Latin in Marathon 2

"Manus Celer Dei"

Latin is used in a number of places in the Marathon 2 Story. The following are approximate translations.

Ernest Tomlinson <etomlins@rohan.sdsu.edu> writes:

As a double- major in computer science and classics with Latin emphasis (true!) at State, any fragments of Latin that turn up in books and movies and whatnot interest me greatly.

Anyway, considerable of the Latin in Marathon is munged; the "ingue [sic!] ferroque" error has already been noted. But another funny blunder is found in the Marathon II final screen. Durandal calls his Jjaro ship the "Manus Celer Dei", forgetting I suppose that "manus" is one of the only fourth-declension Latin nouns which is _feminine_ (hence the Spanish derivation "la mano"). So he should have called his ship the "Manus Celeris Dei". Oops.

It's possible though that "manus" can be of either gender, depending on context, something like the noun "dies" which is _usually_ feminine, but not always.

Mike Phillips <venom@silcon.com> writes:

Regarding Ernest Tomlinson's comment about the use of the feminine noun "Manus" in the name of Durandal's ship -- I'm no Latin major (nor do I have any knowledge of it other than what I've learned from the Marathon trilogy of games!), but I wanted to point out that ships, and many vehicles in general, tend to be christened with female names. I don't know why this is, but I'm sure there is some sort of old custom or superstition behind it, if anyone knows who would like to broaden our minds... ;)

Kieran Wheeler <kieran_wheeler@hotmail.com> writes:

Ancient seagoers, like the Greco-Romans, originally named their vessels after their gods, as a sign of respect. Female deities in particular. Later on, regular feminine names were used. The reason? Women were seen to be epitomically nurturing, caring, and (above all) protecting. The tradition evolved from the view that female ships would be more likely to make it safe to port, based on the previously mentioned gender stereotype. Apparently they thought their constructions of wood and iron were in some way animate... reminiscent of the AI's? Maybe.

When Marathon Durandal was released for Xbox Live Arcade on August 1, 2007 new latin was added to the game.

Marathon Durandal was created by Freeverse who were contracted by Bungie to do an Xbox port. The two leads on project were well know Marathoners, namely Mark Levin and Bruce Morrison. You can read a Bungie interview with Bruce Morrison about the port here.

While not strictly canon in the true sense of the original game I have added it here for curiosity and completeness.

This screenshot is taken from the final terminal on All Roads Lead to Sol... but the image appears on a number of other Marathon 2 levels.

It reads:

PERSEQUAR   INIMICOS   MEOS   ET   ADPREHENDAM   ET   NON   REVERTAR
DONEC   CONSUMAM   EOS   CADENT   SUB   PEDIBUS   MEIS

Roughly translated it means:

I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I turn again till they were consumed: yea, they are fallen under my feet.

The word "consumed" can also be interpreted as "destroyed".

The latin appears to come from two Bible quotes:

Psalms 18:37 - [Vulgate 17:38]     persequar inimicos meos et adprehendam et non revertar donec consumam eos

and

2 Samuel 22:39     Consumam eos et confringam, ut non consurgant: cadent sub pedibus meis.

The latter translates as:

And I have consumed them, and wounded them, that they could not arise: yea, they are fallen under my feet.

On Slings & Arrows of Outrageous Fortune, the second level of Marathon 2, both Durandal terminals display:

It reads:

PERSEQUAR   INIMICOS   MEOS   ET   ADPREHENDAM   ET   NON   REVERTAR
0x1?   ONMUCSES   OMA   DTSBPI   UDEC   N2BUEA   0x14

While the top line is latin and is translated above. The 0x14 appears to be a Windows error code. And it is difficult to make out what the first error code is. The rest of the text appears to be garbage (hence the error codes).

During the Durandal Chapter and the attack on Durandal this terminal goes to mush.

Or does it?

And at what point in the game do we see the full latin text?

PERSEQUAR   INIMICOS   MEOS   ET   ADPREHENDAM   ET   NON   REVERTAR
DONEC   CONSUMAM   EOS   CADENT   SUB   PEDIBUS   MEIS

Chris Knowles (aka Tarrenam on Twitter) writes concerning the apparently garbage text in the above terminal from the Xbox game Marathon Durandal.

It's not actually Latin, it's a mixture of English and French.

The red text at the bottom is ASCII (each two-digit number is either a letter or a space), and reads "tooth bone hair robe". This is almost the list of the four relics supposed to be inside the sword Durandal's hilt, though why they went with "bone" rather than "blood" I'm not sure.

The green text is slightly trickier. The second row on the left ends in "46 esab", which is "base 64" backwards - the rest of the green text is a base64-encoded string. I had to do a bit of trial and error with characters that might be uppercase I's or lowercase L's, similarly O's and zeros, but the correct encoded strings (left and right) are:

YmxhbmMgZXQgZOlnYWfpIGRlIGxhIHRhY2hl
bGUgcGx1cyBzYWludCBsb3lhbGVtZW50IGVuIGVmZmV0

Putting that into a decoder and decoding to Windows-1252 (not a Mac format!?) this comes out as:

"blanc et dégagé de la tache
le plus saint loyalement en effet"

As far as I can tell this translates as "white and unblemished, the most holy, loyally indeed"

I'm no native French speaker, but it seems weird that it's "loyalement" (loyally) rather than just "loyal", but there we are.

Seeing French, the obvious thing to look at is the Song of Roland, but this doesn't seem to be a quotation. The original is in very old French anyway, but a translation into modern French I found online (https://resources.warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/neh3030b2330242.pdf) doesn't seem to have those words either. Still, it may well be a description of Durandal-the-sword.

Line 2316 of the Song of Roland is "E! Durendal , cum ies e clere e blanche", which the above PDF version renders in modern French as "O ma bonne Durendal, comme tu es claire et blanche", describing the sword as "clear and white", which does seem to be in the same spirit as "blanc et dégagé de la tache".

So there we go, some fun stuff about Durandal.