The curious incident of Cambridge’s Latin graffiti
A weird one, this. Yesterday, a short walk away from me in Chesterton, Cambridge, an enigmatic threat appeared in three-foot-high letters on a new row of upmarket houses flanking the banks of the Cam. But these weren’t the usual slapdash daubings. No, the letters were lavishly painted across four houses by a ladder-wielding vigilante ten feet above the ground. The stunt has made national headlines, not so much for the content of the protest as for its medium – Latin. Well, it is and it isn’t Latin. It proclaims, Locus in domos loci populum! Purists will object that the Romans had to muddle through without the indulgent hyperbole of exclamation
