re: I've Been Here Too Long page 16

The Dutch don't have any either, since 1585, when the kingship was abolished, and the Republic established. The act saying so did serve as a model for the American founding fathers, btw.

So any town in the Netherlands must have been a town before that date. Not that it matters, for all those rights
were for all practical purposes abolished in 1790. And the Oranges (since 1815) lack the power to reintroduce them.

Best,
Jan

What is this about Lesbians?

It's all a question of who's erkian whom.

Liebs
Hey, Areff started it

If we want to get into stuff like "Vergil was actually a Gaul", we can, of course.

Just a quick question about usage. You use the Latin spelling from 'Vergilius', yet the traditional spelling in English is 'Virgil.' I understand that the 'Vergil' spelling is becoming more common. How did the 'Virgil' spelling become established.

The latest Oxford Classical Dictionary sticks to the traditional English 'Virgil', but says the contemporary spelling was with an e, the first i version being in a Greek inscription of if I understand correctly our fourth or fifth century; but that he and his friends punned on virgo ; "the slightly historicizing Vergil is preferred by some modern critics".
Why we adopted the i version into English, I don't know. OED1 doesn't help. (Something to do with the so-called Gesta Romanorum , perhaps? it's an important source of medieval errors.)

Do we call other people from Mantua Gauls, or only those we want to pick fights over?

Probably the latter! I don't think the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul were all that Celtic in manners or language by V's time, and south of the Po they were descendants of planted Italians anyhow.

Attempts to prove the name was either Celtic or Etruscan have, I believe, always failed.
Mike.