langsandlit:

thoodleoo:

man the roman naming system will never cease to amaze me, and to show you what i mean i’m gonna talk about one of the baddest bitches to ever grace ancient roman history: gaius mucius scaevola

before i do that though i should probably explain how roman names work. basically you’ve got a first name (eg gaius) and a family name (eg mucius). now if you’re one rockin dude you might be given a super cool nickname (eg scaevola) to distinguish you from all the other boring ass bitches in your family, and you could then pass it on to your kids if you wanted

so how did scaevola get his nickname? well, way back in fuck-all bc, rome was getting attacked by these guys called the clusians, and our pal gaius mucius decided to sneak in and kill their king, lars porsena. unfortunately on the day that ol gaius did this, the clusian soldiers were getting paid, so porsena and his secretary were dressed up the same and gaius couldn’t tell which was which. so instead of coming back later like a normal person, he went ‘well fvck it’ and decided to murder one of them. turns out he murdered the wrong guy. WHOOPS. understandably porsena was not pleased with this and had gaius captured. however, gaius was one hell of a baller, because he was like ‘whatever, kill me if yov want, bvt some other roman will follow after me, cavse vs romans dont give a SHIT abovt dying’ and to prove his point he STUCK HIS RIGHT HAND IN A FIRE and just sort of stared at porsena while he roasted his own hand like anderson cooper with a mic at a trump rally, and i guess that freaked porsena out so much (which, fair) that he and his buddies packed up and left. after that, everyone started calling our buddy gaius ‘scaevola,’ which means LEFT-HANDED

so basically this dude saves all of rome’s ass by turning his right hand into an episode of gordonius ramsius’s kitchen nightmares, and rome is so thankful that they’re like ‘gaius mucius, you are one bad bitch and we’re gonna give you a nickname so everyone knows what a bad bitch you are’ and the badass nickname they give him is ‘lefty’

And that’s EXACTLY WHY in Italy we keep saying “mettere la mano sul fuoco” (literally “to put [my] hand into the fire”) when you’re extremely sure about something

{other Romance langs like Spanish have this expression too}