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Theme for the remainder of the month: Alphabet Soup

grassor, grassari, grassatus sum

Definition: to walk, march, advance; to prowl (as in a robber, pirate, or similar), to proceed; to attack; to rage, run riot (esp of diseases)

Sententia: Lucan's Pharsalia, Book 6 l. 419-422

Turbae sed mixtus inerti

Sextus erat, magno proles indigna parente,

Qui mox, Scyllaeis exsul grassatus in undis,

Polluit aequoreos Siculus pirata triumphos.

But mixed with the unskilled crowd was Sextus, an unworthy offspring from a great parent, who soon, having prowled as an exile in the Scyllan waves, as a Sicilian pirate defiled the watery triumphs.

Pharsalia, an unfinished epic poem written by Lucan in the Silver Age, describes the battle between Pompey and Caesar, particularly at Pharsalus. This bit of the 6th book, just after the first conflict between the two leaders, describes Sextus, Pompey's son. Shortly, he will seek the foreknowledge of the events of the battle to come froma local witch, NOT the oracle of Delphi, nor the oracle at Pythia, nor one of many other avenues of the gods described by Vulcan.

This word is not particularly frequent, occurring 48 times in the works itemized by the Perseus database, more frequently in prose than in poetry. It is formed from "gradior," to step, + "-to," which occurs as "-so" in this case because the perfect participle of "gradior," "grassus," has a final 's' in the stem.