Sacrī Pullī

Sacrī Pullī (The Sacred Chickens) is a sheltered-vocabulary Latin novella published by Emma Vanderpool in 2019. It tells the story of the “sacred chickens” of the Roman Republic, the chicken-keeper who reads the chickens' omens, and the consul who refuses to listen to the omens. It is notable for having a very long average sentence length and number of subordinate clauses per sentence, while keeping the core word count low. This is accomplished largely through repetition and by using subordinate clauses with analogs in English (e.g. sī, quod, quamquam).

Available from Amazon.

Reading level

The blurb on the back cover states that this novella is for learners in the first year or early second year of study, and the author’s introduction states that it was originally written for middle school students. Comprehensible Antiquity puts this novella at Level C, and gives a full review here. It was also reviewed in The Classical Outlook (Vol. 91, No. 4); the review can be found here.

Diverse & Multicultural Identities

For information about how representation of multicultural and diverse identities is analyzed in LNDb, see here.

Parallel cultures

No depictions identified.

Gender

Features three cis male main characters (Piccius the chicken, Marcus the chicken-keeper, and Publius Claudius Pulcher the consul). Features no cis female main characters or transgender main characters.

Sexual identity

No depictions identified.

SES/class

No depictions identified.

Religion

Roman religion is a main theme in the story: the will of the gods is interpreted through the augury of the sacred chickens. When Claudius Pulcher kills the sacred chickens, the gods punish the Romans by allowing Carthage to defeat them in battle.

Disability

No depictions identified.

Language Statistics

Vocabulary

Word counts may differ from the author's advertised figures. See here for information about how words are counted in LNDb.

Word List

A complete word list for Sacrī Pullī can be found here.

Glosses

This novella contains glosses in the form of both footnotes with English translations and pictures.

Of the 81 unique words (not counting proper nouns) used in the text, 19 of them (23.5%) are glossed at their first appearance in the text. Of the 1959 total words in the text, 134 of them (6.84%) are glossed.

Glossary

This novella contains a Latin-English glossary, with every form of each word listed separately and grouped under a single definition. The glossary is complete; save for a few minor oversights, every word is included. The glossary contains some alphabetization errors.

Syntax

Word counts may differ from the author's advertised figures. See here for information about how words are counted in LNDb.

Summary

The graph above shows the vocabulary and syntax of the novella relative to the other novellas studied. A higher position on the graph means that this novella scores higher than average in this criterion. These scores are not necessarily tied to reading level; this graph is descriptive of the novella's language rather than predictive of its difficulty.

Genre & Sources

This novella is in the genre of historical (Classical).

It is an adaptation of the historical story of Publius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 249 BCE during the First Punic War, found in Cicero (Dē Natūrā Deōrum, 2.7).

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Marcus is the chicken-keeper who feeds the sacred chickens of Rome and reads the resulting omens: if the chickens eat, that is a good omen; if they do not eat, that is a bad omen. Publius Claudius Pulcher, the consul, is only interested in defeating Carthage, and does not respect the chickens’ power. Marcus is frustrated with Claudius because Claudius never listens to what he says, and so he feeds the chickens extra food one day so that they do not eat at the time the omens are read. When he sees the bad omen, Claudius is furious and throws the chickens into the sea. The gods punish Claudius and the Romans for the blasphemy of killing the sacred chickens by bringing defeat for Rome in battle.

First 100 Words

Underlined words are glossed in the text. See also the preview found on Amazon.

Ego sum pullus Rōmānus, nōmine Piccius! Ego sum nōn solum pullus magnus sed pullus sacer. Dei deaeque me valde amant et potestatem magnam mihi dant.
Romae habitō. Ego et aliī pullī in harā magnā habitāmus. Cotīdiē laetī in harā ambulāre et glōcīre possumus. Virī nōs nōn necant! Solum cibum et aquam dant.
Nōs sumus laetī et fortunātī quod cotīdiē vir, nōmine Marcus, cibum et aquam ad haram nostram portat et nōbis dat.
Marcus nōs nōn necat! Aliī virī pullōs necant—et edunt!
Sed nōn Marcus! Nōs pullī sacrī Marcum valdē amamus!
Negōtium virō est cibum et aquam nōbis dare. Cotīdiē vir cibum in haram iacit... et nōs edimus. …

Studies show that a reader should understand 98% of the words in a text in order to have a good chance of comprehending it. One rule of thumb is to read the first hundred words and count the number of unfamiliar words. If there are two or fewer unfamiliar words, it can be read without much difficulty. Three to five unfamiliar words is possible to read, but may be difficult. If there are six or more unfamiliar words, the text may be too difficult.

Supplementary Materials

If you have resources for Sacrī Pullī and would like to share them on LNDb, please contact me.

Presentation

Illustrations?	yes
Illustrator	Audrey Vanderpool (cover)
Macrons?	yes
Font	Herculanum, 15 pt; Garamond, 15 pt; Optima, 15 pt; Papyrus, 15 pt; Palatino, 15 pt (a different font for every perspective)
Pages of story	42
Total pages	55
Chapters	8

Key Information

Publication date	August 16, 2019
Publisher	Independently published
ISBN	1686669415
ISBN-13	978-1686669415