In Vīnētō
Available from Amazon.
Reading level
The blurb on the back cover states that this novella is for “advanced second-year students and most third-year students.” Comprehensible Antiquity puts this novella at Level E, 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
Features a depiction of Gaulish culture: Bellovesus, an enslaved Gaul, explains aspects of his culture to the Roman girl Fabia, particularly the religious practices (see below).Gender
Features one cis female main character (Fabia) and one cis male main character (Bellovesus). Features no transgender main characters.Sexual identity
Features depictions of heterosexual identity: Fabia and Bellovesus begin to fall in love, and Fabia gives Bellovesus a kiss at the end of the story. Fabia also has a mother and father.SES/class
One protagonist of the story is Bellovesus, an enslaved young man. This makes this novella one of the few to include an enslaved person as a main character. He discusses with Fabia the difficulties of an enslaved life: he does not tell his enslaver about a blight affecting the grapevines, for fear that he will be sent to the mines. His enslaver also threatens to kill him when he sees him with Fabia.Religion
Features a depiction of Gaulish religion: Bellovesus goes to a shrine of the Gaulish god Cernunnos in the woods, and when he accidentally cuts himself with an axe, he offers the blood to the god. Fabia thinks that this is barbarus, but he points out that Romans make offerings of blood too. Cernunnos later is the deus ex machina who solves the problem of the grapevine blight.Disability
No depictions identified.Language Statistics
Vocabulary
Word List
A complete word list for In Vīnētō can be found here.
Glosses
This novella contains glosses in the form of footnotes with English translations.
Of the 535 unique words (not counting proper nouns) used in the text, 146 of them (27.2%) are glossed at their first appearance in the text. Of the 4198 total words in the text, 224 of them (5.34%) are glossed.
Of the 535 unique words (not counting proper nouns) used in the text, 146 of them (27.2%) are glossed at their first appearance in the text. Of the 4198 total words in the text, 224 of them (5.34%) are glossed.
Glossary
This novella contains a Latin-English glossary, with words listed by headword only. The glossary is incomplete; some words used in the text are not found in the glossary.
Syntax
The ratio of complex sentences indicates what proportion of the total sentences are complex sentences, on average. A complex sentence is defined as a sentence with one or more subordinate clauses or verb phrases.
Summary
Genre & Sources
This novella is in the genre of historical (Classical) with fantasy elements..
It contains allusions and quotations from a number of Classical works, especially Vergil. (It is implied that Vergil is a relative of Fabia’s.) The bleeding roots is a reference to the tomb of Polydorus in Aeneid 3.19–68. At one point, Fabia reads and quotes the Culex, once attributed to Vergil. Fabia and Bellovesus visit the Sibyl, as Aeneas does in Aeneid 6.1–97. Finally, the part where the spirit leads them to a body is inspired by Pliny the Younger’s ghost story (7.27).
It contains allusions and quotations from a number of Classical works, especially Vergil. (It is implied that Vergil is a relative of Fabia’s.) The bleeding roots is a reference to the tomb of Polydorus in Aeneid 3.19–68. At one point, Fabia reads and quotes the Culex, once attributed to Vergil. Fabia and Bellovesus visit the Sibyl, as Aeneas does in Aeneid 6.1–97. Finally, the part where the spirit leads them to a body is inspired by Pliny the Younger’s ghost story (7.27).
Complete Plot Summary
CONTAINS SPOILERS
Fabia is a Roman girl living on a vineyard in Atella, near the Bay of Naples. Also living on the vineyard is a boy named Bellovesus, enslaved by Fabia’s father. The two of them don’t care for one another. One day Fabia follows Bellovesus into the woods and sees him come to a tree sacred to the Gauls. Fabia, unaware of the tree’s significance, tries to cut it down, and Bellovesus stops her but cuts his hand on the axe. He offers the blood to the sacred tree. Back at the vineyard, Bellovesus’s father tells him that a blight is killing the grapevines, and he can’t figure out why. That night, Fabia looks out her window and sees an old man in the vineyard being pursued and killed by three men. She runs to the spot, and the old man’s body is gone, but the ground is moist. She digs in the ground and finds that blood is flowing from the roots of the vines. The next morning Fabia explains what she saw to her parents. They say it was only a dream, but Bellovesus believes her, thinking it may be connected to the blight on the vines. Bellovesus sleeps in the vineyard and sees an old man killed just as Fabia saw. When Bellovesus tells Fabia what he saw, Fabia decides to go the Sibyl at Cumae. On the way, she is attacked by thieves, but Bellovesus saves her and joins her on the journey. They arrive at Cumae, but the Sibyl is not there. On the way out of the Sibyl’s cave, however, they find a leaf with a mysterious message written on it saying the curse will be lifted when the horn-bearer is appeased with blood. Heading back home, they stop by the sacred tree to prepare a hare for dinner. Fabia observes that the god of the tree has horns, and offers the hare’s blood to the god. The god appears to them and possesses Bellovesus, who walks to the vineyard and begins tearing at the roots of the vines. At last he finds the body of the old man. Bellovesus and Fabia both pass out and are found the next morning. Fabia’s father assumes that Bellovesus abducted Fabia and sentences him to death. But Fabia urges her father to listen to Bellovesus, who says that the blight will go away if they bury the old man’s body properly, which they do. Fabia decides to leave the vineyard to live in Rome, but before she leaves, she says Bellovesus will always be in her heart, and kisses him. The blight is gone.
First 100 Words
Underlined words are glossed in the text.Fabia, puella Romana, Atellae habitat. villa patris Fabiae est in vineto. olim pater Fabiae erat mercator, sed nunc est vinarius. pater Fabiae vinetum curat. in vineto sunt multae uvae. uvae a servis collectae sunt et tum servi optimum vinum faciunt.
Fabia vinetum non curat, sed Fabia vinetum curare valde cupit. Fabia matrem audit. mater Fabiae de infantibus et de villis dicit. sed Fabia de infantibus et de villis audire non vult. Fabia de vineto et de uvis audire vult. sed mater et pater Fabiae de vineto et de uvis dicere nolunt.
cotidie Fabia per uvas ambulat. Fabia uvas maxime amat. saepe Fabia Bellovesum apud uvas videt.
Supplementary Materials
If you have resources for In Vīnētō and would like to share them on LNDb, please contact me.Presentation
| Illustrations? | yes |
| Illustrator | Chloe Shaw, Laura Shaw |
| Macrons? | no |
| Font | Garamond, 12 pt |
| Pages of story | 45 |
| Total pages | 65 |
| Chapters | N/A |
Key Information
| Publication date | October 21, 2018 |
| Publisher | Independently published |
| ISBN | 1726498638 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1726498630 |
