A Game of Thrones Epic Poem… in Latin!
By: Sator Arepo
Tags: Latin, Poetry, Game of Thrones

I am a long-time fan of the Game of Thrones universe (more precisely, the A Song of Ice and Fire universe) and also an enthusiast of the Latin language. I decided to bring both together with an epic poem, in a similar style of the Aeneid. Check out the recitation!

Why write it in the first place?

For most practical purposes, there is not a lot of motivation for writing in Latin. It is nobody's native language, to begin with, and few people attain a fluent conversational proficiency.

But there are reasons beyond mere communication. Writing can serve simply as language practice, but also more than that: we can appreciate realistic dialogues in movies and series (like the great texts in Barbarians), or more generally, we can write for the sake of art, writing things pleasant to read and listen.

What makes something pleasant or beautiful is certainly a matter of taste. But since we are talking about Latin, we might as well embrace one of its most characteristic literary styles: the hexameter poem.

To be honest, I was never much interested in poetry before studying Latin. In English and other languages that don’t distinguish long and short vowels and consonants, form in poetry is usually dictated by number of syllables in a verse, alliterations and rhyming. This is fine and again, a matter of taste, but what really amazes me about Latin poetry is how beautifully it exploits the contrasts of long and short syllables. Hexameters are one of many possibilities, but the go-to choice for epic themes.

Back when Vergil wrote the Aeneid, reading was one of the most thrilling entertainment options available. Even if much of the story was already known more or less as folklore, reading it in verse could be a great experience for the rhythm of the hexameters (to be clear, the Aeneid was not intended as a purely entertainment piece and Vergil was not happy with it at the end of his life, but we don’t need to go into these details here).

In other words, the tale of the founder of Rome was part of the pop culture of the time. Why shouldn't we write hexameters about icons of our own pop culture, especially when their original story is already set in epic proportions?

The poem itself

So far, I have written the first part of the poem, referring to the onset of Robert’s Rebellion — years before the story in the books or the HBO show, but often mentioned in them. Let’s go through the poem and see some word choices!

Cum regit īnsānus rex, Vesteros opprimitur, vae!

Tempora et exoptant dominī et populus meliōra

The first verse shows the time we are talking about: the reign of the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen. Westeros suffers under his rule, and both the feudal lords and the common people wish for better times. For Westeros, I chose to go with Vesteros, which would have genitive Vesterī. The interjection vae! was a neat trick to inject some emotion and make the verse scan.

In sē spem saltem rēgālis fīlius hanc fert

Post tam terribilem patrem, fore dissimilis rēx

Prince Rhaegar (rēgālis fīlius) was seen as a great man, wise and strong, and carried the hope of being a much different king from his insane father.

Jām nōn ille dracōnibus imperium retinēbat

Mōre valēbat lēgeque quam priscī īnstituērunt

Saecula patrēs ante Valīrī prōgeniēbus

Saepe quidem lēx firmius imperium tenet ēnse

Arte polīticā enim rēctūrus rēx potius sit!

This passage recalls that the Targaryens did not have their dragons anymore — the king did not keep his power (imperium retinēbat) by means of dragons (dracōnibus), which had made Targaryens unbeatable when they first came to Westeros. However, they were lawfully the reigning dynasty, according to the laws created by the first Targaryen kings. Their power now resided more in laws and practices (mōre lēgeque) than in a (not anymore) superior military force (ense, literally sword).

I used Valīrus to refer to Targaryens. That seems a fitting name for the people of Valyria, and a good metaphor for a somewhat clunky word, although I admittedly changed y for i for aesthetic reasons. A long vowel to mark the stressed syllable in the English Valyria sounded good to me.

The last verse above uses a future participle that would sound a bit awkward in prose, but would sometimes be employed by poets to fit the metric. The idea of the subjunctive here is more or less “let the king [be about to] reign better with political skill!”; it would also make more sense to refer to kings in plural, but another common device in Latin poetry is replacing singular for plural (or vice-versa) when context is clear enough. Finally, the Greek term polītica (an adjective here) was hardly ever used in Classical Latin; but given the lack of a good equivalent Roman term, I chose to go with it.

Conjugium cōnfēcit quod nec flamma dracōnum

nec gladiī potuēre: Valīrīs dēdere Dornum

Uxōrem dūxit Martellem rēgulus ipse

Here I mention one of the most prominent peaceful political achievement of the Targaryens: bringing Dorne into the realm by marriage. Until then, Dornishmen would resist annexation, even when it meant severe damage to their country by dragonflame. This happened generations ago, but a tradition of Targaryen-Martell marriages still existed, and even prince Rhaegar was married to Elia Martell.

Dorne was latinized Dornum, second declension, and this was a rather arbitrary decision. Neuter region names are not common in Latin but we do have a few (Latinitium has nice references). A third declension neuter Dorne, -is might work, I just don’t like it; a more traditional suffix would give us Dornia, -ae (together with dornus for Dornish) which I actually like and might even use in further verses.

Sī, Rhaegar, modo fīdus mānsissēs apud illam,

Clādes quae nōmen prope perdidit omne tuōrum

facta esset nunquam, spoliāta urbs rēgia nunquam!

If Rhaegar had never gone after Lyanna Stark and stayed with his wife, Robert’s Rebellion would likely never have happened. The civil war almost killed off the Targaryen dynasty, which I mean with perdidit nōmen omne tuōrum: destroyed the whole name of your [people], and resulted in the sack of King’s Landing, the rēgia urbs — the regal city, capital of Westeros. Rhaegar here was a plain third declension noun; the ae might be pronounced as the diphthong in Classical Latin (which I did in my recitation), but a more English-like ē or even a diphthongized ei would also scan fine.

Fēcistī tamen, abripuistī, captus amōre

Jam sponsam lupulam! Dīcās, nōn abripuisse,

autem sponte suā tēcum fūgisse puellam.

Nec dubitō! Sed sī tuum amōre fuit scelus actum,

attamen id scelus; īgnōscet spōnsus tibi nunquam.

But Rhaegar indeed did it — he left Elia and fled with Lyanna. Robert Baratheon would say he kidnapped and raped her, but the books indicate that Lyanna was also in love and fled with Rhaegar willingly. I used the subjunctive dīcās meaning more or less “say as you might”: Rhaegar might argue that he did not kidnap or rape anyone, and I do believe him, but still he committed a crime of adultery with a betrothed woman.

The abripuisse in the accusative with infinitive clause has an implicit subject, tē, which I’d expect to see explicitly in prose. In poetry, however, we must sometimes trim out words, but I hope the verse is still well understandable.

Robert, the spōnsus mentioned here, would never forgive him for it. The rebellion was not started just because of a stolen bride, but that was the last straw for him.

Next Steps

I hope you enjoyed my verses so far! It took me a lot of time to compose them, and I also learned a lot in the process. In fact, trying to compose your own hexameters might be a great exercise in Latin.

I’m currently writing a few more verses and will share them when they are ready. I intend to describe the next steps leading to the Battle of the Trident, and all the epic deeds involved in there, and also of the fate of Ned Stark and Jon Snow.