The Press: Semper Latina

Four times a year, a milk farmer in Indiana, a granary proprietor in St. Louis, a cobbler in Portland, Maine, and 25,000 other subscribers wait with varying degrees of impatience for their copies of a slender little magazine called Auxilium Latinum. Then, with varying degrees of proficiency, they translate its contents. The latest issue has a profile on Fredulus Astaire, he lyrics of a song called Somnians Pulchra (Beautiful Dreamer), one column of jokes under the heading “Sub-rideamus!” (Let Us Smile!), and, as usual, a Crucigramma (crossword puzzle). Auxilium Latinum—which means Latin help—is a U.S. magazine printed in Latin.

Valete in Crastinum. Thirty years ago, Dr. Albert E. Warsley, then teaching Latin in Brooklyn’s St. John’s Preparatory School, began printing a Latin magazine for his class. This was about as far as Dr.Warsley’s publishing ambition reached. But one day in 1931 Radio Commentator Lowell Thomas called Warsley and requested a Latin translation of “So long, until tomorrow”—the Thomas sign-off line. When Warsley obliged (Valete in Crastinum), Thomas not only used it, but plugged the magazine on his show.

“After that,” said Warsley, “a flood of mail came in—6,000 to 8,000 letters. We were in business.” Warsley (Seton Hall ’24) opened his classroom magazine to the avalanche of unsolicited subscriptions, in a few years was sending out the magazine to subscribers in England, Ireland, Greece, Turkey, Rhodesia, Ceylon, India and Tonga, as well as the U.S.

“Cadaver Absens.” All but 2,000 copies of Auxilium Latinum go to Latin students, and its main aim is to help them with their Latin. But Editor Warsley is especially proud of the 2,000 subscribers, such as the Hoosier farmer, who take the magazine because they like to read Latin, not because they have to. He tries to make each issue lively rather than pedantic. The jokes tend to be lame: Primus: “Noah Webster optime Anglice locutus est.” Se-cundus: “Ego quoque possem, si meum proprium dictionarium scripsissem.”* But the fiction sometimes has its excitement, e.g., a recent story entitled Cadaver Absens (The Missing Corpse). Although many prospective advertisers (books, crayons, even liquor) have expressed interest, Warsley has held to a no-advertising policy; he thinks that ads might lower the magazine’s tone. His annual gross from subscriptions is about $14,000.

The success of Auxilium Latinum helps convince Editor Warsley, retired from teaching (by a heart attack) seven years ago, that Latin is not a dead language. “Our households and necessities and tastes have not changed much,” he will tell a visitor to his home in West Topsham, Vt. “Did you know that Caesar’s favorite breakfast was ham and eggs with a glass of milk?” Auxilium Latinum’s 25,000 readers send in a steady stream of inquiries for just such knowledge, e.g., “What color were Caesar’s eyes?”* For a coming issue, Warsley plans a reader-requested translation of one of Elvis Presley’s screaming hits, in which the key line, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” would come out “Tu nihil aliud nisi canis venaticus es.”

* Jones: “Noah Webster speaks perfectly in English.” Smith: “So could I, if I had written a dictionary.” * Brown.