filmed in 1953 and released by RKO in an edited, English-dubbed version the following year. Unlike Quo Vadis , there were no American actors or production crew. The Anthony Quinn film Attila (directed by Pietro Francisci in 1954),

882-548: A native language, Medieval Latin was used across Western and Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages as a working and literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance , which then developed a classicizing form, called Renaissance Latin . This was the basis for Neo-Latin which evolved during the early modern period . In these periods Latin was used productively and generally taught to be written and spoken, at least until

980-481: A protagonist named Maciste although the films were set in many different time periods and geographical locations. Here is a complete list of the silent Maciste films in chronological order: The Italian film industry released several historical films in the early sound era, such as the big-budget Scipione l'Africano ( Scipio Africanus : The Defeat of Hannibal ) in 1937, written by Mussolini's son Vittorio , and heavily financed by his fascist government. In 1949,

1078-551: A result, the list has variants, as well as alternative names. In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church from late antiquity onward, as well as by Protestant scholars. The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin, also called Archaic or Early Latin, which was spoken from the Roman Kingdom , traditionally founded in 753 BC, through

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1176-439: A scene of a village or city being burned to the ground by invaders. For their musical content, most films contained a colorful dancing girls sequence, meant to underline pagan decadence . Italian filmmakers paved the way for the peplum genre with some of the earliest silent films dealing with the subject, including the following: The 1914 Italian silent film Cabiria was one of the first films set in antiquity to make use of

1274-407: A separate language, existing more or less in parallel with the literary or educated Latin, but this is now widely dismissed. The term 'Vulgar Latin' remains difficult to define, referring both to informal speech at any time within the history of Latin, and the kind of informal Latin that had begun to move away from the written language significantly in the post-Imperial period, that led ultimately to

1372-529: A series of four more films featuring a generic beefcake hero named Goliath, although the films were not related to each other in any way (the 1960 Italian peplum David and Goliath starring Orson Welles was not part of this series, since that movie was just a historical retelling of the Biblical story). The titles in the Italian Goliath adventure series were as follows: (the first title listed for each film

1470-695: A small number of Latin services held in the Anglican church. These include an annual service in Oxford, delivered with a Latin sermon; a relic from the period when Latin was the normal spoken language of the university. In the Western world, many organizations, governments and schools use Latin for their mottos due to its association with formality, tradition, and the roots of Western culture . Canada's motto A mari usque ad mare ("from sea to sea") and most provincial mottos are also in Latin. The Canadian Victoria Cross

1568-429: A sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech. Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of Plautus , which contain fragments of everyday speech, gives evidence of an informal register of the language, Vulgar Latin (termed sermo vulgi , "the speech of the masses", by Cicero ). Some linguists, particularly in the nineteenth century, believed this to be

1666-565: A spoken and written language by the scholarship by the Renaissance humanists . Petrarch and others began to change their usage of Latin as they explored the texts of the Classical Latin world. Skills of textual criticism evolved to create much more accurate versions of extant texts through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and some important texts were rediscovered. Comprehensive versions of authors' works were published by Isaac Casaubon , Joseph Scaliger and others. Nevertheless, despite

1764-432: A strictly left-to-right script. During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, from about 75 BC to AD 200, a new Classical Latin arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets, historians and other literate men, who wrote the great works of classical literature , which were taught in grammar and rhetoric schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to such schools , which served as

1862-491: A syndicated TV package called The Sons of Hercules . Since few American viewers had a familiarity with Italian film heroes such as Maciste or Ursus, the characters were renamed and the films molded into a series of sorts by splicing on the same opening and closing theme song and newly designed voice-over narration that attempted to link the protagonist of each film to the Hercules mythos. These films ran on Saturday afternoons in

1960-689: A vernacular, such as those of Descartes . Latin education underwent a process of reform to classicise written and spoken Latin. Schooling remained largely Latin medium until approximately 1700. Until the end of the 17th century, the majority of books and almost all diplomatic documents were written in Latin. Afterwards, most diplomatic documents were written in French (a Romance language ) and later native or other languages. Education methods gradually shifted towards written Latin, and eventually concentrating solely on reading skills. The decline of Latin education took several centuries and proceeded much more slowly than

2058-411: Is Veritas ("truth"). Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn, and the mother of Virtue. Switzerland has adopted the country's Latin short name Helvetia on coins and stamps, since there is no room to use all of the nation's four official languages . For a similar reason, it adopted the international vehicle and internet code CH , which stands for Confoederatio Helvetica ,

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2156-857: Is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages . Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio ), the lower Tiber area around Rome , Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire . By the late Roman Republic , Old Latin had evolved into standardized Classical Latin . Vulgar Latin refers to

2254-525: Is a 1949 Italian language motion picture historical drama directed by Alessandro Blasetti , very loosely based on the 1854 novel Fabiola by Nicholas Patrick Wiseman . The film stars Michèle Morgan , Henri Vidal and Michel Simon . It tells the story of the Roman Empire in which Christianity is growing around the 4th century AD. An unofficial remake, The Revolt of the Slaves ( La Rivolta degli Schiavi ),

2352-626: Is a reversal of the original phrase Non terrae plus ultra ("No land further beyond", "No further!"). According to legend , this phrase was inscribed as a warning on the Pillars of Hercules , the rocks on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar and the western end of the known, Mediterranean world. Charles adopted the motto following the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and it also has metaphorical suggestions of taking risks and striving for excellence. In

2450-509: Is forced to fight several gladiators, but does not attempt to kill them. Eventually, the gladiators follow his example and throw down their arms. Meanwhile, the advance troops of Constantine arrive at the city walls and there is a general uprising. Peace returns to Rome, and the imperial banners display the sign of Christ. Film critic Manny Farber in the September 1, 1951 issue of The Nation wrote: “ Fabiola [concerns] Christian tribulations in

2548-548: Is found in any widespread language, the languages of Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy have retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common Christian (Roman Catholic) culture. It was not until the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711, cutting off communications between the major Romance regions, that the languages began to diverge seriously. The spoken Latin that would later become Romanian diverged somewhat more from

2646-661: Is modelled after the British Victoria Cross which has the inscription "For Valour". Because Canada is officially bilingual, the Canadian medal has replaced the English inscription with the Latin Pro Valore . Spain's motto Plus ultra , meaning "even further", or figuratively "Further!", is also Latin in origin. It is taken from the personal motto of Charles V , Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain (as Charles I), and

2744-958: Is taught at many high schools, especially in Europe and the Americas. It is most common in British public schools and grammar schools, the Italian liceo classico and liceo scientifico , the German Humanistisches Gymnasium and the Dutch gymnasium . Occasionally, some media outlets, targeting enthusiasts, broadcast in Latin. Notable examples include Radio Bremen in Germany, YLE radio in Finland (the Nuntii Latini broadcast from 1989 until it

2842-531: Is the film's original Italian title along with its English translation, while the U.S. release title follows in bold type in parentheses (note how many times Maciste's name in the Italian title is altered to an entirely different name in the American title): In 1973, the Spanish cult film director Jesus Franco directed two low-budget "Maciste films" for French producers: Maciste contre la Reine des Amazones ( Maciste vs

2940-459: Is the film's original Italian title along with its English translation, while the U.S. release title follows in bold type in parentheses) The name Goliath was also inserted into the English titles of three other Italian pepla that were re-titled for U.S. distribution in an attempt to cash in on the Goliath craze, but these films were not originally made as "Goliath movies" in Italy. Both Goliath and

3038-531: The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance and relevant information. The reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy . About 270,000 inscriptions are known. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. In

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3136-449: The 1959 Steve Reeves sequel Hercules Unchained , the 1959 re-release of Cecil B. DeMille 's Samson and Delilah (1949), and dozens of imitations that followed in their wake. Italian filmmakers resurrected their 1920s Maciste character in a brand new 1960s sound film series (1960–1964), followed rapidly by Ursus, Samson, Goliath and various other mighty-muscled heroes. Almost all peplum films of this period featured bodybuilder stars,

3234-761: The Egyptians , Assyrians , and Etruscans , as well as medieval times. Not all of the films were fantasy-based by any means. Many of the plots featured actual historical personalities such as Julius Caesar , Cleopatra , and Hannibal , although great liberties were taken with the storylines. Gladiators and slaves rebelling against tyrannical rulers, pirates and swashbucklers were also popular subjects. As Robert Rushing defines it, peplum, "in its most stereotypical form, [...] depicts muscle-bound heroes (professional bodybuilders, athletes, wrestlers, or brawny actors) in mythological antiquity, fighting fantastic monsters and saving scantily clad beauties. Rather than lavish epics set in

3332-562: The Holy See , the primary language of its public journal , the Acta Apostolicae Sedis , and the working language of the Roman Rota . Vatican City is also home to the world's only automatic teller machine that gives instructions in Latin. In the pontifical universities postgraduate courses of Canon law are taught in Latin, and papers are written in the same language. There are

3430-561: The Middle Ages , borrowing from Latin occurred from ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century or indirectly after the Norman Conquest , through the Anglo-Norman language . From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed " inkhorn terms ", as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by

3528-559: The Roman Rite of the Catholic Church at the Vatican City . The church continues to adapt concepts from modern languages to Ecclesiastical Latin of the Latin language. Contemporary Latin is more often studied to be read rather than spoken or actively used. Latin has greatly influenced the English language , along with a large number of others, and historically contributed many words to

3626-553: The Romance languages . During the Classical period, informal language was rarely written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors, inscriptions such as Curse tablets and those found as graffiti . In the Late Latin period, language changes reflecting spoken (non-classical) norms tend to be found in greater quantities in texts. As it

3724-622: The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and Germanic kingdoms took its place, the Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other, more formal uses. While the written form of Latin was increasingly standardized into a fixed form, the spoken forms began to diverge more greatly. Currently, the five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish , Portuguese , French , Italian , and Romanian . Despite dialectal variation, which

3822-430: The 1960s Italian Maciste series. Following Buddy Baer 's portrayal of Ursus in the classic 1951 film Quo Vadis , Ursus was used as a superhuman Roman-era character who became the protagonist in a series of Italian adventure films made in the early 1960s. When the "Hercules" film craze hit in 1959, Italian filmmakers were looking for other muscleman characters similar to Hercules whom they could exploit, resulting in

3920-457: The 1960s series, he mentions to another character that the name "Maciste" means "born of the rock" (almost as if he was a god who would just appear out of the earth itself in times of need). One of the 1920s silent Maciste films was actually titled The Giant from the Dolomite , hinting that Maciste may be more god than man, which would explain his great strength. The first title listed for each film

4018-453: The 1960s. Peplum films were, and still are, often ridiculed for their low budgets and bad English dubbing. The contrived plots, poorly overdubbed dialogue , novice acting skills of the bodybuilder leads, and primitive special effects that were often inadequate to depict the mythological creatures on screen all conspire to give these films a certain camp appeal now. In the 1990s, several of them have been subjects of riffing and satire in

Sword-and-sandal - Misplaced Pages Continue

4116-416: The American film Athena and he was hired to play Hercules in 1957 when the film was made. (Reeves was paid $ 10,000 to star in the film). The genre's instantaneous growth began with the U.S. theatrical release of Hercules in 1959. American producer Joseph E. Levine acquired the U.S. distribution rights for $ 120,000, spent $ 1 million promoting the film and made more than $ 5 million profit. This spawned

4214-617: The British Crown. The motto is featured on all presently minted coinage and has been featured in most coinage throughout the nation's history. Several states of the United States have Latin mottos , such as: Many military organizations today have Latin mottos, such as: Some law governing bodies in the Philippines have Latin mottos, such as: Some colleges and universities have adopted Latin mottos, for example Harvard University 's motto

4312-534: The Dragon in the U.S. since at the time Goliath and the Barbarians was breaking box-office records, and the distributors may have thought the name "Hercules" was trademarked by distributor Joseph E. Levine . There were a total of 25 Maciste films from the 1960s peplum craze (not counting the two dozen silent Maciste films made in Italy pre-1930). By 1960, seeing how well the two Steve Reeves Hercules films were doing at

4410-599: The English lexicon , particularly after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest . Latin and Ancient Greek roots are heavily used in English vocabulary in theology , the sciences , medicine , and law . A number of phases of the language have been recognized, each distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, and syntax. There are no hard and fast rules of classification; different scholars emphasize different features. As

4508-461: The English translation of its original Italian theatrical title: Steve Reeves appeared in 14 pepla made in Italy from 1958 to 1964, and most of his films are highly regarded examples of the genre. His pepla are listed below in order of production, not in order of release. The U.S. release titles are shown below, followed by the original Italian title and its translation (in parentheses) There were many 1950s and 1960s Italian pepla that did not feature

4606-580: The Grinch Stole Christmas! , The Cat in the Hat , and a book of fairy tales, " fabulae mirabiles ", are intended to garner popular interest in the language. Additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissner's Latin Phrasebook . Some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series,

4704-464: The Hercules character in any way. Likewise, most of the Sons of Hercules movies shown on American TV in the 1960s had nothing to do with Hercules in their original Italian versions. (see also The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), an American-made genre parody starring peplum star Samson Burke as Hercules) The Italians used Goliath as the superhero protagonist in a series of adventure films (pepla) in

4802-465: The Kirk Douglas epic Ulysses (co-directed by an uncredited Mario Bava in 1954) and Helen of Troy (directed by Robert Wise with Sergio Leone as an uncredited second unit director in 1955) were the first of the big peplum films of the 1950s. Riccardo Freda directed another peplum, Theodora, Slave Empress in 1954, starring his wife Gianna Maria Canale . Howard Hawks directed his Land of

4900-625: The Pharaohs (starring Joan Collins) in Italy and Egypt in 1955. Robert Rossen made his film Alexander the Great in Egypt in 1956, with a music score by famed Italian composer Mario Nascimbene . To cash in on the success of the Kirk Douglas film Ulysses , Pietro Francisci planned to make a film about Hercules , but searched unsuccessfully for years for a physically convincing yet experienced actor. His daughter spotted American bodybuilder Steve Reeves in

4998-682: The Queen of the Amazons ) and Les exploits érotiques de Maciste dans l'Atlantide ( The Erotic Exploits of Maciste in Atlantis ). The films had almost identical casts, both starring Val Davis as Maciste, and appear to have been shot back-to-back. The former was distributed in Italy as a "Karzan" movie (a cheap Tarzan imitation), while the latter film was released only in France with hardcore inserts as Les Gloutonnes ("The Gobblers"). These two films were totally unrelated to

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5096-525: The Treasure of the Incas ( a.k.a. Hercules and the Treasure of the Incas ) (1965) sounds like a peplum title, but was actually a spaghetti Western. The Sons of Hercules was a syndicated television show that aired in the United States in the 1960s. The series repackaged 14 randomly chosen Italian peplum films by unifying them with memorable title and end title theme songs and a standard voice-over intro relating

5194-457: The United States comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 . However, in the early 1960s, a group of French critics, mostly writing for the Cahiers du cinéma , such as Luc Moullet , started to celebrate the genre and some of its directors, including Vittorio Cottafavi , Riccardo Freda , Mario Bava , Pietro Francisci , Duccio Tessari , and Sergio Leone . Not only directors, but also some of

5292-461: The United States the unofficial national motto until 1956 was E pluribus unum meaning "Out of many, one". The motto continues to be featured on the Great Seal . It also appears on the flags and seals of both houses of congress and the flags of the states of Michigan, North Dakota, New York, and Wisconsin. The motto's 13 letters symbolically represent the original Thirteen Colonies which revolted from

5390-552: The University of Kentucky, the University of Oxford and also Princeton University. There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The Latin Misplaced Pages has more than 130,000 articles. Italian , French , Portuguese , Spanish , Romanian , Catalan , Romansh , Sardinian and other Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin. There are also many Latin borrowings in English and Albanian , as well as

5488-497: The Vampires (1961) and Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963) actually featured the famed Italian folk hero Maciste in the original Italian versions, but American distributors did not feel the name "Maciste" meant anything to American audiences. Goliath and the Dragon (1960) was originally an Italian Hercules movie called The Revenge of Hercules , but it was re-titled Goliath and

5586-623: The addition of some graphic gore and nudity. Many of these 1980s entries were helmed by noted Italian horror film directors ( Joe D'Amato , Lucio Fulci , Luigi Cozzi , etc.) and many featured actors Lou Ferrigno , Miles O'Keeffe and Sabrina Siani . Here is a list of the 1980s pepla: A group of so-called "porno peplum" films were devoted to Roman emperors, especially - but not only - to Caligula and Claudius ' spouse Messalina : Latin Latin ( lingua Latina , pronounced [ˈlɪŋɡʷa ɫaˈtiːna] , or Latinum [ɫaˈtiːnʊ̃] )

5684-759: The adventures of the famed Italian folk hero Maciste. Samson Against the Sheik (1962), Son of Samson (1960), Samson and the Slave Queen (1963), Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World (1961), Samson vs. the Giant King (1964), and Samson in King Solomon's Mines (1964) were all re-titled Maciste movies, because the American distributors did not feel the name Maciste was marketable to U.S. filmgoers. Samson and

5782-409: The arena. 312 AD. Rhual, a young and athletic Gaul, is invited to take part in the gladiator games at the seaside villa of Senator Fabius Severus, near Rome. Secretly, Rhual is an agent of Emperor Constantine who wishes to establish Christianity in the Roman Empire, and Fabius is leading a movement for religious tolerance and the freeing of slaves. In the villa gardens Rhual meets and falls in love with

5880-452: The arena. So begin the persecutions during which many Christians are killed or imprisoned. The centurion Sebastian of the Praetorian Guard, denounced as a Christian, dies as a martyr. Fabiola obtains Rhual's freedom, but he at first rejects her. The situation is redeemed, however, when Fabiola declares herself to be on the side of the Christians and joins them in the arena, thereby indicating they were not responsible for her father's death. Rhual

5978-478: The author and then forgotten, but some useful ones survived, such as 'imbibe' and 'extrapolate'. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French . Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies. Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Fabiola (1949 film) Fabiola (UK title: The Fighting Gladiator )

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6076-425: The benefit of those who do not understand Latin. There are also songs written with Latin lyrics . The libretto for the opera-oratorio Oedipus rex by Igor Stravinsky is in Latin. Parts of Carl Orff 's Carmina Burana are written in Latin. Enya has recorded several tracks with Latin lyrics. The continued instruction of Latin is seen by some as a highly valuable component of a liberal arts education. Latin

6174-402: The box office, Italian producers decided to revive the 1920s silent film character Maciste in a new series of color/sound films. Unlike the other Italian peplum protagonists, Maciste found himself in a variety of time periods ranging from the Ice Age to 16th century Scotland. Maciste was never given an origin, and the source of his mighty powers was never revealed. However, in the first film of

6272-485: The box-office successes of Jean-Jacques Annaud 's Quest for Fire (1981), Arnold Schwarzenegger 's Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Clash of the Titans (1981 film) (1981) spurred a second renaissance of sword and sorcery Italian pepla in the five years immediately following. Most of these films had low budgets, focusing more on barbarians and pirates so as to avoid the need for expensive Greco-Roman sets. The filmmakers tried to compensate for their shortcomings with

6370-409: The careful work of Petrarch, Politian and others, first the demand for manuscripts, and then the rush to bring works into print, led to the circulation of inaccurate copies for several centuries following. Neo-Latin literature was extensive and prolific, but less well known or understood today. Works covered poetry, prose stories and early novels, occasional pieces and collections of letters, to name

6468-493: The classical world, they are low-budget films that focus on the hero's extraordinary body." Thus, most sword-and-sandal films featured a superhumanly strong man as the protagonist, such as Hercules , Samson , Goliath , Ursus or Italy's own popular folk hero Maciste . In addition, the plots typically involved two women vying for the affection of the bodybuilder hero: the good love interest (a damsel in distress needing rescue), and an evil femme fatale queen who sought to dominate

6566-415: The classicised Latin that followed through to the present are often grouped together as Neo-Latin , or New Latin, which have in recent decades become a focus of renewed study , given their importance for the development of European culture, religion and science. The vast majority of written Latin belongs to this period, but its full extent is unknown. The Renaissance reinforced the position of Latin as

6664-412: The country's full Latin name. Some film and television in ancient settings, such as Sebastiane , The Passion of the Christ and Barbarians (2020 TV series) , have been made with dialogue in Latin. Occasionally, Latin dialogue is used because of its association with religion or philosophy, in such film/television series as The Exorcist and Lost (" Jughead "). Subtitles are usually shown for

6762-429: The decline in written Latin output. Despite having no native speakers, Latin is still used for a variety of purposes in the contemporary world. The largest organisation that retains Latin in official and quasi-official contexts is the Catholic Church . The Catholic Church required that Mass be carried out in Latin until the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965 , which permitted the use of the vernacular . Latin remains

6860-432: The early 1960s. He was a man possessed of amazing strength, although he seemed to be a different person in each film. After the classic Hercules (1958) became a blockbuster sensation in the film industry, a 1959 Steve Reeves film Il terrore dei barbari ( Terror of the Barbarians ) was re-titled Goliath and the Barbarians in the U.S. The film was so successful at the box office, it inspired Italian filmmakers to do

6958-405: The educated and official world, Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful for international communication between the member states of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies. Without the institutions of the Roman Empire that had supported its uniformity, Medieval Latin

7056-429: The entire film as "Hercules". There were a total of nine Italian films that featured Ursus as the main character, listed below as follows: Italian title / English translation of the Italian title (American release title); A character named Samson was featured in a series of five Italian peplum films in the 1960s, no doubt inspired by the 1959 re-release of the epic Victor Mature film Samson and Delilah . The character

7154-405: The genre's free use of ancient mythology and other influences, Italian director Vittorio Cottafavi , who directed a number of peplum films, used the term "neo-mythologism". A series of 19 Hercules movies were made in Italy in the late '50s and early '60s. The films were all sequels to the successful Steve Reeves peplum Hercules (1958), but with the exception of Hercules Unchained , each film

7252-429: The hero. Also, the films typically featured an ambitious ruler who would ascend the throne by murdering those who stood in his path, and often it was only the muscular hero who could depose him. Thus the hero's often political goal: "to restore a legitimate sovereign against an evil dictator." Many of the peplum films involved a clash between two populations, one civilized and the other barbaric, which typically included

7350-409: The history of Italy's peplum genre was produced and directed by Antonio Avati in 1977 titled Kolossal: i magnifici Macisti (aka Kino Kolossal ). Sword-and-sandal films are a specific class of Italian adventure films that have subjects set in Biblical or classical antiquity , often with plots based more or less loosely on Greco-Roman history or the other contemporary cultures of the time, such as

7448-679: The invention of printing and are now published in carefully annotated printed editions, such as the Loeb Classical Library , published by Harvard University Press , or the Oxford Classical Texts , published by Oxford University Press . Latin translations of modern literature such as: The Hobbit , Treasure Island , Robinson Crusoe , Paddington Bear , Winnie the Pooh , The Adventures of Tintin , Asterix , Harry Potter , Le Petit Prince , Max and Moritz , How

7546-675: The language of the Roman Rite . The Tridentine Mass (also known as the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass) is celebrated in Latin. Although the Mass of Paul VI (also known as the Ordinary Form or the Novus Ordo) is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, it can be and often is said in Latin, in part or in whole, especially at multilingual gatherings. It is the official language of

7644-440: The large areas where it had come to be natively spoken. However, even after the fall of Western Rome , Latin remained the common language of international communication , science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the early 19th century, by which time modern languages had supplanted it in common academic and political usage. Late Latin is the literary language from the 3rd century AD onward. No longer spoken as

7742-462: The late seventeenth century, when spoken skills began to erode. It then became increasingly taught only to be read. Latin grammar is highly fusional , with classes of inflections for case , number , person , gender , tense , mood , voice , and aspect . The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets . Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and

7840-431: The later part of the Roman Republic , up to 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin . It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Latin literary works, such as the comedies of Plautus and Terence . The Latin alphabet was devised from the Etruscan alphabet . The writing later changed from what was initially either a right-to-left or a boustrophedon script to what ultimately became

7938-421: The less prestigious colloquial registers , attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and the author Petronius . While often called a "dead language", Latin did not undergo language death . By the 6th to 9th centuries, natural language change eventually resulted in Latin as a vernacular language evolving into distinct Romance languages in

8036-557: The lower production costs, use of frozen funds and the expertise of the Italian film industry to shoot the large-scale Technicolor epic Quo Vadis in Rome. In addition to its fictional account linking the Great Fire of Rome , the Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire and Emperor Nero , the film - following the novel "Quo vadis" by the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz - featured also

8134-462: The main hero in each film to Hercules any way they could. In some regions, each film was split into two one-hour episodes, so the 14 films were shown as 28 weekly episodes. None of the films were ever theatrically released in the U.S. The films are not listed in chronological order, since they were not really related to each other in any way. The first title listed below for each film was its American broadcast television title, followed in parentheses by

8232-494: The most popular being Steve Reeves , Reg Park and Gordon Scott . Some of these stars, such as Mickey Hargitay , Reg Lewis , Mark Forest , Gordon Mitchell and Dan Vadis , had starred in Mae West 's touring stage review in the United States in the 1950s. Bodybuilders of Italian origin, on the other hand, would adopt English pseudonyms for the screen; thus, stuntman Sergio Ciani became Alan Steel , and ex-gondolier Adriano Bellini

8330-479: The nine-film Ursus series listed below. Ursus was referred to as a "Son of Hercules" in two of the films when they were dubbed in English (in an attempt to cash in on the then-popular "Hercules" craze), although in the original Italian films, Ursus had no connection to Hercules whatsoever. In the English-dubbed version of one Ursus film (retitled Hercules, Prisoner of Evil ), Ursus was actually referred to throughout

8428-462: The other varieties, as it was largely separated from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire. Spoken Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing. For many Italians using Latin, though, there

8526-558: The postwar Italian film industry remade Fabiola (which had been previously filmed twice in the silent era). The film was released in the United Kingdom and in the United States in 1951 in an edited, English-dubbed version. Fabiola was an Italian-French co-production like the following films The Last Days of Pompeii (1950) and Messalina (1951). During the 1950s, a number of American historical epics shot in Italy were released. In 1951, MGM producer Sam Zimbalist cleverly used

8624-460: The screenwriters, often put together in teams, worked past the typically formulaic plot structure to include a mixture of "bits of philosophical readings and scraps of psychoanalysis, reflections on the biggest political systems, the fate of the world and humanity, fatalistic notions of accepting the will of destiny and the gods, anthropocentric belief in the powers of the human physique, and brilliant syntheses of military treatises". With reference to

8722-457: The success of Spartacus , there were a number of Italian peplums that heavily emphasized the gladiatorial arena in their plots, with it becoming almost a peplum subgenre in itself. One group of supermen known as "The Ten Gladiators" appeared in a trilogy, all three films starring Dan Vadis in the lead role. After the peplum gave way to the spaghetti Western and Eurospy films in 1965, the genre lay dormant for close to 20 years. Then in 1982,

8820-440: The titles in parentheses are their original Italian titles with an approximate English translation. Dates shown are the original Italian theatrical release dates, not the U.S. release dates (which were years later in some cases). A number of English-dubbed Italian films that featured the word "Hercules" in the title were not made as Hercules movies originally, such as: None of these films in their original Italian versions involved

8918-521: Was a stand-alone story not connected to the others. The actors who played Hercules in these films were Steve Reeves followed by Gordon Scott , Kirk Morris , Mickey Hargitay , Mark Forest , Alan Steel , Dan Vadis , Brad Harris , Reg Park , Peter Lupus (billed as Rock Stevens) and Mike Lane . In a 1997 interview, Reeves said he felt his two Hercules films could not be topped by another sequel, so he declined to do any more Hercules films. The films are listed below by their American release titles, and

9016-513: Was called Kirk Morris . To be sure, many of the films enjoyed widespread popularity among general audiences, and had production values that were typical for popular films of their day. Some films included frequent re-use of the impressive film sets that had been created for Ben-Hur and Cleopatra . Although many of the bigger budget pepla were released theatrically in the US, fourteen of them were released directly to Embassy Pictures television in

9114-413: Was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to suppose that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. On the contrary, Romanised European populations developed their own dialects of the language, which eventually led to the differentiation of Romance languages . Late Latin is a kind of written Latin used in the 3rd to 6th centuries. This began to diverge from Classical forms at

9212-496: Was much more liberal in its linguistic cohesion: for example, in classical Latin sum and eram are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use fui and fueram instead. Furthermore, the meanings of many words were changed and new words were introduced, often under influence from the vernacular. Identifiable individual styles of classically incorrect Latin prevail. Renaissance Latin, 1300 to 1500, and

9310-441: Was no complete separation between Italian and Latin, even into the beginning of the Renaissance . Petrarch for example saw Latin as a literary version of the spoken language. Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the post-classical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed, that is from around 700 to 1500 AD. The spoken language had developed into the various Romance languages; however, in

9408-456: Was released in 1960, with Lang Jeffries and Rhonda Fleming, only with Rhual's name changed to Vibio. In ancient Rome a love story blossoms between Fabiola, daughter of a senator, and Rhual, a Gallic gladiator . When Fabiola's father is killed, the Romans blame the Christians and the persecution begins. Rhual confesses to be a Christian and is accused of the murder and sentenced to fight to death in

9506-478: Was shut down in June 2019), and Vatican Radio & Television, all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin. A variety of organisations, as well as informal Latin 'circuli' ('circles'), have been founded in more recent times to support the use of spoken Latin. Moreover, a number of university classics departments have begun incorporating communicative pedagogies in their Latin courses. These include

9604-525: Was similar to the Biblical Samson in the third and fifth films only; in the other three, he just appears to be a very strong man (not related at all to the Biblical figure). The titles are listed as follows: Italian title / its English translation (U.S. release title in parentheses); The name Samson was also inserted into the U.S. titles of six other Italian movies when they were dubbed in English for U.S. distribution, although these films actually featured

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