The Guilty Ones

1

~~~~Moritz POV~~~~

        " Again." Herr Sonnenstich snapped as we recited the Latin we had learned. I zoned out, much too tired to focus on anything besides the faint Latin being recited in the classroom. 

... vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram ... 

 I looked out of the window to see a butterfly passing by the open window. 

... multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem. 

How cool would it be to be a butterfly, you could just fly away from all of your problems. 

· .. Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venitlitora

Butterfly's don't have to worry about passing their classes.

Herr Stiefel. 

And they most certainly don't have to worry about having the most horrific dark fant- 

Herr Stiefel! 

A tap on the leg from my best friend Maria brought me back from my thoughts, making me bolt straight up at attention, "Sir!"

" Continue. Please." He sneered. I shot a worried glance at Maria who smiled and gave me a nod of encouragement. 

" Laviniaque venit ..." I started,

"Yes" he affirmed                                                                                                   

 " litora ... multum enim"  I tried my voice audibly unsure. 

"Multum enim?" He raised a brow.  "multum olim" I said quickly correcting myself.  However, that only seemed to anger him further.

"Olim? Multum olim?! So then, somehow the Pious Aeneas has already suffered much in the days still to come!" I didn't know what to say not wanting to make him more upset  then he already was so I stayed quiet. 

" Herr Stiefel? Do you have any idea what you're saying, Herr Stiefel?" I couldn't move I felt frozen like a deer caught in headlights. He opened his mourn to taunt me more when a bang from next to me interrupted him.

"If you please!" Maria had slammed her hands on the table standing up in a defensive position.

 " I beg your pardon" Herr Sonnenstich stood straight up looming over the younger girl. 

" I don't see a reason you must taunt Moritz. He has simply made an error and for you to make such a scene for the simplest of things is not only unnecessary but unprofessional as well.'' She snapped gritting her teeth.

 Fueled with rage he smacked her rather roughly across the chest making her flinch and my fists clench. He swung back about to strike again when Melchior interrupted. "Sir! I think what she meant was can't we at least consider "multum olim" as a plausible conjecture for how the text might read?"

He moved his stick away from Maria's chest as he answered Melchior "Herr Gabor. We are hardly here today to conjecture about textual conjectures. The boy has made an error."

"Yes. But an understandable error, sir. Indeed, if we could only entertain the fitness of the conjecture. Look to the fresh rhetorical balance-"multumolim" introducing "multa quoque" -a parallel, sir, between what Aeneas has already suffered in war and those sufferings on land and sea just ahead."  Melchior challenged a glint of a challenge in his eyes.

"Herr Gabor, since the days of Servius ,Aulus Gellius, and Claudius Donatus-nay, since the moment of Virgil's death-our world has been littered with more than sufficient critical commentary on textual conjecture." Sighed Herr Sonnenstich his patience visibly running thin by the second.