Via Perīculōsa
Via Perīculōsa (The Dangerous Road) is a sheltered-vocabulary Latin novella published by Andrew Olimpi in 2018. It tells the story of Niceros, a man who, while escaping slavery, investigates a mysterious murder at a seedy inn. It is notable for being one of the few novellas to feature an enslaved person as the protagonist, and for being a fantasy story in a Classical setting. It also is notable for its simple syntax: it has a relatively low number of words per sentence, subordinate clauses per sentence, and T-units per sentence (meaning that very few sentences include multiple clauses joined together by conjunctions such as et, sed, and neque).Available from Amazon.
Reading level
The author’s introduction states that this novella was written with the aim of being accessible to first- or second-year students. Comprehensible Antiquity puts this novella at Level C, and gives a full review here.
Diverse & Multicultural Identities
For information about how representation of multicultural and diverse identities is analyzed in LNDb, see here.Parallel cultures
Niceros, as a Greek person living in Italy, is a member of a parallel culture.Gender
Features one cis male main character (Niceros). Features no cis female main characters or transgender main characters.Sexual identity
Features a depiction of heterosexual identity: Niceros likes a woman named Melissa, who is enslaved like himself.SES/class
The protagonist of the story is Niceros, a man who has escaped slavery. This makes this novella one of the few to include an enslaved person as a main character. Niceros discusses the cruelty of his enslavers and the fear that he faces as a fugitive from slavery.Religion
No depictions identified.Disability
No depictions identified.Language Statistics
Vocabulary
Word List
A complete word list for Via Perīculōsa can be found here.
Glosses
This novella contains glosses in the form of both footnotes with English translations and pictures. It also features many illustrations. While they are not glosses of particular words, they are meant to depict the events of the story in a way that supports comprehension on a level broader than individual words.
Of the 265 unique words (not counting proper nouns) used in the text, 102 of them (38.5%) are glossed at their first appearance in the text. Of the 2498 total words in the text, 213 of them (8.5%) are glossed.
Of the 265 unique words (not counting proper nouns) used in the text, 102 of them (38.5%) are glossed at their first appearance in the text. Of the 2498 total words in the text, 213 of them (8.5%) are glossed.
Glossary
This novella contains a Latin-English glossary, with every form of each word listed separately. The glossary is incomplete; some words used in the text are not found in the glossary. There are also some words found in the glossary that are not used in the text.
Syntax
Summary
Genre & Sources
This novella is in the genre of historical (Classical) with fantasy elements.
It is an adaptation of a story from Petronius’s Satyricon (62–63). The appendix contains a similar but unrelated story from a letter of Pliny the Younger (7.27).
It is an adaptation of a story from Petronius’s Satyricon (62–63). The appendix contains a similar but unrelated story from a letter of Pliny the Younger (7.27).
CONTAINS SPOILERS
Niceros is a Greek man who has escaped slavery and is traveling along the Appian Way. At an inn, a soldier approaches Niceros and says to come with him. Niceros and the soldier hide in the shadows and see a man walk into the inn, whom Niceros recognizes as Rufus, his overseer from when he was enslaved. Rufus questions the innkeeper about Niceros, but the innkeeper says nothing. After Rufus leaves, Niceros tells the soldier his story: while enslaved in Brundisium, he met a woman named Melissa, who was also enslaved. Niceros liked Melissa, but she told him she had to leave Brundisium the next day. When Rufus found out Niceros had been talking with other slaves, he beat him, and that night, Niceros escaped. Having heard Niceros’s story, the soldier offers to help reunite Niceros and Melissa. The next morning, Niceros awakens to find Rufus violently killed in the street. He goes away from the inn and sees the soldier, who joins him on the journey. They come to a place with many tombs, where they sleep for the night. Niceros wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to where the soldier was sleeping, and finds only a bloody tunic and the footprints of a wolf. Then he sees a monster, large and terrible like a wolf, and runs away to Melissa’s house. Melissa lets him in, and he goes to sleep again. In a dream, he sees the soldier transforming into a wolf and going into the stables of Melissa’s house, killing the animals there. The doorkeeper cuts off the wolf’s ear with a sword, and the wolf runs away, changes back into a soldier, and goes back to the inn. When Niceros wakes up, he finds that the events of his dream actually happened, even finding the wolf’s severed ear. He puts on a cloak and hood, and goes out to try to kill the monster. He returns to the inn, where he finds the soldier, who then turns into a wolf again and attacks Niceros. The innkeeper, alarmed by the commotion, breaks down the door. Niceros explains that the soldier turned into a wolf, but the innkeeper says that he did not hear or see a wolf, and that there was never any soldier. Niceros looks back and the wolf has disappeared. The innkeeper notices that Niceros’s head is bloody, and Niceros removes his hood to find his ear is missing. Niceros understands that the soldier is not the werewolf: he is.
First 100 Words
Underlined words are glossed in the text. See also the preview found on Amazon.Ego sum Nīcerōs; servus eram. Graecus sum, sed in Ītaliā versābar. Ōlim in Ītaliam ego iter faciēbam per Viam Appiam.
Via erat longa et difficilis.
Via quoque erat perīculōsa. Ego eram fugitīvus!
Ego eram viā fessus. Ego dormīre volēbam. Ego quoque cibum et vīnum volēbam.
Mox ego īvī ad tabernam. Taberna mala et suspīciōsa erat.
Ego scīvī tabernās esse perīculōsās. Sed… Ego eram fugitīvus. Nōn erant multī optiōnēs!
Ego in tabernam īvī. In taberna ego vīdī multōs variōs virōs. Hāc nocte multī loquēbantur et vīnum bibēbant.
Caupō ad mē īvit. Caupō mihi vidēbātur esse vir amīcus.
Caupō: “Salvē! Nōmen mihi est Eucliō." ...
Supplementary Materials
If you have resources for Via Perīculōsa and would like to share them on LNDb, please contact me.Presentation
| Illustrations? | yes |
| Illustrator | Andrew Olimpi |
| Macrons? | yes |
| Font | Garamond, 16 pt |
| Pages of story | 70 |
| Total pages | 101 |
| Chapters | 14 (plus an appendix) |
Key Information
| Publication date | March 16, 2018 |
| Publisher | Comprehensible Classics (Createspace) |
| ISBN | 1973955547 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1973955542 |
