Auriga & Quadriga: Roman Charioteer Words in English at Bill Casselman's Words of the World & Canadian Word of the Day

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Auriga & Quadriga:

Latin ‘Charioteer’ Words in English

Our title shows the thundering chariot race from the 1959 film “Ben Hur,” with Charlton Heston as charioteer of a quadriga, a conveyance pulled by four horses harnessed abreast. We discuss quadriga later, but first we define Auriga.

Auriga is one of the 88 modern constellations. In the northern sky, its brightest star is Capella. It means ‘charioteer’ in Latin, so called because ancient star gazers thought the star-group or constellation (con, cum Latin ‘together’ + stella Latin ‘star’) looked like a charioteer’s pointy helmet.

Auriga as a Word

Auriga is a Roman word that underwent some changes in Latin which I think are worth discussing. Two processes that cannot be easily legislated in a modern living language are spelling transformation and semantic drift. Oh, nations attempt such meddlesome finger-work with living words but often they don’t succeed.

One hundred years ago a spelling reform movement wanted English users to spell rough as ruff, slough as slow, pillow as pillo. Fat chants of that! Check out the convolutions and depredations inflicted on French, la belle langue, by L’Académie française. Can any objective observer of those linguistic fascists state that the French Academy has improved modern French? No! Words once introduced may always change meaning and spelling. That is almost one definition of a living language. Except, apparently, in Paris.

Change of Meaning

Why are Latin and ancient Greek used to make international scientific words in every Western language? Because Latin and ancient Greek are dead languages, crystalized in obsolescence. Meanings of Latin and Greek roots don’t change. Imagine if scientific terms changed their meaning every week! Knowledge might become chaotic. Nevertheless, when such roots become part of a language that is alive and thriving like modern English, those words can change. Acid once meant vinegar. Now it may mean LSD.

Etymology

Old Latin words that were altered by vowel lengthening and other processes to make the root words more emphatic and stronger, as Latin proceeded through history, can be tricky to trace to their proper source.

Auriga (Latin ‘charioteer’) has a prime meaning of “driver” that is ‘a man who drives forward’ a chariot. Auriga had earliest forms that make clear the word is based on the Latin verbal stem ag ‘push forward’ ‘drive ahead.’ *Ag appears in the common Latin verb ago, agere, egi, actum. Auriga is composed of the ag stem broadened and lengthened to make the root sound more emphatic, so that *aurig means ‘really drive ahead powerfully.’ Thus, in common early Latin pronunciation, auriga = aurg or aurig + a common masculine agent noun ending in Old Latin of -a, the equivalent of an English agent noun suffix like -er (as in fighter, preacher).

The verb ago, agere, egi, actum also has the more frequent Latin agent noun suffix, -ator, -or showing up in Latin words like gladiator ‘one who uses a short broad-sword called a gladius’ and showing up in the Latin word actor literally ‘one who does something by driving forward with action.’

Auriga carrying the goat and kids depicted in Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London around 1825 CE.

The -A Ending of Masculine Gender

A familiar masculine Latin agent noun with a similar ending is the Roman word for male farmer, agricola = ager Latin ‘field’ + -col verbal root ‘live, dwell’ + -a Old Latin masculine agent noun suffix.

I emphasize that this -a ending is masculine because many students, seeing a Latin noun ending in the letter a, tend to think such a form must be of the feminine gender. Of course, most Latin nouns of the first declension are of feminine grammatical gender and do indeed have nominative and vocative case endings in a. But a few Latin nouns ending in -a which appear to be of feminine gender are in fact masculine: nauta ‘sailor’ and Hadria ‘the Adriatic Sea’ and scriba ‘clerk, secretary, scribe’ (literally ‘one who writes’ from scribere ‘to write.’

This quadriga clad in gold leaf, whose sculptural title is “Progress of the State,” adorns the entrance to the Minnesota State Capitol building in St. Paul.

Quadriga

A chariot drawn by four horses harnessed abreast was in Latin a quadriga. That is a contracted form of the original Roman word quadriiugae = quadri ‘four’ + iugae ‘yokes’ ‘harnesses.’ The English word yoke and the Latin word iugum are cognates; they both derive from a common Indo-European root whose prime and sensuous meaning was ‘join.’ The Latin word was probably a calque or loan-translation of an earlier, original Greek name τέθριππον tethrippon = tetra from tettara, tetteres Attic Greek ‘four’ + hippos ‘horse.’

The most famous modern instance is in the movie “Ben Hur” and the four-horse chariot once atop the Brandenberg Gates in Berlin. Today “Quadriga” is the title of political discussion panel program on Deutsche Welle, a German TV network.

The Brandenburg Gates quadriga, starkly lit by ghastly night light, glows with somber Prussian gloom and seems to have just ridden forth from Hell's stable.

In Greek and later Roman mythology, the quadriga was the chariot of choice for the gods. When Apollo cantered across a morning sky, dissolving the shroud of night and spreading over the earth the luminous duvet of day, he preferred always a quadriga, vain divinity that he was. Chariot races were introduced to the Olympic Games in the middle of the seventh century BCE. In ancient sculpture, bas-reliefs and vase paintings the goddesses Victory and Fame are depicted at the reins of a thundering quadriga. The model for the chariot in the film “Ben Hur” and the Brandenburg Gates chariot is The Triumphal Quadriga. A replica of the sculpture can be seen today in Venice inside the Basilica of Saint Mark.

copyright © 2012 William Gordon Casselman

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