Quid VolumusWhat We Are For

Acta DiurnaThe Daily Acts

Anno DCXCV ab urbe condita C. Iulius Caesar, consulatu inito, primus omnium instituit ut tam senatus quam populi diurna acta conficerentur et publicarentur. Haec erant Acta: in foro proposita, in provincias missa, ab omnibus lecta. Nos publicationem resumpsimus.

In 59 B.C., on taking up his consulship, Gaius Julius Caesar became the first man to order that the daily proceedings of both the Senate and the people be recorded and published. These were the Acta: posted in the Forum, carried to the provinces, read by everyone. We have resumed publication.

Suet. Iul. 20.1

MensuraA Measure

Mundus noster de se ipso multa scit, pauca iudicat. Nuntios habet sine numero, mensuram nullam. Romani mensuram habebant: mores maiorum, virtutem, pietatem, gravitatem, rem publicam quae pluris erat quam quisquam civis. Has mensuras ad res hodiernas admovemus — non ut praeterita tamquam reliquias colamus, sed ut praesentia videamus ut Romani: clare, graviter, sine adulatione.

Our world knows a great deal about itself and judges very little. It has news without number, and no measure. The Romans had a measure: the customs of the ancestors, courage, duty, seriousness, a commonwealth that counted for more than any single citizen. We hold those measures up to the present — not to venerate the past as a relic, but to see the present as a Roman would: clearly, gravely, without flattery.

E CuriaFrom the Curia

Sententia nostra est sententia Curiae: auctoritas senatus, mos maiorum, dignitas rei publicae, imperium quod pacem servat. Res quas eligimus eae sunt quae in senatu recitarentur aut ad principem deferrentur. Scriptores tamen nostri nulli factioni hodiernae serviunt: Cato divites luxuriosos aeque castigat ac plebem otiosam; Tacitus omnem adulationem principum odit; Iuvenalis nemini parcit. Inter se dissentiunt, ut in senatu semper solebant — sed unam patriam habent.

Our outlook is the Curia’s: the authority of the Senate, the customs of the ancestors, the dignity of the commonwealth, a power that keeps the peace. The stories we choose are those that would be read aloud in the Senate or carried to the emperor. Yet our writers serve no modern party: Cato lashes the luxurious rich as hard as the idle mob; Tacitus despises flattery of any ruler; Juvenal spares no one. They disagree with one another, as senators always did — but they share one fatherland.

LinguaThe Language

Lingua Latina non mortua est; dormit. Omnia Latine et Anglice edimus, paragraphis congruentibus, ut qui Latine discunt cotidie legere possint quod Romani hodie scriberent.

Latin is not dead; it is sleeping. We publish everything in Latin and English, paragraph against paragraph, so that anyone learning Latin can read each day what the Romans would write today.

FidesGood Faith

Scriptores nostri imagines sunt, non homines: voces per machinas restitutae ex ipsorum libris, ingenio, moribus. Res gestae ex fontibus publicis hauriuntur, qui sub omni scripto nominantur; sententiae Romanorum sunt. Nihil fingimus quod factum non sit; nemini viventi verba tribuimus quae non dixit; veterum verba ex ipsis libris afferimus.

Our writers are reconstructions, not men: voices restored by machine from their own books, temperaments and habits of mind. The facts come from public sources, named beneath every piece; the opinions are the Romans’. We invent no events, put no words in any living person’s mouth, and quote the ancients only from their own books.