octogesimussextus

Theme for this week: Olympic sports

passus, passus m.

Definition: step, pace, track, footstep; mille passus = a thousand paces, a Roman mile (slightly less than 1500 meters)

Sententia: Mille passibus cursis quam celerrime, athleta, magnopere passus, tam laetus erat ut manibus passis saliret.

With the thousand paces having been run as quickly as possible, the athlete, having suffered greatly, was so happy that he lept with hands having been extended.

In the masculine nominative singular, this word appears identical to the perfect participles of patior and pando - cave! With that in mind, it's quite challenging to find specific examples of the word's use; whlie it does show up in multiple dictionaries (Lewis & Short, Whitaker's Words online, New College, etc.), the online databases tend to combine its instances with those of patior and pando as well. It seems to be a word that would appear in day-to-day Roman life frequently!

And speaking of Roman life, this word did in fact appear on a question on the Roman Life test at NJCL Convention, which asked for a measurement that was equal to one gradus. One gradus would equal half of a passus, and one gradus would also be equivalent to 2.5 pedes (the answer for the particular question on the test). Wikipedia, dare I say it, has an excellent page for Roman systems of measurement, linked to here. For those of you who recognize the phrase (those of you who don't will surely hear of it soon)... an ancient form of dimensional analysis?

-Will "The First Christina Substitute" Czaplyski