Critics have been in rhapsodies about the joy of the panels in the new Bayeux Tapestry show at the British Museum, opening on September 10th.
But they don't refer to the Latin. It's very pleasing and simple - a great introduction to the subject, beautifully illustrated and so even easier to understand for the layman or the Latin scholar.
'HIC HAROLD REX INTERFECTUS EST' - 'Here King Harold was killed' - is the most famous line. A nice use of the passive there - but still pretty easy to get the hang of, particularly when you see the picture of Harold with the arrow in his eye below.
The first line of the tapestry - 'Edward Rex' or 'King Edward' - is even easier, showing Edward the Confessor on his throne.
There are 58 captions or 'tituli' in the tapestry. I've been reading them on and off since I first saw the tapestry on a school trip, aged 11, 44 years ago.
But it was only at the Oldie Literary Lunch with the great classicist Mary Beard this week that I learnt some of the hidden pleasures lurking beneath that nice, easy, medieval Latin.
One of them is a reference to Virgil: Harold sails 'velis vento plenis' - 'with sails full of wind'. That's borrowed from Book 5 of the Aeneid. It suggests that the composer - or composers - of the tituli were Latin scholars, hiding their knowledge under the simple message in order to get it across to as many readers as possible.
Some of the Latin smacks of Norman French:
'HIC EXEUNT CABALLI DE NAVIBUS'
'Here the horses left the ships.'
Caballi is an odd choice of word for 'horses'. Most Romans would have used 'equi'. But caballi is closer to the French word for horse - 'cheval'.
Then again, there is also an unusual English word order, suggesting that the tapestry was, as suspected, made in Canterbury, not France. As schoolboys used to know, the Romans liked to put their verbs at the end of the sentence. But the tapestry Latin often follows the order of the English translation just as we would speak it.
Take this example:
'UBI NUNTII WILLELMI DUCIS VENERUNT AD WIDONE'
'Where Duke William's messengers came to Wido.' A Roman would have preferred to put 'venerunt' - 'came' - at the end of the sentence.
That name 'Widone' is also intriguing. 'Ad' - 'to' - takes the accusative. So it should really have been 'Widonem'. But that might have been for reasons of space - the line is squeezed right up against the embroidery of a house. Or it might be accepted shorthand for a name.
In fact, the Latin is almost error-free. But there are different spellings of William the Conqueror. Sometimes, he's Willelmus; sometimes he's Wilgelmus. That might be a mistake but it might also show that different people composed the lines - perhaps the different embroiderers who were putting it all together.
There are also rather strange Latin usages. Take this:
'ET HIC MILITES FESTINAVERUNT HESTINGA UT CIBUM RAPERENTUR' - 'And here the knights have hurried to Hastings to seize food.' In fact, that 'raperentur' is passive, meaning 'they might be seized'. So it's a bit clumsy. Surely they meant to use the active - 'they might seize'. Or perhaps they meant to use the singular with the passive - 'So food might be seized.'
Whoever embroidered the tapestry, in Canterbury or Normandy, Latin was the ideal language for it. It was the lingua franca - understood alike in medieval Kent or France - as it had been ever since the collapse of the Roman Empire in 410 AD. The Anglo-Saxons realised the language's importance, too - Alfred the Great started learning Latin in the late 9th century AD, at the age of 30.
And the staggering thing is that the Latin in the tapestry is pretty much identical to the Latin written in Rome and the Roman Empire over a thousand years before the Battle of Hastings. And it's pretty much identical, too, to the Latin I learnt at school 900 years after the Battle of Hastings.
While spoken Latin morphed into Italian and the other romance languages across Europe, the reverence for the written language meant this pure form of Latin has survived unadulterated for over 2,000 years.
Reading the Latin won't give you magic answers to the great mysteries - who embroidered the tapestry and where. But if you're lucky enough to see the blockbuster show over the next few months, do please read as well as look. Even if you have no Latin, your pleasure will be doubled.
Harry Mount is author of Et Tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever
